ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the concept of profit in peasant economies. It uses the results of a survey of potato fields in two comparable valleys in Peru to clarify the differences between a strict business accounting procedure to establish profits or losses and the method that peasants use to evaluate the profitability of cash crops. It also looks at how farmers evaluate the status of their subsistence crops, showing that they require important cash investments but do not necessarily account for them. A central part of this chapter is the presentation of a cultural model of householding that monitors the flows of resources and of money, relating these to Stephen Gudeman’s house economy.
