ABSTRACT
In this chapter we shall be concerned with peasant behavior, or more accurately, the behavior of the rural-dweller. He, and to a much lesser extent, she is the object of great concern on the part of policy-makers, international aid donors, extension services, credit banks, groundnut oil refiners and so on down a long list. But the peasant is scarcely passive in the face of this concern, and while eschewing direct confrontation with ‘the authorities’, whoever they may be, he has devised ways of thwarting, manipulating and occasionally turning to his advantage the public policies of which he is the target (see especially Gellar and Tuck in this volume). In turn policies are formulated on the basis of assumptions about how peasants act and react. What are these assumptions and how good are they? To answer this question we shall focus upon peasants in the groundnut basin.
