Time Schedule:
Glennys J. Young
SIS 444
Seattle Campus
Interdisciplinary study of peasants, with special attention to questions of rural transformation. Peasant involvement in an increasingly independent world. Rebellion and revolution, impact of the international market, agricultural development. Offered: jointly with POL S 446.
Class description
Why do human beings act as they do? This course will explore one dimension of this question by introducing students to the interdisciplinary study of peasants and political activity, focusing on the theoretical tools that we have developed to explain the decisions that peasants make. Among the questions we will consider are the following: Why do peasants rebel? Can general, cross-cultural principles be formulated to explain the economic decisions that peasants have made? If so, what would they be? How do peasants resist the various types of oppression they experience? How quickly does peasant culture change? What can we know about how peasants perceive the exploitation they have experienced, given the that peasants tend to be interested in concealing their resistant and even potentially rebellious inclinations from the powers that be?
Lectures and readings will draw upon examples gleaned from the Russian, French, Japanese, Mexican, Polish, and Southeast Asian peasantries, among others.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Lectures, reading, class participation. This is a W class. Students will write two papers based on primary sources (briefly, direct evidence) concerning peasant life. Among the books and articles that we will read and discuss are the following: Samuel Popkin, The Rational Peasant, James Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant, Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia, edited by David L. Ransel, and Early African-American Classics, edited by Anthony Appiah.
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
Grades will be calculated as follows: Quizzes: 35% First Paper (5-6 pp.): 15% Second Paper (8-10 pp.): 20% Final Examination: 20% Class Participation: 10%
