The author of this superbly documented book has provided us with the most complete general history and modern anthropological analysis of a peasantry on any island state in the Caribbean. Dealing with cultivators in their political-economic setting, he asks at what level of socioeconomic structure can we best visualize their activities? He proceeds to articulate micro and macro levels by examining Dominica (a tiny island in the eastern Caribbean) as a nation-state and as a participant in the world economic system. Finally, with a close and sensitive analysis, he also examines one village where peasants play out their unique lives as domestic-based land cultivators. Arguing that all three levels must be perceived simultaneously, he builds his abstractions on solid ethnographic data and couples them with an assiduous review of theoretical material as he examines the coexistence of peasants and a world system beyond their control.
The methodological and ethnographic contributions of the work reach far beyond the state of Dominica. Most important is the warning not to visualize peasants as a “type,” but, rather, as a process; an interaction between cultivators and those who purchase their goods, and the simultaneous adaptation of sellers who reshape their traditional modes of consumption and production in order to support their domestic group. The Caribbean provides an interesting twist to discussions of the manifold types of peasant life. Here, tradition succeeded modernity, as the Caribbean peasantry was built on the ruins of modern plantation society, following some four centuries of slavery (itself following the annihilation of the American Indian population).
This is a very fine book, written with intellectual integrity and honest passion. For students of “peasant societies” and the Caribbean, it should be read carefully, as it glides smoothly between disciplines, incorporating much from many. For persons with a taste for the broader view of the world as a system, it reminds us that, despite overwhelming structures and powerful forces rooted in time, we must carefully examine the local habitat and individuals as well.
