Moral economists, subalterns, new social movements, and the (re‐) emergence of a (post‐) modernized (middle) peasant

Abstract This article examines the way in which peasant movements in both India and Latin America have been reinterpreted by the postmodern and politically revisionist project of the subaltern studies series on India and the new social movements theory on Latin America. It is suggested that much of the conceptual analysis embodied in both these frameworks is prefigured in the earlier 'moral economy' approach, incorporating the middle peasant thesis of Wolf and Alavi, an epistemological lineage in which the work of J.C. Scott discharges a pivotal role. An additional claim made here is that such frameworks implicitly provide Chayanovian neo‐populist economic theory with its missing politico‐ideological dimension. Notes Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RQ, UK. This article is based on a paper presented in Session 2 (Social Movements in Developing Countries) at the Xllth World Congress of Sociology in Madrid during July 1990. The writer thanks the Managers of the Smuts Memorial Fund for a grant towards the cost of attending the Congress.