It's all about the mindset. Writing it is hard. Understanding it is harder.

[elfs]

This answers a deep mystery that FallenPegsasus has commented on in the past:

Broad areas of peasant behavior are patterned in such fashion as to suggest that peasants view their social, economic, and natural universes-- their total environment-- as one in which all of the desired things in life such as land, wealth, health, friendship and love, manliness and honor, respect and status, power and influence, security and safety, exist in finite quantity and are always in short supply, as far as the peasant is concerned. Not only do these and all other "good things" exist in finite and limited quantities, but in addition there is no way directly within peasant power to increase the available quantities. It is as if the obvious fact of land shortage in a densely populated area applied to all other desired things: not enough to go around. "Good," like land, is seen as inherent in nature, there to be divided and re-divided, if necessary, but not to be augmented.

Except in a special-- but extremely important-- way, a peasant sees his existence as determined and limited by the natural and social resources of his village and his immediate area. Consequently, there is a primary corollary to The Image of Limited Good: if "Good" exists in limited amounts which cannot be expanded, and if the system is closed, it follows that an individual or a family can improve a position only at the expense of others. Hence an apparent relative improvement in someone's position with respect to any "Good" is viewed as a threat to the entire community. Someone is being despoiled, whether he sees it or not. And since there is often uncertainty as to who is losing any significant improvement is perceived, not as a threat to an individual or a family alone, but as a threat to all individuals and families.

Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good, by George M. Foster.

Comments

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

It's probably a fair model for understanding some cultures, but I think the author makes huge (and inaccurate) generalizations about peasant cultures in this paper. I wonder how it'd be received by a contemporary anthropologist (I, alas, don't qualify, my work being a decade old). So yes, I think the habitus of pervasive scarcity he proposes is a real one, I just don't think it coïncides neatly with subsistence/preïndustrial agriculture.

I freely confess, too, that I tend to see peasant society in the image of Tzintzuntzan, Michoacan, Mexico, and that greater familiarity with other peasant communities might well lead me to different expressions of details in the model.

Just a little ;)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

I quite concur with you on this, my friend; and furthermore, find Elf's summary of the argument quite compelling. Have seen enough examples of this dynamic lately to really start to wonder about the cherished notion of the inherent goodness of people.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

What is amusing about the premise of scarcity is that every market transaction inherently adds "value" to the system. Each participant in a market transaction is exchanging something they have for something another person has to which they accord a value equal to or greater than that of what they are exchanging. So, at least in perceived value, each transaction adds to the 'wealth' of both participants. The introduction of money simply confuses the issue through the conflation of 'cost' with 'value'.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]