Peasant Intellectuals
Anthropology and History in Tanzania
Steven Feierman
“This brilliant book shatters our intellectual complacency. By transforming the notion of ‘peasant intellectual’ from an oxymoron into a powerful organizing principle, Feierman renders obsolete the usual ways we approach peasant, politics, and culture.”—Steve J. Stern, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Scholars who study peasant society now realize that peasants are not passive, but quite capable of acting in their own interests. But, do coherent political ideas emerge within peasant society or do peasants act in a world where elites define political issues? Peasant Intellectuals is based on ethnographic research begun in 1966 and includes interviews with hundreds of people from all levels of Tanzanian society. Steven Feierman provides the history of the struggles to define the most basic issues of public political discourse in the Shambaa-speaking region of Tanzania. Feierman also shows that peasant society contains a rich body of alternative sources of political language from which future debates will be shaped.
Steven Feierman is professor of history at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is the author of The Shambaa Kingdom and has written extensively on African medicine and healing practices.
Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.)
A trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press
Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.)
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November 1990
LC: 90-050086 DT
352 pp. 6 x 9
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