Conclusions: Peasants into Active Citizens: Paths to Emancipation

This concluding essay addresses the main features of the “Peasant Question,” understood as a “societal dossier” encompassing pro and counter arguments and strategies for a more effective integration of the peasantry into the socio-political and legal structure of the modern nation-state. It explores the way in which the Peasant Question was articulated in different national contexts and its relation to stringent national or social issues, such as aristocratic privileges, land ownership, the Jewish Question, and inter-ethnic relations or national issues. The essay also outlines four major methodological challenges to the study of the peasantry that the participants to this volume grappled with. The first is terminological: Is there a distinct social class that can be called peasantry? Or is this concept too generic and needs to be broken down into sub-categories? The essay points out that the volume participants employ a range of intermediary or “hybrid” social categories, such as sharecropping peasantry, seasonal workers, migrants, city commuters, farmers, etc. Second, peasant studies are, by definition, an interdisciplinary research field. The essay advocates for a socio-cultural approach, arguing that the status of peasantry encompasses not only social aspects but also values, attitudes, and ways of life. Third, the study of peasantry necessitates the combination of global, continental, national, regional, and local levels of research. Fourth, the volume stimulates researchers to engage with the concept of citizenship and to test it in various “non-Western” historical contexts. It is argued that the volume presents a compelling case for studying the peasantry as a privileged lens through which to understand key processes of social and political transformation. It is hoped that the insights offered in this volume can contribute to a better understanding of the long-term processes of depeasantization in the modern world, as well as their potential reversal.