Title:
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Rural Proletarianization ; a social and Historical Enquiry into the Commercialization of the Southern Cauca Valley, Colombia.
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This thesis attempts to describe the historical development and
contemporary status of the rural lower class inhabiting the Cauca
valley in Western Colombia, South America. Put at its briefest, this
history is one that encompasses a trajectory beginning with slavery,
passing through a century of social existence as free peasants, and
gradually terminating in the twentieth century with the proletarianization
of those peasants as they become landless manual labourers on
sugar plantations and large commercial farms.
The research involved in this work includes both archival investigation
of historical sources, and anthropological field-work. Some
fourteen months were spent living in a small area at the southernmost
extremity of the valley where "participant observation" was carried out.
The thesis is broadly descriptive in aim; no specific hypothesis
has been advanced or refuted. While the historical section coi. siders
events from a fairly wide point of view, the ethnography is far more
detailed and tends to concentrate on peasant economics and social
organization . The final chapter is concerned with beliefs and the
changing ideology of production, and stands as a summary for most of
the preceding chapters.
The theme that runs throughout most of the work is the process
whereby landed peasants become rural wage labourers, since this is
not only the major component in the valley's history but is also the single most important factor influencing peasant life today. Consequently
the ethnography focusses on some of the main effects this
process has on the remaining peasantry, and their reactions and
attitudes towards their being cast into a totally distinct mode of
production and way of life.
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