Suchergebnisse

Students of peasant society recognize the importance of the market economy for understanding decision-making processes within the house- hold and the nature of articulation between the peasant sector and the national society. We intend to describe market behavior in Northeast Brazil and to relate such behavior to changes in the agricultural economy in general. The ultimate goal is to understand how peasants are integrated into the national economy as commodity producers and consumers of manufactured goods. By concentrating on the internal marketing system for food staples in Northeast Brazil we hope to refine earlier views of peasants and to suggest a definition of peasantry based on economic integration rather than on partial participation in the national culture.

It is indeed a pleasure to be invited to address economists and economic historians regarding the dynamics of peasant economic integration into a national economic system. The particular subject of these meetings, "The Organizational Forms of Economic Life and their Evolution," is an appropriate one for us since, as anthropologists, we are generally interested in the "Evolution of the Organizational Forms of Life." Today we will examine the organizational form of peasant economic life in Brazil in an effort to develop a fuller understanding of the socio-economic transactions which take place within this traditional—better, transitional—agrarian society.