Editing Peasant (section)

==Historiography==
{{See also|Agrarianism}}
[[File:Peasants 3French Best.jpg|thumb|upright|Portrait sculpture of 18th-century French peasants by artist [[George S. Stuart]], in the permanent collection of the Museum of Ventura County, [[Ventura, California|Ventura]], California]]

In medieval Europe society was theorized as being organized into [[Estates of the realm|three estates]]: those who work, those who pray, and those who fight.<ref>[[Richard Southern|Southern, Richard]] (1952) ''The Making of the Middle Ages''.</ref> The [[Annales School]] of 20th-century French historians emphasized the importance of peasants. Its leader [[Fernand Braudel]] devoted the first volume—called ''The Structures of Everyday Life''—of his major work, ''Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century'' to the largely silent and invisible world that existed below the market economy.

Other research in the field of peasant studies was promoted by [[Florian Znaniecki]] and [[Fei Xiaotong]], and in the post-1945 studies of the "great tradition" and the "little tradition" in the work of [[Robert Redfield]]. In the 1960s, anthropologists and historians began to rethink the role of [[peasant revolt]] in world history and in their own disciplines. Peasant revolution was seen as a [[Third World]] response to capitalism and imperialism.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Wolf|first1=Eric R.|author-link1=Eric Wolf|title=Peasants|date=1965|publisher=Prentice-Hall|location=Englewood Cliffs, NJ|isbn=978-0136554561}}</ref>

The anthropologist [[Eric Wolf]], for instance, drew on the work of earlier scholars in the Marxist tradition such as [[Daniel Thorner]], who saw the rural population as a key element in the [[transition from feudalism to capitalism]]. Wolf and a group of scholars<ref>Van der Ploeg, Jan Douwe (2012). ''The new peasantries: struggles for autonomy and sustainability in an era of empire and globalization''. Routledge.</ref><ref>Moore, Barrington (1993). ''Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: Lord and peasant in the making of the modern world''. Vol. 268. Beacon Press.</ref><ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1080/03066157308437872|title=The nature and logic of the peasant economy 1: A Generalisation|year=1973 |last1=Shanin |first1=Teodor |journal=The Journal of Peasant Studies |volume=1 |pages=63–80 }}</ref><ref name="diva-portal.org">Alves, Leonardo Marcondes (2018). [http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1222013/FULLTEXT01.pdf ''Give us this day our daily bread: The moral order of Pentecostal peasants in South Brazil'']. Master's thesis in Cultural Anthropology. Uppsala universitet.</ref> criticized both Marx and the field of Modernization theorists for treating peasants as lacking [[agency (sociology)|the ability to take action]].<ref>Wolf, Eric R. (1969) ''Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century''. New York: Harper & Row.</ref> [[James C. Scott]]'s field observations in Malaysia convinced him that villagers were active participants in their local politics even though they were forced to use indirect methods. Many of these activist scholars looked back to the [[peasant movement]] in India and to the theories of the revolution in China led by [[Mao Zedong]] starting in the 1920s. The anthropologist Myron Cohen, however, asked why the rural population in China were called "peasants" rather than "farmers", a distinction he called political rather than scientific.<ref>{{cite journal|jstor=20027171|author=Cohen, Myron |title=Cultural and Political Inventions in Modern China: The Case of the Chinese "Peasant"|journal=Daedalus|volume=122|issue=2 |year=1993|pages=151–170}}</ref> One important outlet for their scholarly work and theory was ''[[The Journal of Peasant Studies]]''.