Page 401 - Panjek, Aleksander, Jesper Larsson and Luca Mocarelli, eds. 2017. Integrated Peasant Economy in a Comparative Perspective: Alps, Scandinavia and Beyond. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 401
pluriactivity, proto-industrialisation or integrated peasant economy?
a tendency that too many phenomena and activities were bunched in un-
der the proto-industrial umbrella. Regionally spread mass activities have
simply been labelled ‘proto-industrial’ despite not fulfilling the criteria of
households being very specialised, producing for far away markets or, lead-
ing to special – from ‘normal’ peasant households deviant – demograph-
ic behaviour. It could be held of course that all pre-industrial manufactur-
ing activities involving many people in a limited area and therefore being
in a way ‘large scale’ combinations of small-scale activities, should count as
proto-industry (maybe that is the essence of Industrialiserung vor der In-
dustrialiserung?) but too elastic definitions render concepts less usable. In-
deed, Scandinavian pre-industrial peasants carried out a lot of market re-
lated crafts and trade services. Clearly this was part of an important and
strengthened regional division of labour, which at least partly stemmed
from the vast difference in natural endowments between different areas
and localities. But was it all to be categorised as ‘proto-industry?’
Writing about 17th century alpine regions in Slovenia, Aleksander Pan-
jek has proposed the concept integrated peasant economy (henceforth IPE)
to analyse the activity and importance of (foremost) small peasant house-
holds combining subsistence farming with secondary and tertiary sector
activities to make up a complex total family income. The multi-activity was
systematic, it would be incorrect to talk about farming and ‘side’ activities
and the combination resulted in an area having a higher carrying capacity
(denser population) than it would have had, if households had concentrated
on agriculture only (Panjek 2015, 202–5). As I interpret this concept it real-
ly does not have an evolutionary bias (although this might be contested). It
focuses on the strategies peasant households developed in order to survive
and possibly raise their levels of wellbeing by adapting to the social, politi-
cal and commercial environment they found themselves in. For sure, they
altered and developed the structure they acted in. Some of their chosen ac-
tions might have fallen into some kind of proto-industrial category, but
seemingly, lots of actions fall clearly beyond or outside that scope. Is such
IPE concept perhaps applicable to Sweden and Scandinavia?
2. Regional examples of proto-industry and integrated
peasant economy
In the outright plains-districts like southwest Scania (southernmost Swe-
den), most of Denmark, a small area in the vicinity of Oslo in Norway, most
of the Lake Mälaren basin (west of the Swedish capital Stockholm), and
399
a tendency that too many phenomena and activities were bunched in un-
der the proto-industrial umbrella. Regionally spread mass activities have
simply been labelled ‘proto-industrial’ despite not fulfilling the criteria of
households being very specialised, producing for far away markets or, lead-
ing to special – from ‘normal’ peasant households deviant – demograph-
ic behaviour. It could be held of course that all pre-industrial manufactur-
ing activities involving many people in a limited area and therefore being
in a way ‘large scale’ combinations of small-scale activities, should count as
proto-industry (maybe that is the essence of Industrialiserung vor der In-
dustrialiserung?) but too elastic definitions render concepts less usable. In-
deed, Scandinavian pre-industrial peasants carried out a lot of market re-
lated crafts and trade services. Clearly this was part of an important and
strengthened regional division of labour, which at least partly stemmed
from the vast difference in natural endowments between different areas
and localities. But was it all to be categorised as ‘proto-industry?’
Writing about 17th century alpine regions in Slovenia, Aleksander Pan-
jek has proposed the concept integrated peasant economy (henceforth IPE)
to analyse the activity and importance of (foremost) small peasant house-
holds combining subsistence farming with secondary and tertiary sector
activities to make up a complex total family income. The multi-activity was
systematic, it would be incorrect to talk about farming and ‘side’ activities
and the combination resulted in an area having a higher carrying capacity
(denser population) than it would have had, if households had concentrated
on agriculture only (Panjek 2015, 202–5). As I interpret this concept it real-
ly does not have an evolutionary bias (although this might be contested). It
focuses on the strategies peasant households developed in order to survive
and possibly raise their levels of wellbeing by adapting to the social, politi-
cal and commercial environment they found themselves in. For sure, they
altered and developed the structure they acted in. Some of their chosen ac-
tions might have fallen into some kind of proto-industrial category, but
seemingly, lots of actions fall clearly beyond or outside that scope. Is such
IPE concept perhaps applicable to Sweden and Scandinavia?
2. Regional examples of proto-industry and integrated
peasant economy
In the outright plains-districts like southwest Scania (southernmost Swe-
den), most of Denmark, a small area in the vicinity of Oslo in Norway, most
of the Lake Mälaren basin (west of the Swedish capital Stockholm), and
399
