Peasants and Political Mobilization: Introduction

In the present issue, and the one to follow, Comparative Studies has brought together a set of papers which address themselves, in various ways, to the understanding of how peasants come to take part in political mobilization, and how they are affected by such participation. It is thus the intention of the editors to contribute further to the ongoing discussion, in history and the social sciences, about the nature and characteristics of peasantry. This discussion has a secure and venerable genealogy in continental Europe: relevant names which come to mind are those of the Frenchman Le Play, the German Riehl, and the Russian Vasil'chakov. Something of this rich legacy reached North American sociology through the influence of the Polish sociologist Florian Znaniecki. But in the United States the interest in peasantry remained marginal, until it took root in anthropology, primarily through the efforts of Robert Redfield. Drawing on the legacy of Maine, Durkheim, Tönnies, and of the German-influenced urban sociologists at the University of Chicago, Redfield elaborated the concept of ‘the folk society’, possessed of a distinctive ‘folk culture’.