ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on exactly this point: the importance of structure-building for development-oriented activities. It examines some issues related to the modernization of the social organization of agricultural productive activities, under the following headings: these are organizational underdevelopment in peasant societies; development potential of traditional peasant economic organizations; rural development projects and peasants' organizations; and organization building. The social analysis of forces pressing for modernity and of modernization mechanisms should therefore pay adequate attention to the potential of, and the need for, developing and multiplying unconventional organizations. The primary function of these organizations is the management of water, especially the equitable allocation of water among members, and the maintenance of the canals. The degree of subjective readiness of a peasant society for one or another type of formal organization is thus an essential variable to be assessed under each specific set of cultural, technological, economic, and political circumstances.
