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Variability in Culture

Oscar Lewis n/a

Peasant Culture in India and Mexico: A Comparative Analysis¹

I. INTRODUCTION

Although peasantry still constitutes almost three-fourths of the world’s people and makes up the bulk of the population in the underdeveloped countries, it has been relatively neglected by social scientists as a special field of study: anthropologists have specialized in primitive or tribal societies; sociologists, in urban societies; and rural sociologists, in modern rural societies. Thus, the great majority of mankind has had no discipline to claim as its own. A comparative science of peasantry is only now beginning to take form.

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In this paper I want to compare … some of the similarities and differences between the North Indian village of and the Mexican village of Tepoztlan. The major purpose of this comparison is to contribute toward our general understanding of peasantry. It is recognized that there is something about being a peasant which makes peasantry seem so similar all over the world, even in the most different historical and cultural settings. On the other hand, it is also true that the cultural setting and the general nature of the larger society of which peasantry is a part must undoubtedly influence the forms of peasant life and the very nature of the people.

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Comparison between a Mexican and an Indian village presents problems over and above those encountered in comparing villages within a single country or a single great tradition. Items which exist in one and not in the other are simply not comparable. For example, Tepoztlan has no caste system, and Rani Khera has no compadre system. In Tepoztlan the municipio is the landholding unit (for communal lands); in Rani Khera the village is the landholding unit. How are we to weigh the influence of such items on the total culture pattern of the community? Both the caste system and the compadre system are cohesive forces in social life, but can we equate them? The answer is probably "No," but the matter of weighting is not so easy.

The difference in size of communities may also be important. Tepoztlan is over three times as large as Rani Khera, and it may be that some of the matters to be discussed are related to size of population. Then there is the difference in topography and climate. Tepoztlan is in a hilly, mountainous area, while Rani Khera is on a level, almost treeless plain. However, this difference reflects national differences and to this extent our choice may inadvertently have been advantageous.…

In regard to climate, both are relatively dry areas. But the average annual rainfall in Tepoztlan is approximately sixty inches, while that of Rani Khera is less than thirty. This difference is less important than it seems, because in both cases the rains come within the four-month rainy season, and there is practically no rain for seven or eight months of the year. In both communities the greatest felt need is more water for irrigation.…

II. TEPOZTLAN AND RANI KHERA COMPARED

Tepoztlan is a Catholic village of about thirty-five hundred people, fifteen miles from Cuernavaca, the state capital, and sixty miles south of Mexico City. It is an ancient highland village which has been continuously inhabited [for] at least two thousand years. Two languages are spoken in Tepoztlan: Spanish and the indigenous Nahuatl. About half the population is bilingual, the other half speak only Spanish.

Rani Khera is a Hindu village of eleven hundred people, about fifteen miles from New Delhi, the national capital. It is only two miles from a major highway which runs to Delhi. It is an old village which was conquered about seven hundred and fifty years ago by the an ethnic group which is now the dominant caste in the village. The language spoken is a local dialect of Hindi mixed with a sprinkling of Punjabi. Only a few people speak English.

Both villages may be designated as peasant societies in the sense that both are old and stable populations with a great love of the land, both depend upon agriculture, both are integrated into larger political units such as the state and the nation and are subject to their laws, both exist side by side with cities and have been exposed to urban influences for long periods of time, and both have borrowed from other rural areas as well as from urban centers but have managed to integrate the new traits into a relatively stable culture pattern. Moreover, both communities exist by a relatively primitive technology and depend upon hoe culture as well as plow and oxen in agriculture; both produce primarily for subsistence but also participate in a money economy and use of barter; both are relatively poor, have a high incidence of illiteracy, a high birth rate and a high death rate; and, finally, both communities have lived under foreign domination for long periods in their history and have developed that peculiar combination of dependence and hostility toward government which is so characteristic of colonial peoples.

A. Settlement Pattern

So much for the broad similarities. Now let us examine some differences. One of the first things that impressed me about village Rani Khera and other Indian villages, as compared to Tepoztlan, was the village settlement pattern—or rather the absence of pattern—the greater density of population, the greater crowding, the housing shortage, the shortage of space for animals, and, in general, an atmosphere of much greater poverty.

Unlike Tepoztlan … with its relatively well-ordered grid pattern of streets at right angles, its plaza and market place, its palacio, or government building, and its central church, in Rani Khera there is no orderly arrangement of streets, many of which are narrow dead-end alleys, there is no village center, no government or public building for the village as a whole. The or keeper of village land records, who is an official of the Revenue Department, lives with one of the better-to-do families and has no official residence as such. Were a new installed, he would have to make his own lodging arrangements.

In Tepoztlan the houses are spread out, and most house sites have their own patio, corral, and orchard; in Rani Khera the houses are crowded together, and, unlike Tepoztlan, which has many vacant houses, there was not a single available house for our field workers in Rani Khera.…

Another thing which stood out in Rani Khera because of its contrast with Tepoztlan was the much greater separation of the sexes. The preferred arrangement for family living is to have two residences, one for the women and children, another for the men and the cattle. There are also two or men’s houses, one for each division of the village, which are used for male smoking groups and other social gatherings.

B. Land and Economy

I have said that agriculture is important in both villages. But here the similarity ends. In Rani Khera agriculture is much more intensive than in Tepoztlan. Of the 784 acres of Rani Khera, 721, or well over 90 per cent of the total area, is under cultivation, as compared with only 15 per cent in Tepoztlan. Moreover, Tepoztlan depends almost entirely on a single crop, namely, corn, with beans and squash of minor importance, whereas Rani Khera has a diversity of crops which include, in order of importance, wheat, millets and , gram, sugar cane, and hemp. Unlike Tepoztlan, which has no irrigation anti produces only one crop a year, Rani Khera grows two crops a year on about one-fifth of its lands which are under canal and well irrigation.

The apparently greater agriculture resources of Rani Khera are tempered by serious limiting factors. Rani Khera has practically no grazing lands and no forest resources. Indeed, the scarcity of trees was brought home to me by the fact that each of the thirty-seven trees in the village is listed in the village records. This makes for a crucial fuel shortage so the valuable cow dung has to be used for fuel instead of fertilizer, and the cattle have to be stall-fed rather than pastured. By contrast, Tepoztlan has very rich forest resources (almost 50 per cent of the total area), and these provide ample firewood and charcoal both for domestic consumption and for sale.

Still other differences in the village economy need to be mentioned. In Tepoztlan over 90 per cent of the 853 families engage directly in agriculture as cultivators, and until recently even the shopkeepers and artisans would close shop to plant corn when the rains came. In Rani Khera only 53 per cent of its 150 families engage directly, in agriculture, i.e., are cultivators, and most of these belong to a single caste, the

The importance of this difference … is related to a fundamental difference in social and economic structure of the two villages. In Tepoztlan the family is much more of a self-sufficient unit, free to engage in a variety of activities and occupations, and it cherishes this self-sufficiency and independence from others. In Rani Khera the specialization of occupations along caste lines makes for a greater dependence of the villagers upon each other. But it is a dependence organized along hierarchical lines, institutionalized in the traditional, semifeudal system of reciprocal obligations in economic and ceremonial affairs among the various castes.

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In both villages there are privately owned and communally owned lands. The communal lands of Tepoztlan are truly communal in the sense that any member of the municipio of Tepoztlan has equal rights to their use. However, the communal lands of Rani Khera are held by the on a share basis, and the rights of the families in the communal, or lands are proportionate to the size of their holdings of private land.

In Tepoztlan about 80 per cent of all the land is communally held either as municipal lands or, since the Mexican Revolution, as ejidal lands. In Rani Khera about 7 per cent of the lands are communally owned, and most of these consist of the village house sites, the village pond, roads, and some uncultivable areas. Traditionally, the communal lands in North India were intended to serve as pasture and woodland. In both Rani Khera and Tepoztlan the communal lands have been a source of constant strife, but for different reasons. In the former it was between families within the village who attempted to appropriate communal lands for themselves. In the latter it was between villages, concerning the rights of villages to the communal lands. It is important to note that in both cases the communal lands are not subject to taxation. In the case of Tepoztlan this means that about 80 per cent of its total area is tax-free.

Population pressure on the land is considerable in both communities. But whereas Tepoztlan has 1.5 acres of cultivable land per capita, Rani Khera has only three-quarters of an acre. The advantage for Tepoztlan is even greater than is indicated by these figures, for, whereas Rani Khera has practically no other land, Tepoztlan has an additional 8 acres per capita of forest and grazing lands, and about 10 per cent of this area can be used for growing corn by the primitive method of cutting and burning the forest to make temporary clearings.

In Tepoztlan only about 36 per cent of the families had private landholdings, as compared to 52 per cent of the families in Rani Khera. But, while the landless families of Tepoztlan have access to the rich resources of the communal lands, the landless of Rani Khera have to depend primarily upon nonagricultural occupations. It may be noted that in both communities hoe culture is looked down upon as a last resort of the poor. In Rani Khera about fifteen low-caste families raise vegetables as a part-time occupation on land rented from the

The size of private landholdings shows fundamental similarities in both communities. Holdings are very small.…

As might be expected, there is a striking difference between the two communities in regard to the respective role of livestock in the economy and the attitude toward livestock. In India there is an ancient cattle complex, and most people are vegetarians. In Mexico domesticated cattle are relatively recent, dating back to the Spanish Conquest. The cattle industry was never very important and never became well integrated with the economy. In Tepoztlan there is relatively little livestock, and most of it is of poor quality. Investment in cattle is viewed as precarious. By contrast, the little village of Rani Khera supports a remarkably large number of livestock and this with practically no grazing resources.…

C. Social Organization

It is in the field of social organization that we find the most remarkable differences between these two peasant societies. Indeed, they seem like separate worlds, and I might add that, by comparison with Rani Khera, Tepoztlan, in retrospect, seems much less complicated and much more familiar, very Western-like, and almost North American. Undoubtedly one of the reasons for this is the fact that the Spanish Conquest left its indelible mark on Mexican culture. Spain, for all its cultural idiosyncrasies in sixteenth-century Europe, was part of the Western European culture pattern.

The distinctive aspects of the social organization of village Rani Khera as compared to Tepoztlan can be discussed in terms of (1) the more pervasive role of kinship; (2) the presence of a caste system; (3) the existence of multiple factions based on kinship; and (4) the differences in the role of the village as a community.

1. The role of kinship. — In Rani Khera kinship plays a major role in the ordering of human relations and is the basis of most social and political groupings such as the and the smoking groups, the factions, the castes, the panchayats, or councils, and the inter-village networks. The extended family is strong and forms a basic unit for individual identification. The caste system acts as an integrating and cohesive factor in village life, primarily within the castes and to some extent between castes. Caste members are bound by kinship, by common traditions, interests, and social interaction. The castes in turn are bound by economic interdependence resulting from the specialization of occupations, and this is formalized by the system of reciprocal obligations.

In Tepoztlan kinship is a much less pervasive force: the nuclear family predominates, the extended family is weak (the elaborate compadre system seems designed to make up for this), and social relations and social solidarity are organized around religious, political, and other nonkinship bases. The independence and individualism of the nuclear or biological family in Tepoztlan make for an atomistic quality in social relations. And while these discrete family units are organized into larger units such as the barrio, the village, and the municipio, these organizational forms are relatively impersonal and do not impinge as directly upon the lives of the individuals as does the extended family, the faction, and the caste in Rani Khera. In Rani Khera the extended family, the faction, and the caste are the units which demand one’s loyalties and channelize most of one’s life-activities. But by the same token they provide the individual with a much greater degree of psychological security than is present in Tepoztlan, and this in turn affects the quality of community life.

The role of kinship organization on the political level is also markedly different in the two villages. In Tepoztlan the connection between the village and the state and federal government is in terms of elected officials who vote as members of their demarcación, an arbitrary division of the village for secular purposes. The officials do not represent kinship units nor even the barrios. But in Rani Khera the political organization and the kinship organization are more closely intertwined. Each of the two headmen of the village represents a which is essentially a kinship unit consisting of related patrilineal lineages.

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2. The caste system. — In Rani Khera the caste system organizes life in terms of hierarchical principles and plays up the status differences between groups. In Tepoztlan there is no caste system, and the society is much more democratically organized. In Rani Khera there are 150 households representing twelve castes as follows: seventy-eight families, fifteen Brahman, twenty (Leather-worker), ten (Sweeper), seven (Potter), five (Water Carrier), four (Washerman), four (Carpenter), three (Barber), two (Calico Printer), one (Blacksmith), and one (Merchant).

The are by tradition agriculturists and own all the land of the village, including the house sites, i.e., the land upon which the houses of the other castes are built. In a sense, then, the other castes, even the Brahmans, are in the village at the sufferance of the The village is officially known as a village, and clearly the dominate village life. Even the formal organization of the village into two each with its or headman, is solely in terms of the The lower castes tend to live on the outskirts of the village and are not part of this formal organization despite the fact that some of the lower-caste families are ancient inhabitants.

In Tepoztlan the picture is very different. No one group dominates the life of the village. Each family, whether rich or poor, owns its house site and house, has recognized status, and can proudly say, "This is my village." The quality of interpersonal relations among Tepoztecans is comparable with what exists within the single caste of that is, status differences are played down at least on a verbal level, and wealthy individuals are careful not to "pull rank."

In Rani Khera the caste system divides the village and weakens the sense of village solidarity. The caste generally represents a distinct ethnic group with its own history, traditions, and identifications, and each caste lives in more or less separate quarters of the village. There are separate wells for the Harijans, or untouchables; dining and smoking between higher and lower castes are still taboo; low-caste persons (this does not include or ) will not sit together on the same carpal, or cot, with a or Brahman; and when government officials come to the village and call meetings to explain the new community development projects, the Harijans may attend, but they stay off to one side in the audience and "know their place." In a sense, then, each caste, or at least those with larger representation in the village, forms a separate little community. The social structure of the village therefore has somewhat the quality of our urban communities with their variety of ethnic and minority groups and a high degree of division of labor.

In Tepoztlan the population and the tradition are much more homogeneous, and there is nothing comparable to the divisive effects of the caste system. Perhaps the nearest approximation to segmentation in the village results from the organization of separate barrios, each with its own chapel, patron saint, and esprit de corps. The barrios, like the castes, can be thought of as sub-communities within the village …

The caste system in Rani Khera is undergoing changes and in some ways may even be said to be breaking down. The proximity to Delhi, the Gandhian movement against untouchability, the preaching of the Arya Samaj (a reformed Hinduism movement), and increased off-farm employment opportunities as a result of the past two world wars have all had some effect.

Perhaps the greatest change in the caste system has occurred in relation to the occupational structure, i.e., caste and occupation are now less synonymous than formerly. Some of the families no longer cultivate their land, and their children have become schoolteachers or taken miscellaneous jobs in Delhi. The Brahmans no longer carry on their priestly functions. Most of them are occupancy tenants of the but only four are cultivators; one family sells milk, another does tailoring, and the remainder are employed in jobs outside the village. Though the are Leatherworkers by caste, only two are now shoemakers, and they no longer skin the dead cattle. The substitution of Persian Wheels for the earlier system of drawing water with leather buckets threw some of the out of work: three families are weavers, four rent land from the for vegetable gardening, four are employed outside the village, and the remainder earn a living in the village by combining part-time agricultural labor with cattle raising. Of all the castes, the or Sweepers, seem to have shown the least change in occupation.

There have been other changes. Children of all castes now attend the village school, and there is no discrimination or segregation in the seating arrangements …

However, despite all these trends, the caste system is still very strong in the village.

3. Factions. — In both villages there are factions, but their structure, functions, and role in village life differ greatly. We will first consider factions in Rani Khera and then in Tepoztlan …

In Rani Khera factions are an old, ingrained pattern in village life and must be considered as a basic structural aspect of traditional village organization along with castes, gotras, and other groupings.… The factions are generally referred to by the name of their leaders or by a nickname of the leading lineage represented in it.

Factions follow caste lines. However, factions from different castes may and do form blocs or alliances …

The factions are relatively small and cohesive kinship groupings which act as units in defense of family interests. The major issues which lead to court litigations between factions and sometimes result in the development of new factions are quarrels over the inheritance of land and the adoption of sons, quarrels over house sites and irrigation rights, sexual offenses, murders, and quarrels between castes. The villagers sum it up by saying that factions quarrel over wealth, women and land.

But factions also have positive, co-operative functions. All factions operate as more or less cohesive units on ceremonial occasions, particularly births, betrothals, and marriages; in the operation of caste panchayats; and in recent years in district board, state, and national elections. Moreover, all factions have one or more of their own hookah-smoking groups, which serve as informal social groups in which there is almost daily face-to-face contact.

factions have a few additional functions. They act as units in co-operative economic undertakings such as moneylending and the renting of land. In principle no faction will rent land to members of other factions if there is anyone in its own ranks that needs land. In the case of mortgaging, faction solidarity is even more striking, for there has not been a single case within the last five years of land mortgaged outside one’s own faction.

Members of hostile factions will not attend each other’s ceremonial celebrations, will not visit each others’ homes, and, as a rule, will not smoke hookah together, except at the home of a member of a neutral faction. In panchayat meetings the representatives of hostile factions can be counted upon to marshal vicious gossip about rivals. However, direct attack in public is rare; indirection is developed to a fine art. Because members of hostile factions do not cease talking to each other and continue to be polite in formal greetings, there is always the possiblity of improving relations or of joining temporarily with one hostile group against another.

There are some occasions when members of hostile factions unite for some common action. The major occasions are funerals, building of village wells, cleaning the village pond, and repairing subcanals for irrigation, and participation in a few festivals such as and There is also a tradition of presenting an appearance of village unity to the outside. For example, if two men of hostile factions have married daughters in the same village, each, whenever he visits that village, must visit the daughter of the other and pay the customary rupee to symbolize the fact that she, like his own daughter, is a daughter of the village.

In Tepoztlan factions are political groupings rather than kinship groupings and reflect diverse social and economic interests. The factions are fewer in number, only two as a rule, and are larger and more loosely organized. Faction membership is less stable and faction loyalty more tenuous. In Tepoztlan, unlike Rani Khera, brothers may be members of hostile and opposed factions. In Rani Khera, first, second, and even third cousins are generally members of the same faction.

One of the major cleavages in Tepoztlan was between the Bolsheviki and the Centrales. These groups became clearly delineated in the early twenties when two socialistically oriented Tepoztecans from Mexico City, who were members of the Confederación Regional de Obreros Mexicanos, returned to the village to organize the peasants in defense of the communal lands against the sons of the ex-caciques who controlled the local government and allegedly were exploiting the forest resources of the municipio in their own interests. The Bolsheviki had their greatest strength in the smaller and poorer barrios of the upper part of the village, while the Centrales were strongest in the larger central barrios. To some extent this grouping corresponded to class distinctions, since, in the days before the Mexican Revolution of 1910–20, most of the caciques and well-to-do merchants lived in the center of the village.

In contrast to the predominantly private familial objectives of factions in Rani Khera, the objectives of the factions in Tepoztlan were broadly social and political. The aim was to dominate the local government and to appeal to the voters in terms of broad public issues. In the twenties the slogan was "Conserve the Communal Forests," and in the thirties the new organization known as the Fraternales had the slogan "Union, Justice and Civilization."

Since the middle thirties the factional groupings have more and more become political groupings which align themselves for or against the government in power. The establishment by Tepoztecans of two competing bus lines from Tepoztlan to Cuernavaca has led to bitter quarrels and violence and has again split the village into hostile groupings.

4. The village as a community. — The comparative consideration of the question, "Is the village a community?" is more complex than it seems, for there are numerous dimensions of "community," such as the ecological, physical, social, economic, political, religious, and psychological …

There is yet another aspect of the problem, namely, what is the quality of social relations, of mutual interdependence of persons or social groups within each village? We must be ready to deal with the possiblity that, although Village A does not define the physical area of social, economic, and other relations as clearly as does Village B, yet the quality of such relations in A or subgroups within it may be so much more cohesive as to justify our saying that there is more community within A (as well as the villages into which this spills over) than there is in B. With these observations in mind, let us first consider those aspects of community which Rani Khera and Tepoztlan share and then go on to consider some of the more important differences.

Both Tepoztlan and Rani Khera are corporate bodies which enjoy legal status and can take suits to law courts. Both are units of taxation for the respective revenue departments. In both cases the greater part of the social, economic, and religious activities takes place within the village. The village is home and there is relatively little out-migration, but more in Tepoztlan than in Rani Khera. Of Tepoztlan it can be said that most villagers are born there, live and work there, and die there. This cannot be said of Rani Khera, for the married women were not born there, and the daughters of the village will not die there. Yet the very designation "daughter of the village" speaks eloquently for the sense of village consciousness.

In both villages, despite the existence of schisms and factions, there are occasions when the villagers act together as a unit for some common goal such as the building of a road or a school, drainage of a pond, or the defense of the village against attack from the outside …

One of the important differences between our two villages is related to the contrast in settlement pattern between highland Mexico and the Indo-Gangetic Plain. The Mexican pattern is that of relatively self-contained nuclear groupings or pockets of a small number of villages centrally located within municipios, so that the density of population decreases almost to zero as one moves from the center or seat of the community to the periphery. In North India, on the other hand, there is an almost even and continuous scatter of large numbers of villages, so that no distinct pattern of groupings emerges. Thus in Mexico the physical groupings of villages practically define and encompass the social and political groupings, whereas in India the physical pattern gives much less of a clue, and one must trace out the specific kinship and other alignments which organize villages into units. This contrast between the centripetal settlement pattern of Mexican villages and the amorphous pattern of India applies also to the internal settlement pattern of the villages, so that the Mexican village stands out more clearly as a centrally organized unit.

From an economic point of view, the village of Rani Khera is a more clearly isolable and self-contained community than the village of Tepoztlan. Village boundaries are clearly fixed and contain within them the land resources upon which the villagers depend for their livelihood. In Tepoztlan the larger municipio is the functional resource unit. Village boundaries are ill-defined and are essentially moral boundaries, whereas the municipal boundaries are clearly demarcated. It is within the bounds of the municipio that the everyday world of the Tepoztecan exists. Here the farmers work the communal lands, cut and burn communal forests, graze their cattle, and hunt for medicinal herbs.

From the point of view of village government Tepoztlan stands out as a more clearly organized and centralized community. When I first studied Tepoztlan, local government seemed very weak indeed, but by comparison with Rani Khera and North India in general, it now seems extremely well developed, what with elected village presidents, councils, judges, the collection of taxes for public works, police powers, and the obligations of villagers to give twelve days a year for cooperative village works. The traditional local government in Rani Khera is much more informal and consists of caste panchayats which cut across village lines. Only recently has the government established a new statutory local panchayat with taxation powers, which, however, has not been effective so far.

Village-wide leadership in Tepoztlan is formally expressed by the local government. In Rani Khera it does not yet exist, and the idea of positive, constructive leadership in the public interest is only now beginning, particularly in connection with the establishment of public schools. As yet, there are no village heroes or outstanding citizens who are popular for their contribution to village welfare as a whole.

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In Tepoztlan there is more verbalization about village community spirit. Candidates for political office always speak in terms of "mi pueblo" and promise to improve their village. The fact that officials may in fact do very little and may even steal public funds is another matter. But at least the sense of village identification and loyalty exists as a potential ideological force. Village solidarity is also reflected, albeit in a negative sense, by Tepoztecan characterizations of the surrounding villages of the municipio as "assassins," "dull-heads," "primitive," and "backward." Moreover, the bogeyman used to frighten children is often a man from a neighboring village. In Rani Khera there were no comparable designations of neighboring villages, most of which contain related lineages.

The difference in the role of the village as a community can also be appreciated if we examine marriage in both cases. In Tepoztlan over 90 per cent of the marriages take place within the village, and, lest this be thought a function of the larger size of the village, we can point out that 42 per cent of the marriages were within the same barrio within the village. The single important rule in marriage is not to marry close relatives, and this generally means eliminating first, second, and third cousins.

In Rani Khera the question of whom one can marry is much more complicated. Marriage is controlled by a combination of factors, namely, caste endogamy, village exogamy, limited territorial exogamy, and gotra, or sib, exogamy. Translated this means: (1) you must marry a member of your own caste, i.e., a must marry a a Brahman, a Brahman, etc.; (2) you must marry out of your village; (3) you must not marry into any village whose lands touch upon the lands of your own village; (4) if you are a you cannot marry into any village known as a Dabas village, the Dabas being the predominant gotra in the village (this automatically eliminates twenty villages from marriage, for there are twenty villages which form a Dabas panchayat unit); (5) finally, you cannot marry into your father’s gotra, your mother’s gotra, or your mother’s mother’s gotra (this again eliminates a whole series of villages). As a result of all these prohibitions fathers or go-betweens must go long distances to find eligible mates for their daughters, and for months before the marriage season they literally scour the countryside for husbands. Remember that residence is of course patrilocal for males.

Our study of Rani Khera showed that the 266 married women living in the village came from about 200 separate villages at distances up to forty miles. We found also that the average distance between spouses’ villages varied considerably by caste, with the lower castes, who are less numerous, having to go much longer distances. If we now examine the other side of the picture, that is, the daughters who marry out of the village, we find that over 220 daughters of Rani Khera married out into about 200 villages. Thus, this relatively small village of 150 households becomes the locus of affinal kinship ties with over 400 other villages. This makes for a kind of rural cosmopolitanism which is in sharp contrast to the village isolationism in Mexico.

D. The People

Finally, we come to a brief comparison of the people in both villages … Tepoztecans are a reserved, constricted people who tend to view other human beings as dangerous and the world in general as hostile. Children are required to be obedient, quiet, and unobtrusive, and parents play upon children’s fears to maintain control. There is a certain pervading air of tension and fearfulness among Tepoztecans; the individual and the small biological family seem to stand alone against the world.

Despite the much smaller size of village Rani Khera, one has the impression that there are more people there. Crowds gather easily around the visitor and follow him down the narrow streets and in and out of houses. One rarely sees a solitary figure. Children play boisterously in large groups; men chat and smoke hookahs in groups. Women go to the well or collect cowdung together. The low value placed upon privacy in Rani Khera is in marked contrast with Tepoztlan, where privacy is so valued that one gets the feeling of an apartment-house psychology in this ancient village.

Faces are different in the two villages. In Tepoztlan, outside the home, faces are generally unsmiling, unrevealing masks. In Rani Khera faces seem more secure. Children are more open-faced and laughing, old men are bland and peaceful, young men restless but unrebellious, women straight and proud. Here too there is individual reserve and formalized behavior, but it does not seem to make so much of an undercurrent of hostility and fear as in Tepoztlan.

The women of Rani Khera work even harder than the women of Tepoztlan, but they appear less drab and bemeaned. They seem strong, bold, gay, and sharp-tongued. Their skirts and head scarves are brillantly colored and spangled with rhinestones and mirrors. Heavy silver jewelry on their ankles, wrists, and necks seems to validate their worth as women. Even with their faces modestly covered, the women of Rani Khera seem more independent than Tepoztecan women and have less of a martyr complex.

It must be remembered that these observations on the people of Rani Khera are highly impressionistic and deserve more careful study.

III. CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, I believe our comparative data from these two villages demonstrate the wide range of culture that can exist in peasant societies. When I left for India in 1952, I expected to find many similarities between Indian and Mexican peasant communities, this despite my earlier critique of the folk-society concept. I did find similarities, but on the whole I was more impressed by the differences. The similarities are greatest in material culture, level of technology, and economics, and the differences are greatest in social organization, value systems, and personality. In terms of raising the standard of living the problems seem much the same, for the bulk of the population in both villages is poor, illiterate, landless, and lives so close to the survival margin that it cannot afford to experiment with new things and ideas. However, the poverty of the Indian people seems so much greater and the agrarian problems so overwhelming and complex as to defy any easy solution even on the theoretical level.

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In stressing the range of variation possible under the rubric of peasant society, I do not intend to suggest that the concept "peasant society" is not meaningful or useful as a classification for comparative research. However, it is not sufficiently predictive in regard to cultural content and structure to take the place of knowledge of concrete reality situations, especially in planning programs of culture change. For both applied and theoretical anthropology we need typologies of peasantry for the major culture areas of the world, such as Latin America, India, Africa, etc. Moreover, within each area we need more refined subclassifications. Only after such studies are available will we be in a position to formulate broad generalizations about the dynamics of peasant culture as a whole. The difficulties encountered in this paper suggest that a typology of peasant societies for Mexico or Latin America would hardly serve for North India. However, once we had adequate typologies for both areas, meaningful comparisons could more readily be made.

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Rani Khera and Tepoztlan face many common problems. In both villages population has increased rapidly in the last thirty years, means of communication have been improved, there is greater dependence upon a cash economy, education is increasingly valued, and the general aspiration level of the people is going up. But there have been no comparable changes in the agricultural production.

We have seen that both villages are meaningful units for comparative study. However, our analysis has shown the complexities involved in evaluating the extent to which each village is a community. From some points of view it would seem that Tepoztlan is more of an organized and centralized village community, that is, in terms of the internal settlement pattern, the greater ethnic homogeneity of the population, the formal organization of village government with elected and paid village officials, the religious organization with a central church, the village market and plaza, and the absence of multiple intervillage networks based on kinship.

From the point of view of ecology Rani Khera is a more clearly defined and self-contained community than Tepoztlan. Moreover, if we define community in terms of the degree and intensity of interaction and interdependence of people, then we might conclude that, despite the divisive effects of castes and multiple factions within castes, there is more community within Rani Khera than within Tepoztlan. Villagers in Rani Khera seem psychologically more secure and relate better to each other. There is a greater readiness to engage in co-operative activities within kinship and caste. The villager spends a greater proportion of his time in some group activity, in smoking groups, in the extended family, in co-operative economic undertakings, and in the caste councils. There is more frequent visiting and more sociability. It is tempting to view the greater verbalization about village identification and solidarity in Tepoztlan as a psychological compensation for the actual atomistic nature of social relations. And by the same token the absence of such verbalization in Rani Khera may reflect the greater cohesiveness of social relations.

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One conclusion to be drawn from these facts is that separate institutions or aspects of culture develop at different rates, within limits, in accord with particular historical circumstance. It is this factor which creates serious difficulties in the construction of societal or cultural typologies which are not historically and regionally defined. This would also help explain how Tepoztlan and Rani Khera can be so similar in terms of economics and so different in terms of social organization.

¹ From , 1955, 57, Part 2 (Memoir, No. 83): 145–170. By permission.