Into their land and labours : a comparative and global analysis of trajectories of peasant transformation

The fate of rural societies in the past and today cannot be understood in a singular manner. Peasantries across the world have followed different trajectories of change and have developed divergent repertoires of accommodation, adaptation and resistance. Understanding these multiple trajectories requires new historical knowledge about the role of peasantries within long-term and worldwide economic and social transformations. This paper aims to make sense of this diversity from a comparative, integrated, and systemic approach. The paper is structured around the notions of peasant work, peasant frontiers, peasant communities and peasant regimes. These concepts figure as key analytical tools in an innovative research framework to analyze the paths of peasant transformation in modern world history beyond idealization and teleologization.