This work, an earlier version of which received the AAAS Prize in Socio-Psychology, will no doubt appeal to a substantial audience interested in the study of revolution and social change. Perhaps ironically, though, the audience will not include many Bolivian specialists because this is not a book about Bolivia. While Bolivian material provides the data base for an empirical description of “the effects of revolution on inequality and social mobility” (p. 2), it does so only through coincidence (in particular, the availability of the important RISM studies of the 1960s). Modern Poland, used for some comparisons, would have served as well had the data been sufficient.
The authors make what is essentially a simple, if poignant, argument, which recasts for agrarian societies the Durkheimian focus on expanding complexity and specialization in society. “Radical revolution” in peasant-dominated, agrarian societies unleashes two-sided forces. These forces bring about societywide redistribution, opening opportunities for the oppressed to participate in new economic niches created by the expansion of the market economy. Such participation and specialization on the part of the individual household inevitably depend upon the advantages it possesses “from the beginning” to compete, especially its “human capital” (which cannot be redistributed). The advantage of some over others ultimately generates a new pattern of inequality and “inherited privilege” among the previously exploited.
While this study focuses on an important development in postrevolutionary societies, it will not be the final word. It invites numerous questions concerning the interpretations involved in the explanation of the “rebirth” of inequality. One set of questions concerns the viability of the concepts themselves underlying the authors’ model in light of the Bolivian context. For instance, can and should culture and knowledge be conceptualized as “human capital” in a discussion of peasant society? To view peasant households as atomized entities that accumulate capital (physical or human) exclusive of others (as in the claim that an individual’s schooling “pays off”) is to discount the vital role of kinship in creating community by generating surplus itself through the obligations of reciprocity. That it can be so discounted is a dubious assumption for the Bolivian campesino. Furthermore, schooling (one yardstick of human capital in this model) has often acted as effectively as no education in limiting economic chances for the peasant.
A related set of questions involves the relationship of the universal and specific in the model. Certainly there is more to the complex reality that is Bolivia than this model suggests with its (excellent) summaries and its use of survey data. Such sayings as “abuelo rico, nieto mencligo,” commonly used to describe economic cycles of large landowners in prerevolutionary Cochabamba, indicate greater complexity in the matter of capital accumulation than we are presented with here, for instance, in discussions of inherited privilege.
This book does not represent a significant contribution to Bolivian studies because the authors’ model leaves too much unsaid, intentionally or unintentionally. Its contribution lies rather in joining the efforts of others such as Charles Tilly to clarify our thinking on revolutionary processes.
