ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author reviews the "image of limited good," discusses some of the criticisms directed at it, and offers some of her own ideas about a model adequate to help understand the factors influencing people to take advantage of opportunities for economic development. In 1965 George Foster published his article "Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good," which brought together several themes important in Foster's earlier work—themes dealing with the nature of peasant personality, world view, and economic organization. According to Foster's model, members of a society share a cognitive orientation which provides them with a means to structure their perception of the universe and establish norms for behavior. By 1960 half the men in Tzintzuntzan had worked as braceros in the United States, and Foster believed that the termination of that program in 1964 had had an adverse social and economic effect on the community because it closed out a major source of income.
