ABSTRACT
English and American anthropologists, in describing how their science has “discovered” the peasantry, look for precursors in monographs written on tribal communities and attempt to discover how the methods and ideas contained therein were then, beginning in the thirties and forties, applied to the investigation of an increasing number of peasant communities. The people of Atany read books and newspapers, and at least some of them have some concept of history and of a museum. They regard the interest in the history of their own village and in their ancient customs as a sign of esteem. The ethnographers were certainly aware of the fact that most elements of the peasant cultures they studied had a wide distribution which extended beyond national boundaries. Comparative cross cultural studies have a long tradition in the ethnographic research generated in Hungary and other Central European countries.
