Contenu du sommaire : Célibats

Forbidden Reproduction : The Symbolic Dimension of Economic Domination Owing to the unification of the market of symbolic and economic goods, the conditions have vanished that underlaid the existence of peasant values, capable of opposing dominant values. For peasants, the matrimonial market gives an opportunity to discover that their social price has plummeted. Owing to the unification of this market, the institution that used to be the keystone of the whole system of reproduction strategies has plunged into a crisis ; and the "household" 's very existence is threatened. The person who remains single, thus leaving land without any heir, achieves what the mere effects of economic domination and of the relative degradation of farm incomes have not been able to do.

Celibacy, Illegitimacy and Social Structure in a Portuguese Hamlet This paper examines celibacy and illegitimacy in a hamlet in Trás-os-Montes, N.E. Portugal. Both phenomena pervade the social structure, and, along with concubinage and natolocal residence, beg a multifaceted analysis well beyond the reach of purely demographic or moralistic explanations. Drawing on Goody's models of Eurasian inheritance patterns and Bourdieu's concept of the "structural victim", we can elucidate an intimate link between such irregular kinship practices and the specific local form of delayed post-mortem transmission. By dissecting the community and showing precisely who the celibates and bastards are, we discover a dual system of marriage and sexuality composed of two parallel spheres inside and outside formal ecclesiastical matrimony. This duality is replicated within the elastic ambiguity of the local term zorro (unrecognised bastard), indicating the symbiosis of bitter social stigma with a generalised acceptance of illegitimacy among the lower social groups. Unrecognised and unlegitimated bastards - rather than celibates — are viewed as this society's structural victims. Situating the community within the overall ethnographic literature on the Mediterranean area remains an open and perplexing question.

Reproduction outside Marriage : The Exemple of a Portuguese Village (1862-1983) According to statistics covering a century and a half of the life of a village in central Portugal, there has always been a high rate of men and women who remain single, and there have always been many births outside marriage. In fact, nearly all single mothers belong to social strata excluded from the circulation of goods. In this society, celibacy represents the means of reproducing, without dividing a heritage, the labor necessary to family farms by constituting a filiation separate from the inheritance of wealth. This filiation is established by godfatherhood, which defines the social position of single persons' children.

Celibacy and Peasant Strategies in Spain The purpose of this article is to demonstrate, through the study of samples located in Spain, that celibacy results neither from a given family structure nor from an inheritance pattern, but constitute one element of a strategy aimed at securing the household reproduction within an economic order and a given social hierarchy.

Free Work in Mexico : Tlapanec Communities and Public Works In Indian Mexico, the population voluntarily assumes responsibility for public works. This is especially so in Tlapanec country, whose 40 000 inhabitants have, for about 20 years now, been busy building schools and roads, setting up a telephone network, electrifying communities, etc. Examining Mexican politics and legislation and then analyzing the reasons for and means of mobilizing a free work force in Tlapanec Indian communities lead to concluding, paradoxically, that regional conflicts are the real force underlying public works.

School and Power in Peasant Communities in Chicontepec (Mexico) The first teachers responsible in the 1930s "castilizing" the Huasteca Indians were, quite naturally, mestizos belonging to the dominant minority. In this regard, they helped moderate the impact of land reform, organize the labor market and refer excess local labor to plantations on the nearby coastal plain. Having soon forgotten Indian languages and being attracted by other occupations, they were replaced as teachers by natives from the better-off strata. The latter, while maintaining their allegiance to a national union that is a pillar of centralism, became the spokesmen voicing local demands for a broader participation of Indians in the municipal government.

Credit subsistence : The Bank's Hold over Mayo Peasants in Yucatan (Mexico) The analysis of various local situations shows that, although agricultural development programs based on the systematic distribution of credit usually fail as production policies, they have effects, unsought for and unforeseen by programmers, on consumption. In ecological and social conditions where a massive application of capital cannot significantly increase yields, credit seems more attractive because of accompanying services (social security, for example) or because of the disposable revenue it procures rather than because of its nature as a productive resource. Given bank's discriminatory powers, the granting of credit leads to competition and alliances between families, work groups and communities.

Land Reform Cooperatives and Food Security in the Ecuadorian Sierra In a cooperative-based land reform program, sociological analysis has to take into account the strategies of both public authorities and peasant "beneficiaries". The degree of compatibility between these strategies explains : why cooperatives created at the initiative of public authorities are, or are not, accepted by peasants ; why they do, or do not, operate correctly in economic and social terms ; why they do, or do not, contribute to improving national security in foodstuffs ; and especially why they do, or do not, significantly improve the situation of small producers, in particular their food supplies. In this respect, the linkage that cooperatives set up between small producers' domestic economy and the capitalistic economic system is of overriding importance.

The Artist, the Butcher and the Sacrificer The ethnographic study of Lower Andalusia, where the toro has become a fundamental cultural symbol, reveals that urban-dwellers feign to reject the meat of the sacrificial killing of a bull in an arena because it is still identified with the marginal world of slaughterhouses. This tendency is revelatory not only of the ambiguous evolution of town-country relations in the Seville area but also about sociocultural relations since the 18th century when the "plebs" , as they are usually called, managed to voice their judgment and their determination to rise in the social hierarchy within the framework of the taurine performance.