1978INo. 20 by Richard Critchfield Lookto Suffering, Lookto Joy South America [RC-2-'781 Part II: The World 1957-1977: Hidden Answers

What exactly is a peasant? The truest peasant is to be found in Fishermen, however, I would include regions of ancient civilizations, such with the peasants. They live in The very word is freighted. Evan as India, China, Indonesia, and settled villages, place virtue upon Thomas, the distinguished book Egypt, those rural people who culti- industry and thrift, and share many editor, once advised this writer to vate their land for subsistence and as of the peasants' traditional tasks and drop the word, peasant, from the title part of an age-old traditional way of values. The only fishing community I of a manuscript as he felt to many life. As far as we can tell, most rural have studied,on the southern Indian people it sounded insulting. Chinese remain peasantry despite Ocean island of Mauritius, fits closely the Maoist revolution. My own most into the peasant cultural pattern. Yet peasant is a precise word with- rewarding village studies have been out any real equivalent. "Farmer," in Egypt, India, and Indonesia, coun- Sub-Saharan Africans are in various "villager," or "folk," convey other tries whose peasants have had stages of moving out of tribalism, a shades of meaning. The word is constant contact for thousands of great many existing on cattle raising probably inescapably laden with years with their urban centers of in- and primitive slash-and-burn culti- other connotations because all over tellectual thought and development. vation, such as the Ngimang tribe I the world, at all periods of history, Such peasants possess a sense of studied in the Nuba Mountains of the terms applied to rural people by assured cultural identity that makes southwestern Sudan. The Ngimangs urban people have tended to imply it easier to live among them and write now live in a settled village and like contempt or condescension, as in about them than partially Western- other African tribes I have read about "hick" and "hayseed," though often ized people such as, for example, would seem to be moving into the mixed with a certain admiration for those with Latin culture, with their global peasant pattern. the virtues of the simple, the primi- imitator's complex of admiration and tive, and the hardy, as in "folksy" or contempt. Latin America poses special prob- the earlier "noble savage." Both lems. Its rural people, very generally Redfield and Lewis used "folk" in speaking, are one of two kinds. The their first books, later dropping it for Hunters, herders, and fishermen first, found in rural Northeast Brazil, "peasant." pose a problem. Although I have in- where I recently spent six months, cluded Arab Bedouins in my own are transplanted European peasantry We can perhaps define peasants as studies, these nomadic sheep-raising or descendants of Africans brought those who make a living and have a pastoralists clearly stand outside the as slaves to work the sugar planta- way of life through cultivation of the peasant culture. Alone they have tions in the sixteenth to nineteenth land, producing food largely for their preserved much of the tradition of centuries, or a mixture of the two. own family's subsistence. This sepa- man the hunter: a system of patri- Rural Brazilians still possess too rates them from those who carry on lineal families, unity of kinship many of the characteristics of fron- agriculture for reinvestment and as a groups under the authority of a tiersmen to be classified as true business for profit, looking upon the chieftain responsible for daily de- peasants and like fishermen or black land as capital and commodity. Such cisions as to where to seek pasture Africans can be included, but only on people are farmers, not peasants. In and pitch tents, with great impor- the fringe. northern India and Pakistan today tance attached to the courage and we can witness the transformation of male prowess of the warrior. The Here in Mexico we find the other kind large numbers of the latter, subsis- morality they accord certain kinds of of rural Latin American: Indian tence peasants, into modern com- violence and predatory behavior is peoples influenced by pre-Colum- mercial farmers. enough to exempt them. bian civilization and later Spanish culture but still in an incompletely nialism and, more recently, comrnu- gration to North America, wrote that developed relationship to their cen- nism. Hindu India fell under Moghul "from the westernmost reaches of ters of intellectual thought and urban rule and then the British raj. Egypt's Europe, in Ireland, in Russia to the elites. Yet rural Mexican villages, pharaonic culture is deeply buried east, the peasant masses had with their mestizo-Indian popula- today after 6 centuries of Christianity attained an imperturbable same- tions and traditions going back many and 13 centuries of Islam, plus influ- nessM4 centuries are much closer to being ences from conquests by the Greeks, peasantry than the rural Brazilians, Persians, Romans, Arabs, Cru- He then listed the qualities con- and certainly much closer than the saders, French, and English. Java's tributing to this "imperturbable Indians of the western highlands of village culture is extremely syncretic, sameness:" a personal bond with the Guatemala. with almost equal elements of Islam, land, an attachment to an integrated Hinduism, and animism. Mexico's village or local community, central Still, as formative as Latin America's village culture is a still unintegrated importance of the family, marriage a village culture remains, it has pro- mixture of the great pre-Columbia provision of economic welfare, vided us with our first and broadest Indian tradition, Spanish influences, patrilocal residence and descent in views of peasant culture. As Robert and latter-day "Americanization." the male line, a strain between the Redfield observed of the 1930s and Much the same is true of the Philip- attachment to the land and village '40s, "It was by moving out of abo- pines, with American and Spanish and the necessity to support a family, riginal North America into the study culture overlaying a Malay tradition. and so on. In the dozen or so villages of contemporary village life in Middle I havestudied in India, Africa, the Far and South America that American But by and large one can say that East, Latin America, and the Muslim World, this "imperturbable same- anthropologists came first and in peasants in India, Indonesia, and ness" can also be found.5 large numbers to undertake the Egypt remain fairly closely con- study of peasants.. . . In Latin nected with their own ancient civili- Malcolm Darling in his study of America anthropology has moved zations and hence are the world's northern India's Punjabis in the from tribe to peasantry."'The truest peasantry. Perhaps China can 1930sfound their way of life had "an Indian subcontinent was the next be included, or perhaps it belongs in underlying unity which makes region to get attention, with anthro- some new magical, mystery cate- peasants everywhere a kin."6 pologists moving on to China, gory of its own. Japan, Sudan, Malaya, Persia, and elsewhere. Yet in Indonesia, apart Anthropology in the early twentieth Rene Porak, after studying a French from the works of Clifford Geertz and century, dealing as it has almost village in the 1940s, concluded Willard Hanna, remarkably little has entirely with primitive tribes, stressed peasants everywhere were a been studied about peasant life in the differences among people rather "psycho-physiological race."' Java, Bali, and Sumatra, as com- than the resemblances. But as soon Porak speculated that peasants in pared with the primitive tribes of the as anthropologists began studying different countries had more in outer islands. I was surprised in 1971 peasants it became evident that their common than peasant and city men to find how much in demand was a basic culture was much the same in the same country. There is a good study I had written about Husen, a over very wide regions, even the bit of truth in this. The world's city Jakarta pedicab driver who migrated world over. In my own work I have men, the educated elites, today also seasonally from his west-central never ceased to be surprised at just tend to share a common cosmopoli- Javanese village.2 Little had been how much village cultures are alike. tan culture far removed from that of written about Jakarta's urban The cultural shock of moving from the rural peasantry around them. migrants before. Similarly, a year- country to country always eases National political leaders who have long study of a village on the Upper when one finally arrives in a village to represent both are forced to have Nile I undertook in 1974-1976 is only where enough is familiar to soon feel something of a split personality. For the fifth such study to be done in at home again. This is especially true example, Anwar al-Sadat's wife, Egypt in this century? yet some of of work life. A group of men cutting Jihan, or lndira Gandhi's son, the Nile villages have been continu- wheat with sickles talk and act much Sanjay, are almost wholly products ously inhabited for 10,000 years and the same way in Mexico's central of the cosmopolitan, Westernized preserve much of man's oldest and highlands, Egypt's Nile Valley, or city culture. This has left them so out most durable surviving form of India's Punjab Plain. of tune with the peasantry, Jihan village life. Sadat's liberal reformism has some- Peasant Cultural Universality times been a political embarrassment Any attempt to define peasant cul- Anthropologists have long com- to her husband and Sanjay Gandhi's ture is further complicated by the mented on the apparent phenome- zeal for sterilization helped to insure imposition of outside cultures on the non of peasant cultural universality. his mother's defeat in the March primary civilization. Westernization 1977 elections. Jawaharlal Nehru has been imposed on Confucianist Oscar Handlin, in his marvelous was particularly adept at his double China in nineteenth-century colo- study on nineteenth century immi- role; he was rather a heavy smoker in private but no Indian villager ever Mediterranean region. Yet nowhere In my own recent Egyptian village saw him with a cigarette in his hand. does so much reverence for the land study I found that the Aswan Dam, Similarly, Mrs. Gandhi likes to play exist as among the fellahin of Egypt. completed in 1971, and to a lesser Scrabble, listen to Bach, and raise An Upper Nile fellah I have studied degree the Egyptian revolution led by Golden Retrievers, secret Western since 1974, last year surrendered to Nasser, seem to have brought far- vices well hidden from the Indian village tradition after years of rebel- reaching changes to fellahin culture masses. lion because he could not bear to tear along the Upper Nile. Yet pharaonic himself away from his native village methods of cultivation persist and so Porak theorized that all peasant* and his small plot of land along the do many marriage and funeral cus- society revolved around the family, Nile. Father Henry Ayrout, an toms. I compared life in Nageh Kom had a mystic attachment to the land, Egyptian Jesuit, wrote in the 1930s Lohlah, my village, with life in and placed emphasis on procreation that there was an "almost organic Kerkeosis, a Nile village of 120 B.C. (the last seems more of a spicy relationship between the fellah, the described by Meches, the village French touch than a widely found land and the ~ile."" Hamad scribe. The sameness was remark- trait). Ammar, a London-educated Egyp- able, and in a world of dizzying tiananthropologist who grew up in a change, wonderfully reassuring. In the late 1940s, Irwin T. Sanders Nile village, emphasized in a book wrote that the chief values among published in the 1950s the fellah's Bulgarian peasants were "land attachment to the land, the value put Redfield's Theory ownership, hard work and fru- on industry, and the feeling that Robert Redfield, who seemed to gality."* Other studies have found farming was the most dignified have emerged from the ~e~oztla'n Irish and French Canadian peasants endeavor?l debate with Oscar Lewis with all his put high value on "industry as a enthusiasm intact, in 1956 formu- prime good." An extremely mystic feeling toward lated a theory that all peasants, past the land is also found in Java. Husen, and present, have possessed a There are a few dissenters, mainly the peasant previously mentioned, shared, similar view of what he called from the Mediterranean region. divorced his barren wife at his "the good life."15 Studies in southern Italian villages parents' insistence; they threatened have uncovered no reverence for the to disinherit him if he refused and The way and view of peasant life, land. Far from it, the Italian peasant's though he loved his wife he could not said Redfield, noting anthropologists philosophy seems to be that one face being turned away from his might use the words "value orienta- works in order to eat but that it is village and dispossessed of the tions" or "ethos," instead, embraced better to work with one's head and family's tiny plot of ancestral landJ2 three essential qualities common to better still not to work at all. I found all peasant societies: (1) an intimate similar attitudes among peasants in Peasant culture not only seems to and reverent attitude toward the the Italian Alps above Verona on have universality in space, but also in land, (2) the idea that agricultural folkskunde excursions while study- time. In the mid-1940s, E.K.L. Francis work is good and commerce not so ing in lnnsbruck during the late analyzed the "personality type of the good, and (3) emphasis on produc- 1950s. As soon as we moved north- peasant" based on Hesiod's Works tive industry as a prime value. ward across the Brenner Pass into and ~a~s,'~the oldest book we Characteristically, Redfield ob- the Austrian Tyrol, more conven- have about peasant life. Francis served, "This may not be good tional peasant values on thrift and found the peasants described by science, but it is a way to get people industry reappeared. Studies among Hesiod, the Boeotians of ancient thinking."16 Andulusian peasants in Spain have Greece in the sixth century B.C., had also suggested a lack of a mystical a great deal in common with con- To support his theory, Redfield had attitude toward the land, the Andu- temporary peasants. He concluded systematically compared three lusians cultivate it of necessity but this sameness was caused by "an peasant societies: the Mayan Indians have no strong feelings toward it. integrated pattern of dominant atti- of Yucatan among whom he had tudes" of "a distinct substratum of done most of his own field re- Another Frenchman, J. Weulersse, society in widespread areas of the search (Redfield never went back found the same thing among globe." Father Ayrout in Egypt to Tepoztlhn), nineteenth-century peasants in Syria. "The fellah cul- argued that the fellahin had changed English villagers in Surrey studied by tivates," he wrote, "with regret.. . he little since pharaonic times. "They George Bourne (whose real name works for himself and not the land, have changed their crops and their was George Sturt), and the Boeo- he does not feel the land is an exten- language, their masters and their tians of ancient Greece described by sion of himself. I1 ne sent pas que religions," Ayrout wrote, "but they Hesiod. He found life and culture in celle-cite dhpasse etleprolongue."9 have not changed their way of life." the three village settings so much He asked how we could explain "this alike he concluded, "If a peasant This might suggest a separate sub- extraordinary sameness in a race of from any one of these three widely culture of peasant values in the men?"l4 separated communities could have been transplanted by some con- as if Redfield and others, in admiring He began by noting that American venient genie to any one of the peasant culture, condoned the anthropology was turning from the others and equipped with a knowl- poverty that went with it. But, Lewis study of primitive tribes to "the great edge of the language in the village to seemed to be saying, times have peasant and urban masses of the less which he had moved, he would very changed. "Poverty in modern developed countries." He predicted quickly have come to feel at home. nations is a very different matter" future anthropologists would conse- And this would be because the fun- which created "class antagonism, quently find themselves studying damental orientations of life would social problems and the need for "the culture of poverty."20 be unchanged."17 change." Contemporary poverty, he wrote, Redfield also grasped that the Redfield's peasants, with their rev- was not only a state of being poor, it coming anthropological frontier erence for the land, pride in the dig- als~created its own culture with a would be the urbanizing peasant. nity of labor and the values of indus- distinct "structure, a rationale and But he noted that all too many an- try and thrift seemed about to be defense mechanisms without which thropologists were still thinking turned into restless revolutionary the poor could hardly carry on." He about and studying how best to masses. "Poverty becomes a dy- expanded his list of cities where report validly on the basic values of namic factor," Lewis continued, anthropological studies showed the primitive, self-contained tribal com- "which affects participation in the "culture of poverty" existed: Lon- munities (even as these communities larger national culture and creates a don, Glasgow, Paris, New York were rapidly vanishing in the jet age). subculture of its own. One can speak City's Harlem, and Mexico City (the Redfield felt the task of knowing of the culture of the poor, for it has its "Mexican villages" were dropped). more about the urbanizing peasant own modalities and distinctive social was an urgent one, but he wondered and psychological consequences for Lewis said the "culture of poverty" if American anthropology was yet its members. It seems to me that the applied only to those "at the very ready for "further culture of poverty cuts across the bottom" of the world's economic regional, rural-urban and even scale, "the poorest workers, the Redfield perceived the resemblances national boundaries." (Eventually poorest peasants, plantation and natural unity in world peasant Lewis was to suggest that the culture laborers.. .and the lumpen prole- culture. But he also recognized that of poverty applied to about the tariat." this perception would have to work poorest third of the world's people.) itself down to "precise words and How many peasants? "In Mexico," procedures" if it was to yield gener- Lewis said he found "remarkable he said, "the culture of poverty in- ally accepted proof. As with Tepozt- similarities in family structure, the cludes at least the lower third of the rural and urban population." He also la'n, the pioneer village peasant nature of kinship ties, the quality of said his "provisional conceptual study, Redfield had blazed a trail for husband-wife relations, time orienta- model of this culture" was "based others to follow. tion, spending patterns, value sys- mainly upon my Mexican materials" tems and the sense of community" (which in fact meant Tepoztliin and Lewis's Culture of Poverty among lower class slum dwellers the three Mexico City slums that And again it was Oscar Lewis. Three studied by anthropologists in the appear in Five Families and reappear years after Redfield came out with 1950s in "London, Puerto Rico, in The Children of Sanchez). The his theory of a universal peasant Mexico City slums and Mexican vil- Sanchez family itself, as described culture, Lewis published Five Fam- lages [he specifically cited his own when it first appeared in Five Fam- ilies, subtitling it, Mexican Case TepoztlAn study1 and among lower- ilies as combining "working class Studies in the Culture of Poverty. class Negroes in the United States." His purpose, Lewis wrote in the and lower middle-class traits" (p. book's preface, was to "contribute 27), does not seem to fit Lewis's defi- The mention of "participation" and to our understanding of the culture nition of those with the "culture of American Negroes struck a respon- of poverty in contemporary Mexico, poverty ." sive chord among American liberals. and, insofar as the poor throughout The Tepoztlsn debate, originated in a the world have something in Lewis described the "culture of remote Mexican village, was about common, to lower class life in poverty" as values poor people got to enter the streets of America's general." l9 when a stratified social and eco- black ghettoes. nomic system was breaking down, Lewis soon made clear that his de- as in the case of the shift from feudal- bate with Redfield was still very The Traits ism to capitalism, or during an indus- much on. "Many anthropologists," Lewis did not spell out what he trial revolution, or-as was happen- he said, "have taken it upon them- meant by the "culture of poverty" ing in Africa-in detribalization and selves to defend and perpetuate this until 1961 in the introduction of his migration to the cities. He was later way of life against the inroads of most famous work, The Children of to generalize this to all poor, back- civilization," making it sound rather Sanchez. ward societies experiencing rapid economic development. But he said wife beating, early initia tion in to the lower strata of a rapidly changing that once established the "culture of sex, free unions or consensual society." Lewis wrote, "I suspect poverty" could endure a long time marriages, a relatively high incidence that the culture of poverty flourishes and that in Mexico it had been "a in the abandonment of mothers and in, and is generic to, the early free- more or less permanent phenome- children, a trend toward enterprise stage of capitalism and non since the Spanish conquest in mother-centered families, anda that it is also endemic to colonial- 1519." much greater knowledge of maternal ism." He estimated only the poorest relatives, the predominance of the 6 to 10 million of low-income Ameri- In time Lewis was to list 70 specific nuclear family, a strong cans, a majority of them Black, suf- traits that identified a people suffer- predisposition to authoritarianism fered from it. Lewis gave four his- ing the "culture of poverty." No one anda great emphasis on family torical examples of very poor people could quarrel with a great many of solidarity -an ideal only rarely he felt did not have the "culture of them as they were simply character- achieved." poverty:" primitive tribes, untouch- istics of poor people everywhere ables in India with their caste iden- since the beginning of time. In the Seven years later, in 1968, Lewis tity, the nineteenth-century Jews of introduction to The Children of slightly modified the list, expanded it Eastern Europe with the belief in Sanchez, most of the 70 were given. to 70 traits and regrouped them into being a chosen people, and those in the relationship with the larger communist societies (Lewis used the The "culture of poverty," Lewis said, society, the nature of a slum-rural word, "socialist"), such as in meant "a lower life expectancy, or urban- community, the nature of Castro's Cuba. more young people and because of the family, and the attitudes, values, child labor and working women, a and character structure of the indi- Lewis also, for the first time, em+ higher percentage of gainfully em- vidual. sized such positive aspe- ployed.'' "culture of poverty" as "a L,,. Lack of participation in the major in- for spontaneity, for the enjoyment of The marginality of such people could stitutions of the larger society was the sensual, for the indulgence of be identified by "a low level of edu- now made "a crucial trait in the cul- impulse," though this had to be bal- cation and literacy, nonmembership ture of poverty," though exceptions anced against its "pathos, suffering in labor unions or political parties, no were made of jail, army service, and and emptiness." He did argue that participation in government medical public relief. (Little use of "airports" "people with the culture of poverty, care, maternity and old-age benefits, was dropped.) with their strong sense of resignation and little use of banks, hospitals, and fatalism, are less driven and less department stores, museums, art Economic traits remained the same. anxious than the striving lower- galleries or airports." On the community level, he added middle class, who are still trying to "poor housing conditions" and make it in the face of the greatest He listed economic traits: "above all, a minimum of organiza- odds."21 tion beyond the level of the nuclear 'Aconstant struggle for survival, and extended family," though there It is quite a list but does it really em- unemplo yment or could be "a sense of community and brace all the poorest peoples in the underemployment, the absence of esprit de corps" in urban slums. He world or just those slum dwellers in savings, a chronic shortage of cash, also added "the absence of child- Mexico City and San Juan whom the absence of foodreservesin the hood as a specially prolonged and Lewis had studied and knew well? home, the pattern of frequent bu ying protected stage in the life cycle," of smallquantities of foodmany "sibling rivalry," and "competition In late 1969 1 began my first village times a day as the need arose, the for limited goods and maternal affec- study in the fishing village in Mauri- pawning of personal goods, tion." tius and faithfully used Lewis's con- borrowing from local mone y lenders ceptual model of the peasant family at usurious rates, spontaneous For individuals he added "strong in Five Families and went about informal credit devices organized feelings of marginality, helplessness, testing the 70 traits. Among a Creole by neighbors and the use of of dependence, and of inferiority," fishing society of very poor mulat- secondhand furniture and clothing." "orality," "weak ego structure," toes, descendants of female African "confusion of sexual identification," slaves and French sugar plantation Social and psychological traits: "lack of impulse control" and "high managers, the "culture of poverty" tolerance for psychological pathol- hypothesis seemed to apply amaz- ''Living in crowded quarters, a lack ogy of all kinds." ingly well. But my interests soon ofprivacy, gregariousness, a high turned from household-centered incidence of alcoholism, frequent The "culture of poverty" still trans- family life to work life-daily fishing resort to violence in the settlement cended "regional, rural-urban and expeditions into the lagoon to har- of quarrels, frequent use ofphysical national differences" but applied poon fish underwater and spear violence in the training of children, primarily to "people who come from octopus-and I discovered there were a good many more dimensions Southeast Asia and the Far East it is urban slum, beyond their immediate to the culture of the Mauritian almost entirely missing, even in neighborhood. Poor people are fi~hermen?~I then moved on to Muslim Bangladesh and Indonesia. generally apolitical and are either India's Punjab, a true traditional The notion of male superiority and completely indifferent to the values peasant culture in the Redfield dominance is a characteristic only of of the upper classes or accept them sense, and found Lewis's theories Latin, Mediterranean, or Middle with respect. Most poor people, in almost totally irre~evant.~~His final Eastern Muslim societies; it is con- village or city, are too preoccupied list of 70 traits went into my files and spicuously stronger in our own earning a living and taking an intense in the past 8 years of studying American culture than in a good interest in the neighbors immediately villages did not come out again until many Oriental societies. And some around them to concern themselves now. black African tribal women probably with affairs outside their own expe- enjoy as much social freedom as any rience. The average villager's horizon A few of the traits do shed light on women anywhere, including in the is probably not much wider than five peasant culture. Lewis also listed "a United States. or ten miles, the distance that can be strong present time orientation" and traveled in a day, on foot, and still relatively little ability to plan for the return home. He has very little Lewis also includes "a suspicion of interest in the world beyond that. future, or defer gratification, fatal- modern medicine and hospitalsand a ism, and the tendency to spontane- preference for herbal or traditional ously enjoy the present moment remedies or sorcery."27True of In Lewis's "culture of poverty" there without much regard for the conse- Mexico, Egypt, and a good many are almost none of the positive quences. 24 This has long been a other places. But if you saw the kind values to be found in Redfield's widely-recognized characteristic of of medical facilities available to most "peasant view of the good life." Muslim society in the Middle East, of the world's poor people, you Redfield found in all peasants a where the belief in predestination is would probably feel the same way. common "sober attitude toward strong. ("Allah will provide.") In all (After contracting hepatitis twice work, a satisfaction in working long peasant societies, I have found a from dirty needles in Laos and and hard in the fields." 291f you ask capacity for sudden, spontaneous Khartoum, I am suspicious of hos- any villager if he likes to work long bursts of heedless joy in living that pitals too.) Like some. of Lewis's and hard, he will answer no. But live have little counterpart in modern traits, this has little directly to do with in villages for a time and observe the Western culture. culture but is merely a trial of being life there and you will find morale dis- poor in poor, backward countries. tinctly rises during harvests and other periods of intense field labor In his earlier theory of the peasant's and falls during slack periods of idle- "view of the good life," Redfield had ness. As I am writing these words I taken note of this present-time ori- He also listed as traits in the "culture have been spending each morning entation and quoted the observation of poverty," both in 1961 and 1968, a helping a Tarascan Indian family of two French anthropologists, "critical attitude toward some of the gather in its wheat harvest from the Lucien Bernot and Renk Blancard on values and institutions of the domi- side of the extinct San Miguel the French peasantry, that "the idea nant classes, hatred of the police, volcano near the central highland of becoming does not exist; what mistrust of the government and lake of Patzcuaro. Tomorrow thresh- exists is the idea of being."25 As we those in high position, and a ing will start with three horses to shall see, Lewis remained a careful cynicism which extends even to the trample thegrain. Aurelio, one of the student of Redfield'swork. church," which gives the "culture of young men in the family, this poverty" "a counter quality and a morning surprised me by remarking Lewis also included the "belief in potential for being used in political that all the family would have to help male superiority which reaches its movements aimed against the exist- tomorrow and that it would be crystallization in machismo or the ing social order.'Q8 In Children of "fun." Aurelio is normally as impas- cult of masculinity."26 Machismo, Sanchez, Lewis described the world sive asan Easter Island as such, is peculiar to Latin societies, of poor urban Mexicans as "a world whether in Spain, Italy, Brazil, of violence and death, of suffering Mexico, or the Philippines. The cult and deprivation, of infidelity and In India, the Punjabis were forever of masculine superiority is also a broken homes, of delinquency, cor- uttering homilies such as, "Work can characteristic of the Mediterranean ruption, and police brutality, and of keep your health; an idle man gets world at large and the Muslim world the cruelty of the poor to the poor." lead in his bones."31 During the of the Middle East. But it is not a uni- (p, xii). In general, very few of these 1970 wheat harvest one of the tall, versal characteristic of poor people. traits apply to most of the peasant bearded Sikh harvesters declared, It starts fading away as one moves villages where I have lived. Far from "Where men work, there is God. Our into central India, is totally absent it. Most peasant horizons do not Guru respected work and we are all among Himalayan mountain people, extend beyond the immediate laboring men."32 Such attitudes are and in southern India and across into village, or if they are uprooted into an universal in peasant culture. Not only are they universal, they are mordial distinction between good Shahhat told me that, after a series unique to peasant culture. Herders and evil, between the unnaturalness of passionate romances with beauti- do not feel this way at all. On the and inhumanness of urbanity on the ful girls, he was about to marry a Mesopotamian Plain in 1971, the one hand and the simplicity and truth quite homely one, explaining, "She Bedouins scoffed when we passed of village life on the other. The works hard and will be good for the men tilling fields on some newly American hippies of the 1960s, who house."35 Hesiod's advice of 25 reclaimed desert land and likened tried to form primitive settlements in centuries ago is still widely followed: them to "donkeys." They were fond the forests or mountains, seemed to "First of all get a house and a woman of recalling the good old days when be expressing the same sentiment. I and an oxen for the plough."36 Bedouins lived as predators and did once spent some days writing a not even have to herd sheep. newspaper feature story about a Bourne characterized marriage in "Before," one of them, Sherif, told hippie commune in the Virginia hills nineteenth-century rural England as me, "all the Arabs were hunters, near Washington and was very "a kind of dogged partnership," an warriors, and bandits, all crafty, moved by the struggle of the young accurate description of most village brave men. No digging in the ground, people, many of them with college couples.37 The approach to love in no running after sheep, just riding up degrees, to try and artificially peasant societies tends to be carnal and taking what they wanted. My recreate something approaching a rather than romantic but a good father told me."33 The warrior- peasant community. many husbands and wives do chieftains of the lliador Mahabharata develop deeply affectionate relation- would understand such values, but Redfield, in formulating his theory on ships based upon compassion and they are plainly alien to peasants, the "peasant view of the good life," mutual need. who do not hold violence in esteem. said he asked himself what peasants desired for themselves and for their Redfield summed up his observation of peasant culture: Peasant values can break down, children. He found these aspirations especially in such borderline peasant included (1) field labor with tradi- "As with other long established societies as to be found in Brazil or tional, often reverential sentiments peoples, peasants find in life purpose Africa. It is a worldwide phenome- about the land and a desire for land andzest because accumulated non that the more primitive the cul- ownership; (2) the relation of this experience has readinto nature and ture is, the more readily do rural labor with ideals of personal worth suffering andjo y and death people enter modern industry. In (the city man was extravagant, idle, significance that the peasant finds Northeast Brazil traditional peasant or false); (3)a recognition that while restated for him in his everyday work values toward work and the land do the peasant was an uncultured rustic andpla y. There is a teaching, as hold true among the middle-aged he was confident of a morally much explicit as implicit, as to why it and elderly, but a good many young superior way of life; (4) pride in en- is that children come into the world people regard cultivation as a durance for hard work and a belief it and grow up to marry, labor, suffer, drudgery to be escaped, a common was to be inculcated in youth from and die. There is an assurance that sentiment being, "I don't want to childhood; and (5) the acceptance of labor is not futile, that nature, or spend the rest of my life behind a hard work as proof of one's man- God, has some part in it. There is a hoe." In countries like India, Indo- hood, yet with great enjoyment at its story or a proverb to assure one that nesia, and Egypt, only the more edu- surcease. 34 some human frailty is just what one cated sons and daughters of the ought to expect; there are in many more prosperous peasants, incul- Lewis's view that the poor beat their cases more serious myths to explain cated with some of the cosmopoli- children and their wives, easily drift the suffering of the innocent or to tan, Westernized culture at school, into consensual marriages or free prepare the mind for death. So that seem to feel this way and escape to unions, and tend to abandon while peasants andprimitives will the towns as soon as they can. True mothers and children, while it may be quarrel and fear, gossip and hate, as peasants, especially if they own a true of some slums in Mexico City do the rest of us, the persisting order little land, with a way of life already in and San Juan, is grossly inapplicable and depth of their simple stable adjustment to ancient civiliza- to most of the world's villages. There experiences, continue to make tions, are much more resistant to is a universal peasant disposition something humanly and urbanization and industrialization. toward marriage and children but it is intellectually acceptable of the After 17 years of pedaling a betjak or quite different. As Hesiod found also worldaround them."38 pedicab in Jakarta, Husen, the in sixth-century B.C. Greece, most Javanese peasant, felt fiercely that a peasants choose a bride for her The Role of Revolution permanent return to the land and his reputation for industry and welcome Implicit, and sometimes explicit, in village was his only salvation. children because they make more Lewis's development of the "culture Shahhat, the Egyptian fellah I hands for work. (Curiously, it is in of poverty" theory was his belief in studied, came close to seeing the dis- Mexican villages that I have found the benefit of revolutions in freeing tinction between life along the Upper the greatest display of affection for the poor from this shackling psy- Nile and in Cairo as close to the pri- children.) Last year in Egypt, chology. In the formulation of the "peasant type. Peasants have had an impor- was "remarkably stable and per- view of the good life," Redfield had tant, if not a crucial role, in at least sistent, passed down from genera- also discussed revolution: "In every four major revolutions-the Mexican tion to generation along family lines" part of the world, generally speak- Revolution of 1910, the Russian and "affecting participation in the ing," he wrote, Revolution of 1917, the Chinese larger culture." Communist Revolution, and the 'peasantry have been a conservative Cuban Revolution under ~astro."~' The word, "participation," caught factor in social change, a brake on Yet all these revolutions, though on. When the Office of Economic revolution, a check on that Lewis does not state it, were led and Opportunity (OEO) was set up in disintegration of localsociety which organized by disaffected middle- Washington as the main instrument often comes with rapid technological class men, such as Lenin, Trotsky, to wage the Johnson Administra- change. And yet in our da ys man y Chou En-lai, Mao Tse-tung, and even tion's "war on poverty," those who peasants are changing rapidly. For Castro. The peasants were just designed the OEO and its programs the future it may be said that swept along. I was not, of course, an maintained it was not enough to help peasantry are ceasing to be.. . . eyewitness to any of these revolu- the poor with money, as in welfare, Peasants now want to be something tions but I was present for four years but that to escape the "culture of other than peasants. . . . These are of Vietnam's struggle, from the over- poverty" they had to be organized times in which even the isolated and throw of Ngo Dinh Diem to the Tet and aroused to demand their rights. the backward experience discontent. Offensive and I closely followed the This became officially known as Quite plain people become different strategy of North Vietnamese polit- "maximum feasible participation." from what they have always been; ical leader, Le Duan, the man who In effect, it meant the federal govern- peasantry develop aspirations. "39 really ran the war (and, unlike most ment funded the poor, who were revolutionary leaders, a man of gen- mostly black, in minirevolutions Yet Redfield held to the view that uine peasant origin).'" against local city halls. Norman historically-with the exception of McCrae, the deputy editor of The the Russian Revolution-peasant Lewis goes on to describe the "great Economist of London, in a special revolts had always aimed not at over- positive content"42 of the word, survey of the United States in 1969, throwing governments but at re- revolution, in Mexico. (Here again I "The Neurotic Trillionaire," wrote of ducing and abolishing oppressive must interrupt to disagree from per- his shock when he visited several dues and services exacted by land- sonal observation. Mexicans, like American cities and found the gov- lords. Redfield believed-as do I- Egyptians toward the Nasserist ernment was funding groups of that most peasants take social strati- revolution, are ambivalent about the young Black gangsters who were fication for granted and only resent events between 1910 and 1920. terrorizing the respectable law- abuses of power. Some redistribution of land and abiding Black families in inner-city great gains in popular education slums. Lewis's ideas were proving In his introduction to Pedro Mar- probably tip the scales on the plus more than "dynamic" in practice. In tinez; a Mexican Peasant and His side. But the Mexican Revolution La Vida he had written, "By creating Family, published in 1964, Lewis de- was a bloody one, costing at least a basic structural changes in society, veloped his ideas on revolution. (The million lives.) by redistributing wealth, by organ- Martinez family was the one "inten- izing the poor and giving them a sively studied" during Lewis's origi- Lewis continues: "One of the major sense of belonging, of power and nal Tepoztldn project although now, accomplishments of the Revolution leadership, revolutions frequently as he began to do in Five Families, he for villages like Azteca [Tepoztla'nl succeed in abolishing some of the is giving Tepoztldn the fictional name was to return to the villagers the characteristics of the culture of of "Azteca.") Lewis, to be fair, was privilege of utilizing their communal poverty, even when they do not writing at a time when liberals within lands. This slowed down or stopped succeed in abolishing poverty itself." the Kennedy Administration were the process of proletarianization and (p. lii). looking to the "new emerging eliminated many of the traits of the forces" of the Third World - the culture of poverty." This is pure sup- Nehrus, Sukarnos, and Nassers-as position as Lewis had little way of The Moynihan-Lewis Debate the wave of the future and asking knowing whether such traits existed In early 1969, as President Richard themselves whether the deep-seated before 1910. M. Nixon took office, I was covering American dread of revolutions was the White House for The Washing- justified. "However," Lewis added, "poverty ton Star. One of my tasks was to in- itself has remained." In his subse- vestigate Nixon's formulation of Lewis wrote: "It has commonly been quent more detailed presentation of domestic policy, which meant quite a held that peasants are essentially a the "culture of poverty" hypothesis, few interviews with Daniel P. stabilizing and conservative force in Lewis was to turn this around and Moynihan, Nixon's urban affairs human history. The events of our say, "It is easier to eliminate poverty adviser. Moynihan had been given own century, however, throw some itself than the cultureof poverty." As the job of defusing, if not dis- doubt on this comfortable stereo- a "way of life," he would argue, it mantling, OEO and framing a welfare package to offer Congress to take its behind it. (Moynihan's own analysis: Lewis criticizing some of Redfield's place. The greatest American urban prob- ideas while appropriating others and lem was the social isolation of the adapting them for his own use. Red- Moynihan was no Robert Redfield Blacks. This was not their own fault field first offered his theory of a with his gentle, humanistic philos- but had been caused by social and common world peasant culture in a ophy. lnstead he was a tough, am- economic developments. The lecture, "The Peasant View of the bitious, intelligent Irishman who, mechanization of cotton production Good Life," at the University of unlike either Lewis or Redfield, knew had led to an exodus of Blacks from Chicago on May 14,1954. Lewis was from the poverty of his own youth the rural south to the cities of the later to describe this lecture as "a what it meant to be poor. Raised in north and west. At the same time, pioneer effort toward getting at New York's Hell's Kitchen, Moyni- the late 1940s and 1950s, postwar some of the common elements in han had hawked newspapers on the veterans' housing loans, cheap new peasant value systems." With a streets as a boy, worked as a steve- methods of home construction, and graciousness that usually did not dore on the docks, and been a bar- the Interstate Highway System had characterize his relationship with tender in his mother's saloon off combined to produce a migration of Redfield, Lewis thanked the older Times Square. Somehow he had both industry and white workers to man for "his kind and stimulating managed to earn a Ph.D. in political the suburbs. Finally, Aid to Depen- discu~sion."~~ science at Harvard and had come to dent Children provisions in the wel- Washington with the Kennedy fare laws had forcec! many jobless, At Redfield's invitation, Lewis wrote entourage. He had first attracted migrant black fathers to abandon a comparative analysis of ~epoztlsn public attention while in the Labor their families. The result was urban and Rampur, the fictional name he Department with a report on the dis- decay, rising crime, and social break- gave the lndian village outside Delhi integration of the black family. down for the blacks. Moynihan saw he had studied as a Ford Foundation Another book, critical of the way the solution in trying to help black consultant from October 1952 to OEO had waged the war on poverty, families disperse into the larger pop- June 1953. Lewis stuck to his guns Maximum Feasible Misunderstand- ulation with a guaranteed minimum on the grim character of Mexican ing, had brought him the White income or negative income tax. No village life, but found rural lndian life House job. nonsense about an inherited "cul- much more cheerful. ture of poverty" for Moynihan, a Moynihan did not believe there was a slum kid who madegood.)44 Lewis noted the differences in faces "culture of poverty." lnstead he felt in the two villages, with those in the poor were just like anybody else, The debate was inconclusive. Con- Tepoztlsn "generally unsmiling, un- except they had less money. In the gress rejected the welfare reform revealing masks." He said those in debate that followed with Lewis package. Moynihan went off as Am- Rampur, in contrast, seemed "more (they both contributed to a book on bassador to India and then to the secure." He observed, "Children are understanding the nature of poverty United Nations, becoming a tele- more open-faced and laughing, old and spoke at the Brookings vision celebrity by raising hell with men are bland and peaceful, young Institution and the like), the two men theThird World because he felt poor men restless but unrebellious, assumed roles rather similar to those countries should behave no differ- women straight and proud. Here too of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott ently from the rich; it landed him in there is individual reserve and Fitzgerald in their famous literary the Senate. And in 1970, Oscar Lewis formalized behavior, but it does not argument over the nature of the rich. died at age 55 with unfinished seem to mask so much of an under- As Hemingway described it in what studies in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and current of hostility and fear as in was probably his greatest story, Calcutta under way and his "culture TepoztlAn." He even found the "The Snows of Kilamanjaro," Fitz- of poverty" hypothesis no more than lndian village women "strong, bold, gerald took the position, "The rich a preliminary view. Yet he left behind gay.. ." and without the "martyr aredifferent from you and me," with La Vida, The Children of Sanchez, complex" of the Mexican village Hemingway himself replying, "Yes, and Pedro Martinez, which, though womenP6 they have more money." (Originally not science and not truly representa- Hemingway called Fitzgerald tive portraits of the world's poor, In this interval away from his "Scott" in the story, but his pub- were strange, moving stories, a new Mexican studies, Lewis himself lishers made him change it to kind of literature that would influ- seemed more relaxed, less driven. In "~ulian.")~~ ence other writers for years to come. 1958, a year before Five Families was published and the formulation of the Moynihan introduced this writer to Resolution "culture of poverty" hypothesis the works of Oscar Lewis, whom I Was the ~e~oztlihdebate ever re- began, Lewis praised Redfield in had heard about but not yet read, solved? print as the first anthropologist to explaining that one could not fully I think it may be said it was. show "a self-conscious awareness understand OEO and the way the of peasantry as a subject for cross- war on poverty had gotten out of In the long history of their intellectual cultural analysis." Although, Lewis hand, without grasping the theory competition, there is a pattern of noted, peasants made up "almost three-fourths of the world's people first met him in ~e~oztlsn("Azteca" Nor was it just any passage. It was and the bulk of the population in the in the book) in December 1943. Lewis Redfield's final summary paragraph underdeveloped countries," this observed that over the years Pedro on the universal peasant culture: "great majority of mankind has had had become "less suspicious and "an intense attachment to native no discipline to claim it, and only now aggressive, kindlier to his children soil; a reverent disposition toward is a comparative science of peasantry and generally more mature." But habitat and ancestral ways; a beginning to take form." TO his Pedro had remained "first and fore- restraint on individual self-seeking in credit, he identified Redfield as the most a peasant," sharing "many favor of family and community; founder of such a ~cience.~' classic peasant values." a certain suspiciousness, mixed with appreciation, of town life. . . " This lighter tone carried on into Five Lewis then told his readers what . Families; the warm almost comic these values were: A few pages earlier, Redfield had portraits of Rosa Hernandez and the also used the phrase, "the idea that raucous Julia Rojas make one wish agricultural work is good.. . ."" Lewis had stuck with the Gomez and "a love of theland, a reverence for Gutierrez families rather than the nature, belief in the intrinsic good of much more somber and grim agriculturallabor, and a restraint on With the natural modesty and Martinez and Sanchez families. individual self-seeking in favor of honesty that was so much a part of family and community. Like most his charm, Redfield had added: "The peasants, Pedro is also authoritarian, characterization is no doubt too But by 1964, in his preface to Pedro fa talk tic, suspicious, vague and impressionistic to serve Martinez, his full-length portrait of a concrete-minded, and ambivalentin the methods of more scientific kinds Tepoztecan peasant, Lewis had re- his attitudes toward city people. " 49 of inquiry." It was as far as Redfield turned to his obsession with the dim would ever get in developing his idea and the dark and was once more the that all peasants share some com- adversary of Redfield. "There is a To readers of this Report, these mon culture, not a culture of "suffer- tendency among all of us, even words must sound familiar. For ing,"51 but a culture of "enjoy- anthropologists," he wrote, "to Lewis was not describing qualities he mer~t."~~ idealize the past.. .and think of had observed in Pedro. Nor was he Mexican villages as relatively stable, quoting some generally held view of Why did Lewis do it? By then The well-ordered, smoothly functioning classic peasant values. He was, in New York Times, in a review by and harmonious c~mmunities."~~ fact and without any attribution, and Michael Harrington, had heralded his with only a passing attempt at para- work as "one of the most significant While this is the old combative phrasing, lifting a passage out of intellectual achievements of postwar Lewis, there were signs of mellow- Redfield's theory of the "peasant times." V.S. Pritchett had written ing. He described the man whom he view of the good life," published that Lewis had "made a new kind of called Pedro Martinez as having eight years before, and, as we have literature." Scientific American had changed in the 20 years since he had seen, much admired by Lewis. said that "both sociology and psy- chology stand to benefit" from his work.

In the light of his 20-year history of disputing Redfield's interpretation of village life in ~epoztlh,it seems extraordinary that Lewis, by then an author of world renown whose own opposing ideas were significantly affecting American intellectual thought, would borrow in this manner words and concepts that represented the essence of Red- field's contrary views.

The answer seems to be that Lewis felt Redfield's view of "classic peasant values" was sounder than illustrations from Pedro Martinez: A Mexican Peasant and His Family by Oscar Lewis (NewYork Random House, 1964). his own. He could not attribute the the true spirit of science by always himself understood, they fit an passage to Redfield-quotation submitting his work to the tests and American preconception of the poor. marks and a footnote would have questions of his readers; Redfield's Yet Lewis also made the first true avoided the hint of plagiarism-with- books, unlike those of Lewis, are urban slum studies and was the first out conceding to some degree that studded with attributed quotes to try and classify the common cul- Redfield's portrait of Tepoztldn 38 calling attention to the ideas of other tural traits of all the world's poor, years before was partially right. men. Redfield made the first true peasant and city dweller alike. village study of peasant life and he Indeed, his main weakness was his Perhaps one should not make too was the first to analyze the cultural claim that the "culture of poverty" much of it. It is a trivial matter, un- traits common to all peasant applied to rural peasants.Toward the important. And yet for me it ends the societies. Though his books seem as end of his life he wrote, "Landless ~epoztla'nmystery and clinches the fresh and contemporary as though rural laborers who migrate to cities argument. In Redfield'sfavor. they were written yesterday and he can be expected to develop a culture makes us think as only the best of poverty much more readily than writers do, outside the realm of migrants from stable peasant villages anthropology few today would with a well-organized traditional Looking back, it is interesting how recognize his name. Yet, to discover culture." Perhaps if he had lived, he their disagreement over Tepoztlh, Redfield is like meeting up with an would have come to realize the their dialectic of opposites on the old, and very wise, friend. almost wholly urban character of the nature of village life and peasant cul- "culture of poverty," since landless ture, stimulated each man's best Lewis was the student, the ardent peasants share equally in traditional work and original thinking. If the researcher and tireless collector of village culture. If Lewis had more existence of some kind of shared, data, detail, fact, statistic, dialogue, failures, he also tried to reach the common culture among the world's and autobiographical interview. His furthest. poorest people is today generally books were long, most of the later accepted, we owe much to Robert ones 500 pages or more. He made Anyone seeking to understand the Redfield and Oscar Lewis. much of scientific technique, yet he poorer three-fourths of the human so fictionalized and cloaked in race is in debt to Robert Redfield and Redfield was the teacher, the con- anonymity and secrecy the sources Oscar Lewis and-it finally must be ceptualizer, the pioneer, the idea of his perceptions as to seriously said-in equal measure. One looked man. He had little interest in collect- weaken their scientific significance. to suffering, one looked to joy. ing data or detailed statistics; he Lewis was also the student who Without the darkness, we cannot distrusted scientific technique and made good, the big critical and com- perceive the light. The truth about gave intuitive judgment its due. His mercial success whose portraits of Tepoztlsn and all the other poor books were short, rarely more than suffering found a popular market, people they wrote about lies in 200 pages and several were collec- whether because of their inner reading both men's work together. tions of his lectures. Yet he showed integrity or because, as Lewis

Acknowledgment

Library research for Look to Suffering, Look to Joy and for the provisional con- ceptual model of the universal peasant culture was done at the Centro Regional de Educacion de Adultos y Alfabetiza- cion Funcional para America Latina (CREFAL) in the small and very pleasant Mexican town of Patzcuaro, Michoacan. As the former United Nations commu- nity development training center for all Latin America, it has a remarkably com- prehensive library on villages and peasant culture. I wish to thank Gilberto Garza ~alcdn, Director Adjunto of CREFAL, and Daniel Mdrquez, the chief librarian, for making available to me the works of Oscar Lewis, Robert Redfield, and a good many others. NOTES

1. Robert Redfield, Peasant Society and (Maharashtra, Kashmir, West Bengal), (New York: Random House, 19631, p. 15. Culture: An Anthropological Approach and Japan. Urban slum studies in Passages from Lewis quoted on pages 7 to Civilization (Chicago: University of Calcutta, Jakarta, Cairo, Casablanca, and 8frorn this source, p. 16. Chicago Press, 19561, pp. 20-24. Paris, and Salvador. Other village experi- ence includes life-long occasional resi- 20. Oscar Lewis, The Children of 2. Richard Critchfield, "Hello, Mister! dence in Viola, lowa (population ca. 200), Sanchez; Autobiography of a Mexican Where Are You Going?," Papers (New interviews as assistant farm editor, Cedar Family (New York: Random House, York: Alicia Patterson Fund, 19721, con- Rapids Gazette, lowa; postgraduate 1963), passages quoted on pages 8 and 9 densation in The Golden Bowl Be study in volkskunde, University of Inns- from xxiv-xxvi. Broken: Peasant Life in Four Cultures bruck (excursions in Italian and Austrian (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Alps). While this may seem like a good bit 21. Oscar Lewis, The Study of Slum Cul- 19741, pp. 214-312. of village experience, the reader should ture-Backgrounds for La Vida (New bear in mind that a journalist specializing York: Random House, 19681. 3. Richard Critchfield, "Egypt's Fellahin, in villages, unlike an anthropologist with Part I: Beyond the Mountains of Kaf" his university duties, is engaged, except 22. Richard Critchtield, "Riders To- IRC-I-'761, and "Egypt's Fellahin, Part II: for periods of wr~ting,in perpetual field gether," Papers (New York: Alicia Patter- The Ant and the Grasshopper [RC-2-'761, research. son Fund, 19701, included in The Golden AUFS Reports, Northeast Africa Series, 6. Malcolm Darling, Rusticus Loquitur: Bowl Be Broken, pp. 45-97. Vol. XXI, No. 6and7,1976. The Old Light and the New in the Punjab Village (London: Oxford University 23. Richard Critchfield, "Sketches of the 4. Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted (Bos- Press, 19301, p. x. Green Revolution," Papers (New York: ton: Little, Brown Et Company, 19511, Alicia Patterson Fund, 1970), condensa- p. 7. 7. ~enkPorak, Un village de France: tion in The Goiden Bowl Be Broken, pp. Psycho-physiologie du paysan (Paris: G 98-213. 5. This writer's village studies include: Doin & Cie, 1943). Creolefishermen, Mauritius, September- 24. Lewis, The Children of Sanchez, p. December 1969; Sikh wheat farmers, 8. Irwin T. Sanders, Balkan Village xxvi. Punjab, India, January-May 1970, Au- (Lexington, Kentucky: University of gust 1974; West-central Javanese rice Kentucky Press, 19491, p. 147. 25. Lucien Bernot et end Blancard, peasants and migrants to Jakarta, Indo- Nouville, un village franqais (Paris: Insti- nesia, December 1967, June-December 9. J. Weulersse, Paysans de Syrie et du tut d'ethnologie, 19531, p. 282. 1970, January-June 1973; Arab Bedouin Proche-Orient (Paris, 19461, p. 173. herdsmen, Khuzestan, Iran-Iraq border 26. Lewis, The Children of Sanchez, area, January-Msrch 1971; wheat peas- 10. Henry Ayrout, Fellahin (Cairo, 19381. p. xxvii. ants, Romanni Plateau, Morocco, and migrants to Casablanca and Arab ghetto 11. Hamed Amrnar, Growing Up in an 27. lbid. of Paris, April-July 1971; Philippine rice Egyptian Village, Silwa, Province of peasants, Zamboanga, Mindanao, July- Aswan (London: Routledge B Kegan 28. Ibid. December 1972, February-April 1974; Paul, Ltd., 19541, pp. 35-39. fellahin of Upper Nile, Egypt, September- 29. Redfield, p. 114. December 1974, April-September 1975, 12. Critchfield, The Golden Bowl Be June-September 1976; fellahin of Delta, Broken, p. 312. 30. While writing this article, I explained Egypt, February-May 1976; Ngimang the opposing Redfield and Lewis inter- tribe, Nuba Mountains, the Sudan, 13. E.K.L. Francis, "The Personality pretations of Mexican village life to January-March 1975; cassava peasants, Type of the Peasant According to Aurelio, the Tarascan Indian. Aurelio, Bahia, and migrants to Salvador, North- Hesiod's Works and Days: A Culture who went to high school in Los Angeles, east Brazil, September 1976-March 1977; Case Study," Rural Sociology, X, No. 3 spoke English, and was familiar with wheat and maize peasants, central (September 19451, p. 278. Mexican highlands, April-August 1977. urban slums, said he felt village life was better. "I mean everybody's not laughing Shorter resident village studies in Bali, 14. Ayrout, Fellahin. all the time, but they're happier here. 1973; South Korea, 1954; South Because they don't have to worry like Vietnam, 1964-1967; Pakistan (Punjab 15. Redfield, Peasant Society and Cul- people in the city do, like if I don't have and Khyber Pass), 1972, 1974; Nepal ture, p. 105. (Tibetan settlement, Pokhara, and any job, how am I going to pay the rent? So that's why." Newaris, KathanduValley), 1961, 1962, 16. lbid., p. 112. 1974; Bangladesh (Comila -and near Dacca), 1973; Thailand (Chiangmai and 17. lbid, p. 109. 31. Critchfield, The Golden Bowl Be Northeast), 1974. Also nonresident, Broken, p. 118. visiting village investigations in Afghan- 18. lbid, p. 140. istan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Burma, 32. lbid., p. 194, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Austria, 19. Oscar Lewis, Five Families: Mexican Italy, the Bahamas, Micronesia, India Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty 33. lbid., p. 42. 34. Redfield, p. 123. only thing wrong about the work of John Womack, Jr. in his review of Four Oscar Lewis," he said, "is that he died Men: Living the Revolution: an Oral 35. Critchfield, "Egypt's Fellahin." before he could finish it." Moynihan re- History of Contemporary Cuba by Oscar vealed that among Lewis's other projects Lewis, Ruth M. Lewis, and Susan M. 36. Hesiod, Works and Days. at the time of his death was a project in Rigdon (Urbana: University of Illinois Calcutta, with theassistance of a Bengali Press, August 1977). In The New York 37. George Bourne, Change in the anthropologist, to study the impact of Review of Books, August 4, Womack Village (New York: George H. Doran both economic advance and revolution describes Lewis' rather harrowing last Company, 1912). upon the "culture of poverty." In 1971, project in Cuba in 1969-70 and how three the year Lewis died, Calcutta and West books were written from 25,000 pages of 38. Redfield, pp. 132-133. Bengal were undergoing spasms of notes the Lewises managed to salvage chaos sponsored by the local Marxist from a much larger amount of material 39. lbid, pp. 137-138. party which had been voted into power. confiscated by the Castro government. The purpose of the violence was to Four Men, published in August, and Four 40. Oscar Lewis, Pedro Martinez; A increase communist strength among the Women in September were largely Mexican Peasant and His Family ( New poor. Lewis was also studying family life written by Mrs. Lewis while a third book, York: Random House 19641, p. xxx. in Cuba and had worked on a further Neighbors, published early in 1978, is the study of Puerto Rican culture, Six work of Rigdon, a political scientist at 41. Richard Critchfield, The Long Cha- Women. Illinois's Center for International Studies. rade; Political Subversion in the Vietnam Mrs. Lewis is a psychologist by training War (New York: Harcourt, Brace Et I asked Moynihan what had happened to and did many of the psychological tests World, 19681, Chapter Two: "Le Duan's thesocial isolation of American Blacks in for her husband. Strategy," and "A Choice Denied." the seven years since he had been While the Vietcong used the slogans of wrestling with a solution. Moynihan felt land to the tiller and independence, Le America's Black population had split in In a generally critical review, Womack Duan in fact relied upon terrorism, in- half, one entering the middle class and wrote that Mrs. Lewis upheld the literary timidation, and appeals to personal am- the poorer half experiencing "no quality of the earlier Lewis books to such bition to build his power structure in the improvement at all." Moynihan was a degree "admirers of Oscar Lewis may south. His strategy was based upon the defensive about his role at the United suspect that the art in the earlier books Leninist principle of "exploiting internal Nations. When I argued that he was too could have come in good part from his contradictions in the enemy camp." I affected by his sour experience in lndia- wife." Four Men is about one older spent at least half of my time in Vietnam Indira Gandhi in one of her anti-American Cuban who has spent a lifetime serving in villages and became convinced that fits once summoned him to her office others and three young men who exem- the rural South Vietnamese shared the and then kept him sitting there while she plify the "fear, envy, and suspicion" so universal peasant culture; they were shuffled papers on her desk for half an common among Lewis's characters. plain, straight, conservative men and hour-Moynihan snapped, "It was one Mrs. Lewis, however, gives their stories women with strongly materialistic drives way of looking at a country and the way I happy endings as the men and their fam- who just wanted to be left alone to till looked." I told him heof all people should iliesweather the revolutionary process to their ancestral lands, marry, and raise know an ambassador should spend more come to feel creative, resolved, and children. The late Tran Van Huong, time with the poor, especially the helpful. As one of the four, Salazar, South Vietnam's former premier and peasants out in the villages. A lively argu- describes this process, "The best teacner vice-president at its fall, once told me, "I ment followed, climaxing with, as we anybody can have is work.. . . It calms am a law-abiding citizen, not a revolu- came out into the street, Moynihan you down, it makes you understand tionary." Huong, in his unsuccessful shouting his vexation with the Third many things-sharing, comradeship." 1967 presidential campaign, made a dig- World, "We've taken enough of their Which suggests, as Moynihan argued all nified appeal for the restoration of tra- bombast and b------t, and we're not along, that unemployment is not simply ditional Confucian cultural values as the going to take it any more!" Like Lewis, another trait in the "culture of poverty" only way left to save the country. It is Moynihan seemed too influenced by his but its essential precondition. Womack Vietnamese peasant culture that remains past intellectual commitments. recommends as the most thoughtful Le Duan's principal adversary in Vietnam criticism of the Lewis hypothesis The and ultimate victory has not gone to 45. Oscar Lewis, Village Life in Northern Culture of Poverty: A Critique edited by communism yet, nor has it in China. lndia (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, Eleanor Burke Leacock (Simon Et 19581, p. 304. Schuster, 1971), and Charles A Valen- 42. Lewis, Pedro Martinez.. . , p. xxx. tine's Culture and Poverty: Critique and 46, lbid., pp. 320-321. Counter-Proposals (University of Chicago Press, 1968). In a recent con- 43. Ernest Hemingway, "The Snows of 47. lbid, p. vii. versation in Berkeley, Dr.George M. Kilamanjaro," first published in Esquire. Foster told this writer "Lewis was an 48. Lewis, Pedro Martinez, p. xxxii. artist, not a social scientist in his later 44. In January 1976, over drinks in the work." Interestingly, Foster felt that Security Council delegates' lounge, 49. lbid., p. xxxii. "today peasant studies have come to an when he was serving as Ambassador to end" and that contemporary anthro- the United Nations, I spoke with Moyhi- 50. Redfield, p. 140. pology has largely turned to "linguistics, han about Lewis. Moynihan, who had formalism and symbolism, moderniza- appeared on the cover of Time the day 51. The last, final, Cuban phase of Lewis' tion, urbanization, religion, and eco- before, had softened in his attitude. "The life and work is described in detail by nomics." 52. In final footnote, I should like to offer The purpose of this conceptual model is famine. But I do believe there must be a somewhat more developed provisional to help us understand, not only the reason to fear what will happen when model of the world peasant culture (see generic quality of the universal peasant millions of immigrant peasants, now following chart). culture, but more important, the prob- existing in the most terrible conditions in able generic nature in the way it is the urban slums of some 50 or 60 cities, In formulating such a model, Redfield is changing, both in villages and among lose their peasant culture. For to me, the best place to start. He mostly con- uprooted peasants in the cities. Such a Lewis's "culture of poverty" represents cerned himself with the values implicit in model cannot be precise. There are the breakdown of the universal peasant the peasant's attitudes toward work and about two million villages in Asia, Africa, cultureand is nota culture, or subculture, land, but all the traits he listed fit into the and Latin America and at least half their in itself. Only in this sense does Lewis's universal peasant culture. One can also urban populations are made up of emphasis on revolution as a solution use some, but by no means all, of the 70 peasants who migrated to the city in their assume alarming significance. traits Lewis gave for the "culture of lifetimes. And, if the scope is vast, the poverty." Lewis based his theory heavily time to study peasant culture is growing During the next couple of years I plan to upon the Sanchez family. It was first short. Overpopulation may overwhelm revisit 15 previously studied villages, as introduced, as I mentioned earlier, as "a some countries in the next five to ten well as the slums of Manila, Jakarta, family which combines working class years. Much depends upon such unpre- Calcutta, Bombay, Cairo, Casablanca, and lower middle class values" (Five dictable factors as the North American Salvador, and Sao Paulo, to try and learn Families, p. 27). The Sanchez family had wheat crop and the availability of exports more about the nature of this cultural no ties with any village and no longer to feed the cities of the poor countries, change. In this, the provisional concep- possessed peasant values. It may be rep- local grain production, local political tual model of the universal peasant cul- resentative of poor families in Mexico leadership, and so on. ture, which t will amend as I go along, City (population between 8 and 12 should be useful as a kind of road map. million). But the great masses of urban When political explosions do result, it poor in cities like Jakarta, Calcutta, and becomes too dangerous to go and live in Politics is the stuff of journalism, just as Cairo, do retain their traditional peasant villagesand urban slums. Then whatever culture is what anthropology is about. If, culture and close ties with their native understanding we get of peasantry, in as I suspect and fear, an unprecedented villages. I believe we are fortunate they villagesor uprooted in slums, must come cultural breakdown is under way in the do, sharing Redfield's view that peasant from journalists covering the crisis, not cities of the Third World, and political culture isstill the main stabilizing force in anthropologists or other scholars. It is explosions result, the close relationship the world. As long as a peasant retains probably already too late to go and live between these two approaches to his peasant culture, he is very unlikely to with the poor in Bangladesh and Cal- studying the human whole should be- become a criminal, rioter, or revolution- cutta, the Gangetic delta region having come evident. ary. Lewis's "culture of poverty" is reached the crisis point in overpopulation something of a transitional phase in versus resources first. between. (April 1978) There is no need to be Apocalyptic. It Long before I discovered Redfield some seems very probable, except for the months ago, I had been compiling lists of occasional bad year, that increases in common traits apparently shared by all food production will keep pace with villagers. (See pages 197 and 221 of The population growth the rest of this cen- Golden Bowl Be Broken, published in tury, not enough to lessen malnutrition 1974, or "Carnival and Guapira's Chil- but enough to avoid really widespread dren: The Moral Challenge, Parts I and II" [RC-1,2,'771, AUFS Reports, East Coast South America Series, Vol. XXI, Nos. 2,3, 1977, and "Sex in the Third World," Human Behavior, April 1977, pp. 40-47. THE UNIVERSAL PEASANT CULTURE morale rises during periods of intense field work such A Provisional Conceptual Model as during harvests; emphasis on industry and thrift as prime values; ability at labor reflects manhood and sense of personal worth (R); belief habit of hard work (R) and (L) indicate traits and phrasing shared by the to be inculcated in youth from childhood (R); children writer with Redfield and Lewis and taken from them. become self-reliant by performing useful chores from toddlerhood; a youth as prepared to earn livelihood from land at 15 as at 40; children eager to perform INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY work well as proof of maturity and to gain status within family and village; great enjoyment at surcease Individual: lower life expectancy (L); present-time ori- of hard labor (R); disorientation and demoralization in entation (R 8 L); capacity for spontaneous enjoyment periods of prolonged idleness, hence exaggerated fear (L); concrete-minded (L); fatalistic (L); indifference of illness or disability though not of death; certain toward institutions of dominant classes; much drink- suspicion, mixed with appreciation of town life (R); ing but little alcoholism; plain, straight, and conserva- strain in relationship with children if they are educated tive with traditional and materialistic drives; grain beyond parents' level or through high school or (wheat, rice, maize or sorghum) the staff of life; age beyond because they usually lose traditional values respected, tradition and custom binding. toward labor and land.

Family: head of family has to provide food, shelter, MORALITY, RELIGION AND SUPERNATURAL and clothing for all, each member in turn obligated to SUPPORTS work for it under father's authority; parental authority has economic basis; patrilocal residence and descent The Agricultural Moral Code: monogamous, divorce- in male line; family of central importance, blood ties less, multichild marriages; many children welcomed and kinship have heavy weight; crowding, lack of as more hands for work (R); more security against privacy, gregariousness (L); relatively high percentage potential enemies and for support in old age, hence of income goes for religious rites, liquor, and ciga- birth control made immoral and "against God's will"; rettes (most villagers smoke); mother-centered fam- industry, thrift highly esteemed, violence condemned; ilies (L); woman comes into her own as mother of recognition that while peasant rustic, he has superior adult sons. moral code to people in cities; parents and the elderly are honored, respected, and obeyed; stealing, Sex and Love: approach practical rather than roman- cheating, falsehoods, and covetousness condemned; tic; early marriage reduces frustration from strictly code more similar to Ten Commandments than Ser- enforced prohibitions against premarital sex; virginity mon on the Mount, with its much loftier ethics. of bride given importance; adultery condemned, harshly punished if detected; open discussion of sex Religion: belief in a personal god concerned with with members of own sex; little or no homosexuality one's individual welfare and who leads forces of good or prostitution; bride chosen for reputation for indus- in perpetual conflict with forces of evil; belief life is, to try; beautiful, rich or well-educated girls may have some degree, predestined or "already written," hence trouble finding mates; marriage a provision of eco- fatalistic; belief in system of punishmentsand rewards nomic welfare and as such unmarried people very for sins and virtues in afterlife; belief in heaven and rare; love rnarriages increasingly common but still hell; evil explained as work of demons or devils who major parental involvement; most village marriages a seek to make men lustful or violent; religion propitiary "dogged partnership" of closely related work life and though disaster, such as illness, death, flood, or earth- family life, but often deeply affectionate based upon quake, tends to be accepted as lot of all creation; compassion and mutual need. though deep personal faith, tend to be skeptical toward organized religion, whether it be Christian, LAND AND LABOR Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist.

Land: love of native land; desire to own land (R); in- Supernatural Supports to Religion: belief in good and tense attachment to ancestral soil (R); personal bond evil omens, witchcraft, sorcery, magic, demons, to land; reverence for nature (R); reverent disposition ghosts, Evil Eye of envious or admiring neighbors, toward habitat and ancestral ways (R); almost organic herbal remedies, faith healing, and protective amulets relationship between man, labor, and land. and talismans; tendency to seek and accept explana- tions of natural phenomena and human behavior in Labor: idea that agricultural work is good, commerce the supernatural rather than in modern, scientific not so good (R); hard physical labor central fact of life; logic; similar tendency to prefer traditional cures and herbs to modern medical practices; belief in super- seasons, and traditional festivals and ceremonies; natural reinforced by much more frequent houses tend to be mud-brick, have thatched or tile occurrences of apparent psychic phenomena than in roofs, an open courtyard, and high walls; live close to modern urban societies. animals, communicate with them in special lan- guages; little difference in outward aspect of houses WORLD VIEW or eating habits of rich and poor; richer villagers tend to work much harder; social life revolves around Low level of literacy, much illiteracy (L); little curiosity births, marriages, and deaths, the local school and vil- or knowledge of outside world even if literate and little lage church, temple, or mosque; pattern of frequent reading of books or newspapers; sometimes watch buying of small quantities of essentials on credit from television but tend to regard shows as a kind of village merchant to whom most villagers are in debt; fantasy and prefer Tarzan or Kung Fu type of adven- borrowing at usurious rates from few richer indi- tures to realistic dramatizations; rarely watch tele- viduals during emergencies; little use of banks; vision news; little sense of nationalism but identify outside authorities, especially police, to be avoided if with local region or ethnic group; horizons extremely possible; dependent on outside world for priests or narrow, usually not beyond neighboring villages or religious teachers, schoolteachers, agricultural tech- nearest market town; fear of great cities, though may nicians and agricultural inputs, veterinarians, doctors, go to work in them but seek to recreate village by or other forms of medical care, and family planning clustering with other fellow immigrants; fear of mili- clinics; ambivalent attitude toward education which is tary service though if go return more alert and aware: highly esteemed though children often kept home fond of travel to see "new places and new faces" but from school to work in fields; rarely identify their inter- village remains fixed point by which a man knows his ests with city people whom regarded with something own position in world and relationship with all of an adversary relationship; notions that city people humanity; from childhood on, a man forms an inner are "extravagant," "idle," or "false" (R); a restraint picture in his mind of his own place, his relationship on individual self-seeking in favor of family and village with others in the village and the world outside, all (R); envy of successful who tend to conceal gains if securely balanced so that he feels a sense of being possible; daily social relations marked by great affa- bound in a community whose common tasks and bility, elaborate traditional forms of greeting and values go on forever; politically, just want to be left courtesy; extremely hospitable to "foreigners" after alone; residual fear of city-based authority which his- initial period of reserve and suspicion. torically came only to tax, conscript or compel; non- revolutionary, accept social structure but resent specific abuses; police respected, obeyed if maintain THE UNIVERSAL PEASANT CULTURE has existed law and order, hated only if abuse power; almost no in all great civilizations and in all periods of history. It concept of world geography; often unaware of can be found in its truest form today in India, Egypt, nuclear bombs, man's journey to the moon, or the Indonesia (Java & Bali), and perhaps China, and those world population problem. countries most culturally influenced by them. This writer has also observed it, with minor variations, in the Sudan, Morocco, Mauritius, Brazil, Mexico, the VILLAGE Philippines, Thailand, South Vietnam, Pakistan, Nepal, the Austrian Tyrol and, with some major vari- Fear of neighbors' censure or "what will people say" ations, in thesmall rural communities of North Dakota is much more potent force in holding village together and Iowa during the 1930s and 1940s. Among impor- than organized religion or government, creates strong tant regional variations aremachismo, the cult of male desire to conform to established ways; gossip chief domination and superiority, which occurs in Latin and form of entertainment; villagers intensely interested in Mediterranean villages and in the Muslim Middle East affairs of neighbors immediately around them with a (but not Muslim India, Bangladesh, or Indonesia-the corresponding almost total lack of interest in world dividing line seems to be the upper Gangetic Plain). beyond village; neighboring villages have bad Violence toward mates, children, or in settling reputations; system of village communal rights and quarrels, a trait Lewis emphasized, when it occurs at obligations governing such matters as the grazing of all, is also largely confined to this region. Hunters and cattle, gathering of fuel, and cutting of fodder, as well herders, while rural, do not share the universal as building roads, cleaning irrigation canals; services peasant culture. to be provided one's neighbors, such as hospitality without cost and loans without interest; some degree Many Americans over 40 have experienced a similar of mutual cooperation; each has part to play in organic culture in North America's rural post-frontier village whole; life governed in harmony with weather and the society of about 1840 and 1940 of small church-going communities, large families, dominant fathers, or, becoming alienated from village and city alike, morality-oriented mothers, and children who grew turning into criminals. History suggests that there may self-reliant by performing useful chores from a young be no adequate substitute for the universal peasant age, all in an atmosphere of gossipy neighborliness. culture, which seems to be man's most natural way of Despite our high technology agriculture-3 percent of life. Repeatedly, once enough men have lost this Americans now feed the rest and a good bit of the culture and been cut off from its agricultural economic world too-vestiges of this culture still remain. The base, urban civilizations themselves have declined, true universal peasant culture is very old. Most of its though this has always been a slow and leisurely characteristics date back to its origin when man first process. In our time, Spengler, Toynbee, Thomas came down from the Central Asian plateau and up Mann, and others havewarned this may be happening from the African savanna toestablish our first peasant to the West. Scientific advances, however, in biology, villages in the Fertile Crescent from Egypt to Meso- agriculture, communications and, in the nuclear potamia 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Historically, the bomb, weaponry, plus the unprecedented inundation universal peasant culture has disintegrated when of many cities by landless peasants, have introduced peasants move into cities, there joining the urban entirely new and unpredictable elements. proletariat, the middle classes, the lumpenproletariat