The Dictionary of Human Geography (143 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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peasant
A term that was in common use in the English language from the fifteenth century, referring to individuals working on the land and residing in the countryside. By the nineteenth century, ?peasant? was employed as a term of abuse (e.g. by Marx on the idiocy of rural life), and in the recent past it has been imbued with heroic and revolutionary connotations (as in Maoism, for example). In modern usage, peas ants are to be found on family farms (farming households) that function as relatively corpor ate units of production, consumption and reproduction (Chayanov, 1966). The particu lar social structural forms of the domestic unit (nuclear families, multi generational extended families, intra household sexual divisions of labour and property systems), the social rela tions between households within peasant com munities and the ecological relations of production (the peasant ecotype) are, however, extremely heterogeneous (Wolf, 1966). The terms ?peasant? and ?peasantry?have often been employed loosely to describe a broad range of rural producers as generic types characterized by certain social, cultural or economic traits: the backward or anti economic peasant, the rational and moral peasant, the uncaptured peasant. These and other terms such as ?trad itional?, ?subsistence? or ?smallholder? detract from the important analytical task of situating peasants as specific social producers in con crete, historically specific political economies with their own dynamics and laws of motion. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Peasants are distinguished by direct access to their means of production in land, by the predominant use of family labour and by a high degree of self sufficiency (see subsist ence agriculture). Nonetheless, all peasants are by definition characterized by a partial engagement with markets (which tend to func tion with a high degree of imperfection) and are subordinate actors in larger political econ omies, in which they fulfil obligations to hold ers of political and economic power. Peasants as forms of household enterprise rooted primarily in production on the land have a distinctive labour process (the unity of the domestic unit and the productive group) and a unique combination of labour and property through partial market involvement. Peasants stand between those social groups that have lost all or most of their productive assets (pro letarians or semi proletarians), on the one hand, and farming households that are fully involved in the market (so called petty or sim ple commodity producers), on the other. Seen in this way, peasants have existed under a variety of economic, political and cultural cir cumstances (e.g. feudalism, capitalism and state socialism) spanning vast periods of his tory, and are ?part societies?. Peasant societies are often seen as transitional they ?stand midway between the primitive tribe and indus trial society? (Wolf, 1966, p. vii) and yet are marginal or outsiders, ?subordinate to a group of controlling outsiders? (Wolf, 1966, p. 13) who appropriate surpluses in a variety offorms (rent, interest, unequal exchange). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In many third world societies in which peasants continue to constitute an important and occasional dominant stratum, a central question pertains to the fate of the peasantry in relation to growing state and market involve ment. Peasants are invariably the victims of modernity (Moore, 1966). The questions of growing commercialization and mechanization of peasant production and of the growth of off farm income (migration, craft production, local wage labour) are reflected in the long standing concern with internal differentiation among peasantries and hence their long term survival (hence the debates over peasant persistence, de peasantization and captured peasants). It is probably safe to say that the period from 1950 to 1975 witnessed an epochal shift in which peasantry became for the first time a global minority. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The proliferation of peasant studies in the past 30 years has been the source of important theoretical innovations in political economy speaking to questions of commoditization, cLass formation, resistance and rebellion (Shanin, 1988). The study ofpeasants was also key to the evolution of cultural ecology and poLiticaL ecoLogy insofar as peasant know ledge and practice is an indispensable starting point for the understanding ofhousehold man agement of resources, and hence the processes of ecological change and rehabilitation (Watts, 1983a; Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In the context of the transitions to and from capitalism, the role of peasantry is central. Barrington Moore (1966) argued that the rela tions between landlord and peasantry are fun damental in understanding the various routes of democracy and dictatorship in the modern world. Peasant revolutions in Mexico, Algeria and China, for example the antithesis of the idea of apolitical or tradition laden peasantries have fundamentally shaped the twentieth cen tury (Skocpol, 1980). Kautsky (1988 [1899]) referred to the agrarian question in western Europe in the nineteenth century to underscore the political ramifications of the new forms of differentiation and proletarianization associ ated with growing commercialization, and the political and strategic questions that arose from peasant protest and struggle. One of the major features ofthe period since 1989 and the decol lectivization of agriculture in the former social ist bloc has been the re emergence of millions of peasant households (re peasantization) in China, Russia and eastern Europe. The role of peasants in post socialist transitions has been a crucial part of the political landscape in these parts of the world and they represent intriguing cases for the study of new forms of agrarian capitalist trajectories (see Verdery, 1996; Selenyi, 1998). In other parts of the world, peasant entrepreneurial and political activism has also gained momentum in India (Gidwani, 2008), Indonesia (Li, 2006) and Mexico (Bobrow Strain, 2007). mw (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Scott (1988). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
performance
A concept that ?is, at this moment, one of the most pervasive metaphors (NEW PARAGRAPH) in the human sciences? (Thrift, 2000a, p. 225). Its popularity has been tied to: current interest in embodiment or habits of the body; non cognitive experiences and knowledges and the production of social life through everyday practices; and desires to de naturalize social categories and processes, create new political opportunities and emphasize the creativity of social life. Although different approaches to performance share most of these objectives, they also differ significantly in conceptions of human agency, subjectivity and power (Gregson and Rose, 2000), and tend to direct attention to different geographies and spaces. It is common to distinguish between four approaches: a sociological dramaturgical (NEW PARAGRAPH) approach, performativity (often as outlined by Butler), non representationaL theory and performance studies. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The sociological, dramaturgical approach is typically traced to Erving Goffman's ideas about the codes of conduct that govern behav iour, and the various strategies that we use to manage ourselves in the presence of others. Social life is conceived as staged by conscious agents who adhere to scripts. This is a geo graphical narrative that distinguishes front of the stage from backstage, and public from pri vate. Gregson and Rose (2000) argue that this has been the most prevalent notion of per formance in geography. A number of studies look at the performances demanded in specific, usually service sector, workplaces (e.g. McDowell and Court, 1994). Davidson (2003) develops the dramaturgical analogy to consider agoraphobia as a kind of ?stage fright? that compels those suffering from it to restrict their public performances to obviate the need to engage in ?impression management'. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Whereas the dramaturgical analogy implies a conscious agent that exists prior to perform ances (Gregson and Rose, 2000), performa tivity outlines a process through which social subjects are produced through performances. These are ?command' performances, regu lated by social norms, but possibilities for sub version arise from slippages between actual performances and the norms/ideals that they cite. Although Butler largely works in a tem poral rather than spatial register, she points to the importance of geographical context for the meaning of any performance: ?subversiveness is the kind of effect that resists calculation ... the demarcation of context is . . . already a prefiguring of the result? (1993b, p. 29). Gregson and Rose (2000) have extended the notion of performativity to space, arguing that ?performances do not take place in already existing locations . . . specific performances bring these spaces into being' (p. 441). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Non representational styles of thinking bring to the notion of performativity more emphasis on creativity, what is excessive to representation, cognition and discourse, everyday skills, affect and the ?binding of bodies with environment' (Thrift, 2004c, p. 177). With respect to the last, Thrift writes of the ?technological unconscious', a vast ?per formative infrastructure' that provides the stable ground for our practices and is produ cing the vast standardization of space. The spatial imaginary is that of connections, inter sections, movement and assembLages; the temporality that of becoming and the momentary event. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Non representational styles of thought take much from performance studies, an interdis ciplinary focus with closer ties to the perform ing arts, especially theatre and dance. It shares the emphasis on creativity and play, the inter mingling of the normative and transgressive, the limits of representation, the expressive qualities of the body beyond discourse, and the full range of the senses, including the kinaesthetic (as well as attempts to develop vocabularies to document these). Perfor mance studies places especial emphasis on liminal times and spaces that allow the tem porary suspension of norms and transitory nature of an event, which can never be fully captured, preserved or repeated. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The focus on performance has opened new ways of thinking of and about research methods. The emphasis on the extra discursive underlines the importance of witnessing in order to understand not just how people describe their world but how they act in their world (see ethnomethodology). Witnessing this ?doing' can offer opportunities to access a range of experiences and emotions that are not easily expressed through interview talk. It also prompts a different methodological approach to talk. Instead of asking respondents to describe their world, researchers have become more interested in listening to potential respondents talk while they are in their worlds. They are interested in the talk that does things. More and more researchers are experimenting with performative writing strategies, and expanding the boundaries of what counts as valuable research data and research products, to include theatre and video productions (see quaLitative methods). Self conscious research performances stretch debates about position aLity and research ethics in new directions (Routledge, 2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Despite the convergences and overlap between different approaches to performance, there are significant disagreements that war rant further debate, especially about what counts as politics and effective political strat egy. Thrift (2004c) directs us to the minutiae of performativity to harness ?the energy of moments' (p. 188). Houston and Pulido (NEW PARAGRAPH) have criticized the individualism of much of the work within geography influenced by the concept of performance and the ten dency to reduce resistance to the scale of the body. They direct us back to historical materi alism and collective politics. Jacobs and Nash (NEW PARAGRAPH) are also measured in their reception of non representational theory. They argue that the emphasis on escaping categorical fixity, in an effort to accentuate processes of becoming, risks returning the unmarked (implicitly mas culine) subject. They argue as well for the need to discriminate between power relations: ?In a world in which power is understood to be radically dissimulated (as much about negoti ating subjectivity or negotiating household chores, or work relations, or claiming and refusing rights), the . . . research imperative becomes one of being sensitive to the relations and proximities that matter, either in their determining forces or their transforming potential' (pp. 274 5). How to make these determinations offers grounds for debate. gp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Butler (1990); Jacobs and Nash (2003); Phelan and Lane (1998); Thrift (2000a). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
performativity
One strand of the recent thinking about performance: it has been an important means of theorizing the workings of power in the production of rules and norms. The concept is rooted in the linguistic distinc tion between constative and performative utterances. A performative utterance (famously exemplified by the statement: ?I pronounce you . . . ', uttered at the marriage ceremony) is itself an act that performs the action to which it refers. The performative ?brings to centre stage ... an active, world making use of language? (Culler, 1997, pp. 97 8). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The concept has been worked up most thor oughly by Judith Butler in relation to gender and norms of heterosexuality (1990, 1993a; see queer theory). She argued that gender is a performance without ontological status: ?There is no gender identity behind the expression of gender; that identity is performa tively constituted by the very ??expressions'' that are said to be its results' (1990, p. 25). (NEW PARAGRAPH) This is a more radical position than that of conventional feminist social construction, because she argues that biological sex is also produced: there is no interiorized, biological foundation on which gender rests. In this sense, gender norms are materialized by the body: they literally become matter. Butler also wrestles with a more complex subjectivity than is evident in many social constructivist accounts, because she attempts to hold psy choanalysis in tension with discourse analysis. She argues that identities are not simply performed on the surface of the body: what is performed always operates in relation to what cannot be performed or said (notably homosexual relations), mediated by the unconscious. In contrast to some accounts of social performances, those analysed as per formative are not seen to be freely chosen; they are compelled and sanctioned by the norms of compulsory heterosexuality (heteronorma tivity), and the subject has no choice but to exist within gender norms and conventions of nature (i.e. binary sex difference). Performances are also historically embedded; they are ?citational chains? and their effect is dependent on conventions (i.e. previous utter ances). Norms and identities are instantiated through repetitions of an ideal (e.g. the ideal of ?woman? or ?man?). Since we never quite inhabit the ideal, there is room for disidentifi cation and agency (see human agency). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographers have been divided in their reactions to performativity theory. Bell, Binnie, Cream and Valentine (1994) were among the first to deploy the concept, in their case to consider the subversive potential of particular performances of sexuality. Critics have been concerned that the subject of per formativity is abstracted in time and place, has little agency, is conceived within a purely dis cursive, non material world and is one that shares characteristics with the masculinist sov ereign subject (for a review of these criticisms, see Pratt, 2004). Others have found the con cept fruitful to think with: some have theorized space itself as performative (Gregson and Rose, 2000); others have drawn out the spati alities that are under theorized in Butler?s work but necessarily underpin the process described by the concept (Thrift, 2000; Pratt, 2004). In Thrift?s words: ?Social prac tices have citational force because of the spaces in which they are embedded and through which they work? (2000, p. 677). Non representational styles of thinking, in particular, emphasize the significance of the non discursive and the instability of the (NEW PARAGRAPH) citational process, envisioning social life ?as pro cessuaHy enactive, as styles and modes of per formative moving and relating rather than as sets of codified rules? (McCormack, 2003, p. 489; original emphasis). The concept has been put to work to theorize more than gender and sexuality. Gregory (2005), for instance, brings the concept to his analysis of sovereign power; Thrift (2000) outlines a new ?ecology? of capitalist business practices that produce ?fast? managers with aptitudes for constant innovation and permanent high performance (see also cultural economy). gp (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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