Gonzales’s principal concern is how to theorize the economic and social relations between peasant households in the officially-recognized peasant communities of highland Peru as well as their articulation to the national economy. While the analysis rests on a solid empirical base, the book does not attempt to be historical or to provide a comprehensive regional analysis of Antapampa, Cuzco, the site of the sample survey of 15 communities. Its primary contribution is conceptual.
The book consists of five self-contained essays, some of which have been previously published. The introduction loosely summarizes the author’s principal analytical findings, as well as his position on a number of the debates in the literature on peasant economies. A useful methodological appendix on the stratified sample survey of 350 households is also included.
Gonzales distinguishes the communal peasant economy from the “generic” peasant economy in terms of the organization and association of households in a communal territory which facilitate communal relations of production. These include both reciprocal and collective exchanges. Gonzales then provides a rather innovative definition of the communal economy: when the organization of production and of work is carried out on the basis of a system of relations between households resulting in economic benefits superior to what could be achieved by households acting independently. He develops this proposition theoretically in chapters 4 and 5 where he shows that this “community effect,” resulting in higher income and welfare levels, is based on externalities derived from the collective administration of community resources, the cooperative organization of work, and shared knowledge and information.
Gonzales argues convincingly that the articulation between these communities and the national economy must be conceptualized in terms of a problem that can be addressed by data. This articulation only takes place through a series of spatial mediations. He illustrates this in chapter 1, with input-output analysis of the linkages between households, communities, microregions, and regions. In chapter 2, after an empirical description of the productive base of the communities and household income-generating strategies, he develops a formal model of the household economy illustrating the interrelationship between household economic behavior and its insertion in the community and in the microregion. Chapter 3 provides a more detailed treatment of the reproduction of labor power in the context of a critique of traditional modes of analyzing rural unemployment and underemployment.
Gonzales’s effort to make his analysis of peasant economy theoretically rigorous through the use of formal economic models will make parts of the book difficult reading for noneconomists. However, his propositions are always first explained in nontechnical language and insightfully illustrated with empirical data. Historians of peasant economies will find it a useful reference.
