ABSTRACT
Attempts to precisely define “peasants” have to a great extent been abandoned as unproductive. From the position of the peasant community itself, there is no such contradiction; Aymara society developed its present mixed economy largely from its own internal mechanisms, and as logically and self-consistently as it developed such practices as fattening cattle. While examples in which circular migration was indeed a transitional phase in a continuous process of proletarianization might be multiplied, there are certainly other cases where the “worker-peasant” has become an ongoing type that never does become a proletarian. The Aymara data are in direct contradiction to any general theory that peasant transformation is induced exclusively or even largely from without the peasant system. The initial kick for peasant transformation may be the result of processes within the peasant system itself, though the means by which such a transformation is accomplished will be determined by the system’s wider environment.
