5 - Peasants and politics

Summary

INTRODUCTION: POLITICISATION

The context having been established, this chapter will consider the process of ‘politicisation’, by identifying the factors which led peasants to take an interest in politics, before considering the practical impact, in terms of political behaviour. Politicisation can be taken to involve some concern, often episodic, with the distribution of decision-making power, and especially with the practical impact of public policy decisions. Thus ‘politicisation’ need not require a detailed knowledge of, or a sustained interest in, political programmes and ideology. Even participation in elections, normally held to denote ‘the modernity of practices, does not necessarily imply the modernity of attitudes’. The peasant might well be operating in a different ‘conceptual universe’ from that of the political militant or historian.

Certainly, interest in politics varied over time and between places. Within communities, historical experience, ‘cultural’ values, the economic and social pressures of a given time and place, together with personal predispositions, combined to influence political choice. So too did the propagandising and organising activities of individuals or groups with links to the state bureaucracy, to ‘parties’, and to influential people outside the community. This ‘leadership’ was of vital importance for peasants who were, in general, ill-equipped in terms of education and culture, and too absorbed in their daily routines, to represent themselves directly within the formal, institutionalised political arena.