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Ethiopia: a Survey on the Existence of a Feudal Peasantry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

John M. Cohen
John M. Cohen
Affiliation:
Department of Rural Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca
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Extract

As towns, industries, agricultural developments, and the green revolution come to Africa, social theorists are beginning to write about the emergence of a peasant class. In addition, they are relating the concept of a peasantry to the growing patterns of capitalism and socialism which are to be found throughout the continent, albeit for the most part asserting that contemporary social systems are built on tribal rather than feudal foundations. What is remarkable from this perspective is that as Africanists turn their attention to these issues, and discuss rigorous conceptual problems regarding the terms ‘peasant’ and ‘feudal’, they continue to be almost unaware of Ethiopia.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 1974 , pp. 665 - 672
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

Page 665 note 1 Examples of the literature on the concept of’peasant’ are: Fallers, Lloyd A., ‘Are African Cultivators to be Called “Peasants”?’, in Current Anthropology (Chicago), II, 2, 1961, pp. 108–110;Google ScholarFoster, George M., ‘Introduction: what is a peasant?’, in Potter, jack M., Diaz, May N., and Foster, George M. (eds.), Peasant Society (Boston, 1967), pp. 2–54;Google Scholar and Dalton, George (ed.), Tribal and Peasant Economies (Garden City, N.Y., 1967), pp. 543–44.Google Scholar

On the concept of ‘feudal’ see: Bloch, Marc, Feudal Society (Chicago, 1961);CrossRefGoogle ScholarGoody, Jack, ‘Feudalism in Africa’, in The Journal of African History (Cambridge), IV, 1, 1963, pp. 1–18;Google Scholar J. M. H. Beattie, ‘Bunyoro: an African feudality?’, ibid. v, I, 1964, pp. 25–36; and Sjöberg, G., ‘Folk and Feudal Societies’, in The American Journal of Sociology (Chicago), LVIII, 3, 1952, pp. 231–39.Google Scholar

Page 666 note 1 Bloch, Feudal Society, passim, and Beattie, , ‘Bunyoro’, pp. 25–36.Google Scholar

Page 666 note 2 Cf. Kroeber, A. L., Anthropology (New York, 1948), p. 284.Google Scholar

Page 668 note 1 E.g. Dalton, op. Cit. and Redfield, Robert, Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago, 1956).Google Scholar

Page 670 note 1 See the excellent reports on the relationship between the feudal peasantry and the disturbances of early 1974 by Ottaway, David O., ‘Food Short Ethiopia Exporting Grain’, in The Washington Post, 2 01 1974,Google Scholar and ‘Shaken Ethiopia at Crossroads: reform or violence?’, ibid. 24 March 1974.

Page 671 note 1 Redfield, , Peasant Society and CultureGoogle Scholar; Sjöberg, S., The Preindustrial City (Glencoe, Ill., 1960);Google ScholarFoster, G. M., ‘What is a Folk Culture?’, in American Anthropologist (Washington, D.C.), Lv, 2, 1953, pp. 159–73;Google Scholar and Redfield, Robert, ‘The Social Organization of Tradition’, in The Far Eastern Quarterly (Ann Arbor), xv, 1955, pp. 13–21.Google Scholar