8/16/2019 Peasants and Capital: Dominica in the World Economy.

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ReviewAuthor(s): Marilyn Silverman

Review by: Marilyn Silverman

Source: American Anthropologist , New Series, Vol. 91, No. 1 (Mar., 1989), p. 211

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8/16/2019 Peasants and Capital: Dominica in the World Economy.

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 SOCIAL CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 211

 planation on page 22 (where it first appears)

 instead of on page 30; piloncillo (page 72) is not

 defined in the text, nor in the glossary. But

 these are small matters that can be corrected

 in a second edition of this outstanding book,

 which I predict will become a classic in Mex-

 ican studies

Peasants and Capital: Dominica in the

 World Economy. Michel-Rolph Trouillot.

 Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History

 and Culture. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins

 University Press, 1988. 360 pp. $35.00 (cloth).

 MARILYN SILVERMAN

 York University

 Analyses of peasantries often become stym-

 ied by empirical complexity and the difficul-

 ties of linking it all into the world system.

 Trouillot's effort, therefore, is commendable;

 that he succeeds so well is laudable

Dominica is the locale, but Trouillot's aim

 is much broader-to understand how peas-

 ants and capitalism coexist in the contem-

 porary world. He therefore analyzes the emer-

 gence and seeming triumph of the Dominican

 peasantry-from pre-Emancipation until the

 1970s. To do so, he uses many lenses. Each

 comes out of a different theoretical perspec-

 tive, each provides a different view of his cen-

 tral problem, and each focuses on a different

 locale. It all adds up to a thought-provoking

 analysis with implications, as he intended, far

 beyond the Dominican context itself.

 Central to the analysis is a concept of peas-

 antry as a labor process. This emphasis on

 production not only allows Trouillot to make

 sense of empirical complexity when con-

 fronted by occupational multiplicity, units

 with different mixes and unfree people ;

 but, more importantly, it gives him the han-

 dle-the process of valorization-through

 which a peasantry (in this case, in Dominica)

 is integrated into the world economy. To this,

 Trouillot adds the idea of human agency-

 that the individual makes history both by in-

 tent and by default and that a micro-level un-

 derstanding also is necessary.

 Trouillot pursues this logic with his varying

 lenses He first describes the Dominican coast

 and its enclaves, each with its complex social-

 economic types in differing combination. Yet,

 Dominican unity, for Trouillot, is not spatial;

 rather, unity is located in the history of colo-

 nization and of successive monocrops and in

 the history of the peasant labor process-from

 the provision grounds of slaves to the small-

 holding banana producer of the post-1953 ex-

 port boom. Trouillot describes this history as

 a struggle between plantation and peasant la-

 bor processes. By 1927, the peasant labour

 process had invaded practically every unit of

 production of the country (p. 97); and by

 1953, it was the dominant process for produc-

 ing export commodities as bananas .. . tied

 mass production for the world market to

 household production (p. 131). The peasants

 had won. Partly this was because bananas had

 a use-value and were incorporated into a new,

  traditional diet, rationalized by the view

 that producers, in firm control of production,

 were simply delivering surplus for export.

 Trouillot then attaches a new lens as he

 analyzes the export trade. A state agency col-

 lects the produce for the transnational mar-

 keting company, which sets the date, amount,

 and price of every shipment. There is no sale,

 no market, no negotiated price, no local con-

 trol, and no surplus. Rather, [t]hrough the

 subjugation of the peasant labour process,

 capital has turned Dominican yeomen and

 tenants into 'proletarians working at home'

(p. 157). Another history substantiates this-

 that of the multinational. Its growth from a

 small family concern to a diversified, highly

 capitalized enterprise rests squarely on the

 super-exploitation of the peasant labor pro-

 cess

Trouillot finally focuses a lens on one en-

 clave so as to analyze the range of variations

which run in tandem with the unity of Dom-

 inica's histories. Using an ethnography of

 mediation, he describes both local life and

 the agents and instruments through which the

 unity of the locality and its differentiated

 subgroups are integrated into the peasant la-

 bor process, banana production, and the

 world

A short review cannot cover the complex in-

 terplay among Trouillot's theoretical argu-

 ments, his depiction of Dominica, and his nu-

 merous methods. Nor is it possible to address

 the issues raised; for example, whether me-

 diation is adequate for describing both

 agency and integration, whether the dynamics

 of local differentiation are not somewhat lost

 in larger concerns, and so on. Yet such issues

 only highlight the fact that this is an impres-

 sive and important book-broad in its cover-

 age, eclectic in its approach, and focused in its

 intent. It should be read by those working

 with agrarian processes, regardless of culture

 area; and it should be read by colleagues in

 other disciplines who are concerned with

 peasantries

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