Peasants and the peasantry

The chapter traces the origins of peasant studies as a route into understanding current debates over peasants and the peasantry. After exploring the question "who are the peasantry?," three positions are identified: those of the peasant persisters, the peasant eradicators, and the peasant reformers. For some scholars, contemporary agrarian change has consigned the peasantry to the history books. Others focus on explaining how, even in the context of globalization, peasants-as-smallholders persist, while still more identify a neo-peasantry emerging even in the context of thoroughgoing agrarian change and deep structural transformations. There is also a long history of peasant political movements, and these remain vital, notably in La Vía Campesina. These broad debates over the peasantry are then grounded in the experience of one country, Thailand.