New Perspectives on Social Class and Socioeconomic Development in the Periphery, Vol. 77 »

NELSON W. KEITH is an international development consultant who was for a number of years a member of the faculty at the School of Urban and Regional Policy of Rutgers University in New Jersey.

NOVELLA ZETT KEITH is currently directing an educational evaluation project at Glassboro State College in New Jersey and was formerly a member of the sociology faculty at Stockton College.

This provocative new volume focuses on the economic features that make Third World social formations distinctive and on non-property characteristics such as religion, ethnicity, and culture, that are central to the survival of these societies. Specifically, the authors look at the significance and revolutionary potential of peasant majorities, who take limited advantage of capitalist modes of production and often manage to maintain their cultural and economic identity and a degree of independence in the process. Following the editors' introduction, which explains the conceptual framework for the study, the historical and structural causes for the weakness of the basic capitalist classes in the periphery (the underdeveloped national regions) are examined. The next several chapters deal with the evolution of classes and institutions in the periphery, the articulation of peasantries within capitalist and socialist societies, and the reasons for the resilience of peasant modes of production. Other topics discussed are the role of the state--capitalist of socialist--in class formation, the relationship between the socialist state and the peasantry, variables in social transformation in the periphery, and the place of the urban poor in Third World development.

Introduction by Nelson W. Keith and Novella Zett Keith

The Setting

Class Analysis in the Periphery: A Partial Evaluation by Nelson W. Keith

Case Studies

The Colonial State, Migrant Labor, and Class Formation in Papua-New Guinea by Richard Curtain Agricultural Transformation in Developmental Socialism: The State and the Peasantry by Jay R. Mandle

Ethnic Leadership and Class Formation in Freetown by Sierra Leone, Allen M. Howard and David E. Skinner

Political Change and the Catholic Church in Brazil and Nicaragua by Thomas Bamat

Ideological Dimensions of Peasant Persistence in Western Kenya by Steven L. Johnson

Conflict, Class and the Urban Poor in the Third World by Dean Forbes

Conclusion: Notes on theory and method for Third World Studies by Novella Zett Keith

Bibliography

Index