Peasants and Capital
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A01=Michel-Rolph Trouillot
Agricultural Economy
Author_Michel-Rolph Trouillot
Caribbean Studies
Category=JBSL
Category=JHMC
Category=NK
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Historical Ethnography
History of Capitalism
Multinational Capital
Peasant Societies
Postcolonial State
Subsistence and Value
Product details
- ISBN 9781914363221
- Weight: 767g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 04 Nov 2025
- Publisher: HAU Society Of Ethnographic Theory
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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A new edition of Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s influential ethnography of a village in Dominica.
Over thirty-five years ago, Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s debut ethnography, Peasants and Capital: Dominica in the World Economy, dared to regard peasants not as vestiges of premodern economies but as instrumental to, and integrated in, a capitalist world system. Combining historical ethnography with an intimate portrait of a banana-producing eastern Caribbean village, this multi-sited study demonstrates how multinational capital thrives on the surplus production of peasant cultivators. At the same time, it investigates how peasantries generate independent conceptions of value and subsistence in the process of building a new postcolonial state in Dominica. This new edition of Peasants and Capital invites anthropologists to revisit the methodological innovations of this multi-scalar study and readers to meditate on the continued vitality of peasant livelihoods in the Caribbean today.
Ryan Cecil Jobson’s new introduction situates this edition in the context of Trouillot’s remarkable life and career. Jobson reminds us of the book’s enduring theoretical and ethnographic significance and asks us to consider how the entanglement of peasants from Dominica in national and world affairs has been impacted by more recent histories, such as the end of preferential markets for Caribbean bananas, the migration of “banana children” to regional and metropolitan urban centers, and the devastation of Dominica by Hurricane Maria.
Over thirty-five years ago, Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s debut ethnography, Peasants and Capital: Dominica in the World Economy, dared to regard peasants not as vestiges of premodern economies but as instrumental to, and integrated in, a capitalist world system. Combining historical ethnography with an intimate portrait of a banana-producing eastern Caribbean village, this multi-sited study demonstrates how multinational capital thrives on the surplus production of peasant cultivators. At the same time, it investigates how peasantries generate independent conceptions of value and subsistence in the process of building a new postcolonial state in Dominica. This new edition of Peasants and Capital invites anthropologists to revisit the methodological innovations of this multi-scalar study and readers to meditate on the continued vitality of peasant livelihoods in the Caribbean today.
Ryan Cecil Jobson’s new introduction situates this edition in the context of Trouillot’s remarkable life and career. Jobson reminds us of the book’s enduring theoretical and ethnographic significance and asks us to consider how the entanglement of peasants from Dominica in national and world affairs has been impacted by more recent histories, such as the end of preferential markets for Caribbean bananas, the migration of “banana children” to regional and metropolitan urban centers, and the devastation of Dominica by Hurricane Maria.
Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1949-2012) was a Haitian anthropologist and professor of anthropology at The University of Chicago. He is the author of many books, including Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History and Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World.
