ABSTRACT
Redfield advanced his most mature expression of the definition and socio-historical significance of peasant societies in a series of lectures he presented in 1956 at Swarthmore College, which were then published as Peasant Society and Culture. In the essay “Peasantry: Part Societies,” Redfield articulated a definition of peasantry that was to exercise great influence among anthropologists and sociologists from the 1950s through the 1970s. Redfield argued that while anthropology had come of age by conducting studies of remote, isolated tribal peoples, which they described as functionally self-sufficient cultures, this perspective would not suffice for study of peasant societies. Peasant societies were not self-sufficient wholes but rather “part societies” and could only be studied by taking into account the larger civilizations in which they were embedded. Redfield urged anthropologists to go beyond the bounds of their traditional studies and examine the entire network of connections which linked peasant societies to urban centers, and his influence served as one of the prime motivators for anthropologists to expand their range of interests to include study of societies at all levels of size and complexity, an expansion of interest that eventually culminated in the rise of the sub-field of urban anthropology.
