Suchergebnisse

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

The participation of Ru pop's in 6 major soc & pol'al upheavals in the 20th cent is examined: (1) the Mexican revolution of 1910; (2) the Russian revolutions of 1905 & 1917; (3) the Chinese revolution which metamorphosed through various phases from 1921 onwards; (4) the Vietnamese revolution which has its roots in WWII; (5) the Algerian rebellion of 1954; & (6) the Cuban revolution of 1958. It is not easy for a peasantry to engage in sustained rebellion & it takes strong influences to impell them toward this. The peasant rebellions of the 20th cent are no longer simple responses to local problems, if indeed they ever were. They are the parochial reactions to major soc dislocations, set in motion by overwhelming societal change such as: the spread of the market; industr'ization & expanded COMM; erosion of traditional pol'al authority & ascendancy of new contenders for power, etc. No cultural system is ever static. As long as the on-going changes remain within tolerable limits, the over-all system persists. If they exceed the limits, or if other components are suddenly introduced from the outside, the system will be thrown out of kilter. Then the parts of the system are rendered inconsistent with each other, the system grows incoherent. Since incoherence rarely appears all at once, in all parts of the system, men may follow one alternative for some time, then another, perhaps contradictory one. But in the end a breach of major disjuncture will make its appearance somewhere in the system. Under such circumstances, a peasant uprising can-without conscious intent-bring the entire society to a state of collapse. M. Maxfield.

Through the Eastern Alps runs one of the great cultural frontiers of Europe, the zone of contact between the cultural sphere of the Mediterranean and the transalpine cultures to the north. This frontier has shifted back and forth over time, as have the boundaries of language and of various dominant political units. One of the present foci of culture contact in a zone of dispute and discord is the present-day Italian region of Alto Adige or Tiroler Etschland (still called the South Tirol by unreconstructed defenders of the traditional unity of the Tyrol) and the Trentino. Unified in the first part of the 13th century under the Counts of the Tyrol, the region passed into the hands of the Habsburgs in 1363, where it remained until 1918 but for a brief interlude during the Napoleonic period. The Napoleonic occupation divided the region, yielding to Bavaria the largely German-speaking province of Bozen (Bolzano), together with the North Tyrol, while grouping the Romancespeaking portions with Italy. This division became the prototype of later efforts to divorce the Romance Tyrol from the German Tyrol, a division effected again in the provincial separation between Province Bozen and Province Trento after the entire region was yielded by Austria to Italy at the end of World War I. Except for a brief period near the end of World War II (1943 to 1945), when both provinces were grouped as Operationszone Alpenvorland with Gau Tyrol of the Greater German Reich, the region has remained politically part of Italy. It remains also, however, an area of conflict in which Italian political hegemony and cultural influence has been combatted by the German-speaking population, impelled by a desire for greater autonomy or complete separation from the Italian state.