Traditions of Communal Co-Operation Among Portuguese Peasants
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UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Traditions of communal co-operation among Portuguese peasants Bennema, J.W. Publication date 1978 Document Version Final published version Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Bennema, J. W. (1978). Traditions of communal co-operation among Portuguese peasants. (Papers on European and Mediterranean societies; No. 11). Universiteit van Amsterdam, Antropologisch-Sociologisch Centrum. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:07 Oct 2021 TRADITIONS OF COMMUNAL CO-OPERATION AMONG PORTUGUESE PEASANTS (PRELIMINARY REPORT) JAN WILLEM BENNEMA NO.TI PAPERS ON EUROPEAN AND MEDITERRANEAN SOCIETIES ANTROPOLOGISCH-SOCIOLOGISCH CENTRUM UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM 1978 TRADITIONS OF COMMUNAL CO-OPERATION AMONG- PORTUGUESE PEASANTS Jgn Willem Bennema ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper is the translated and revised version of my M.A. thesis which was based on fieldwork and literature study. I am responsible for all shortcomings its contents might present; and I am indebted to a number of helpers. The first of them is Anton Blok, who proposed me to forge the initial version into a paper in which attention should be paid to the general discussion on the concept of community and communal rights. He gave me valuable suggestions. During the writing-up of the first version, Nico Kielstra had asked a number of well-chosen and stimulating questions. I am also grateful to Jeremy Boissevain who looked over the first and part of the second version critically. In many ways I am indebted to my wife, Iris Bennema, who assisted me, literally, by word and deed. I also wish to thank Nel Bennema, my mother, for reviewing the translation. Finally, thanks are due to the frank and very hospitable inhabitants of a small village in the Portuguese interior, without whose help the central part of this paper could never have been written. Druk: Huisdrukkerij Universiteit van Amsterdam T - 6869 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii Part One THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDS. AND RESEARCH PROBLEMS 1 I INTRODUCTION 3 II COMMUNAL CO-CPEiRATION: THE RESEARCH PROBLEMS 11 11.1 Defining the subject 11 11.2 The problem of description 15 11.3 The problem of explanation 18 Part Two . COMMUNAL CO-OPERATION IN THE NORTH OF PORTUGAL AND SPAIN 29 III : THE . NORTH IN GENERAL 33 IV A NORTH-EASTERN PORTUGUESE COMMUNITY AND ITS COUNCIL 43 IV.1 The region and the community 43 IV.2 Communal and higher authorities 47 IV. 3 The members of the council 51 V COMMUNAL ENTERPRISE IN MARRAS . 55 V. 1 The communal handling of church affairs 55 V.2 Assistance 58 V.3 The maintenance of communal capital goods 59 V.4 Communal undertakings in agriculture 62 V.4.1 Crop farming 62 V.4.2 Cattle-breeding , 65 V.4.3 The management and exploitation of the waste lands 69 V.5 Conclusion 74 Part Three THE MEDITERRANEAN PLAIN AND THE COLD LAND 77 VI . THE HISTORY OF COMMUNAL CO-OPERATION ON THE SOUTHERN PORTUGUESE PLAIN 81 . VII PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT, RESOURCES AND COMMUNAL CO-OPERATION . 95 VIII CONCLUSION 105 NOTES 111 BIBLIOGRAPHY 127 PART ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDS AND RESEARCH PROBLEMS I INTRODUCTION The aim of this paper is to contribute to the insight into the ;. varying extent to which members of peasant communities work together in the management or exploitation of collective property and in the provision of public services within their community or neighbourhood. For this type of co-operation the term "communal co-operation" will be used. The paper consists of three parts.. The first part will cope in a general way with the subject of communal co-operation and the processes which explain the course of the history of forms of com• munal co-operation. Attention will be paid to general European processes as well as to processes in specific parts of the continent. The second and central part focusses on the persistence of traditions of communal co-operation in northern parts of the Iberian Peninsula and especially in the village of Marras (north-eastern Portugal) where the writer carried out fieldwork in July, August and September 1973. In the third part a further inquiry will be made into one of the conditions which explain the varying importance of communal co• operation: the smaller or greater possibility of commercialization and the type of commercialization in agriculture. In this context a description, based on literature study, will be given of the former existence and subsequent disappearing of co-operative traditions In southern-Portuguese communities. First of all, however, the theoretical backgrounds of this' paper must be made clear. This introduction is the appropriate place for doing so. The collective rights and forms of co-operation which have been important in many a peasant community, were a favourite topic of discussion among writers of the nineteenth centrury. In the very period in which the ever-growing dependency of European peasants on the capitalist world economy and their national societies led to the disappearance of many communal rights and forms of co• operation, these "primitive customs" became a matter of interest for a growing number of philosophers, historians and jurists. -it- Nationalists regarded the communal institutions of the villages in their country as expressions of a feeling of solidarity which was, quite naturally, characteristic of their own nation. Various writers according to their ideology, used terms like "spontaneous democracy", "spontaneous socialism", Urkommunismus or "primitive communism", or 1 even "communism of Christ"! The American ethnologist Lewis H„ Morgan, too, postulated the existence of a stage of primitive communism in the history of mankind. He took the communal institutions of the Iroquois and other Indians as evidence for this assumption (Morgan 1851). The German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies wrote a book about the Gemeinschaft (community), a concept that stood for living, working and praying together in the rural community, in which people still treated one another in a benevolent and respectful way. The organic or natural principle of Gemeinschaft had been developed and differentiated into three definite and meaningful types of relations: kinship, neighbourhood and friendship, Tonnies* work betrays a clearly negative valuation of modern society, which was described by him as the Gesellschaft (society), the mechanical or artificial economic world, based on material interests and formless contracts, (See the sample of Tonnies' writings in Bell and Newby 1974) Such ideas about primitive socialism and harmonious village life have met much criticism. One of the critics was the Dutch anthropol• ogist J.J. Fahrenfort, who in his booklet Socialisme in oude tijden (Socialism in old times) discussed collective rights on arable land* Using examples from the Inca Empire, the Jesuit mission area in Para• guay and the Czar Empire, Fahrenfort argues that collective rights which according to many writers were the outcome of natural solidarity feelings or enlightened policy, had in reality been created by the measures of authorities who were merely after their own endSo The Inca rulers decreed that each man obtained as much land as was required for the maintenance of his family. In addition they insti• tuted certain work obligations for public ends. According to Fahrenfort it would be a mistake to think that they did all this for the good of their subjects. The Inca rulers imposed the system out of their desire to have the disposal of well-fed and therefore capable soldiers. Their "socialist society" possessed all aspects of a totalitarian militarist state. -5- The Jesuits in Paraguay had brought together Guarani Indians in big settlements and had made them work together on communal fields, As opposed to what has been maintained by many admirers the Jesuit policy was not inspired by treatises of Plato, Thomas More and Campanella on the Ideal State - on the contrary, Fahrenfort ar,gues that the missionaries were led by a very practical consideration. By making the Indians live and work in groups, the Jesuits could easily see to it that the Indians, who in their eyes were children, were zealous in fulfilling their religious and work obligations. The periodic reallotment of collective arable land in the mir or village community of pre-revolutionary Russia has often been considered to be a rest of Slavonic communism dating from primaeval ages; but as clearly appears from historical data the arable land had originally been in possession of individual families, and it was not until the beginning of the eighteenth century that the periodic reallotments came into existence. They were called into existence by a decree: henceforth, the council of all households of the mir was to control the land as a fund of tax income for' the state. By compelling periodic allotment of land to each family according to its labour capacity, —>, J the Czar wanted to intensify agricultural production to the maximum, so as to obtain as much tribute as possible. The tribute was badly needed by the Czar in view of his expansionist ambitions! (Fahrenfort 1945,) I think these critical considerations are convincing; Fahrenfort's argument is based on good research.