Review by Choice Review
Who is a peasant and who is a capitalist? Need these be mutually exclusive categories? Cook and Binford reach some interesting conclusions about these questions in their study of workers in the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico. Many of the 1,008 households surveyed conform to a PAH (peasant/artisan household) model in which they "make and earn their living by combining agricultural and craft production for own-use and for exchange." The authors' data confirm that people can occupy several roles in society simultaneously--as capitalist and proletarian. The implications are enormous: for one thing, the authors conclude that poverty is not the same everywhere; for another, the current rural strategies in Mexico may not fit the Oaxaca model of economic growth. The book includes an excellent review of Marxist and non-canon peasant studies, and, in the process, creates a new paradigm. This reviewer would have liked some discussion of religious strategy (Protestant versus Catholic) and of migration to the US as a safety valve, as well as the inclusion of the actual questionnaire. This important book is recommended for most social science libraries and required for Latin American collections. Level: advanced undergraduates and up. -R. Delson, United States Merchant Marine Academy
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
