Page 9 - 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. 9
Foreword
Jesper Larsson and Luca Mocarelli
In our quest to understand ordinary people’s lives we need tools to disen-
tangle peasant economy. With the introduction of the concept Integrated
Peasant Economy (IPE), we have a tool that can enhance our understan-
ding of how peasants who mixed different income sources organised their
activity, and were able to manage a complex household economy. The term
“integrated economy” was used by Gauro Coppola to describe the eco-
nomy in the Italian Alps and has been developed into a useful concept for
analysing peasant economy by Aleksander Panjek, who coined it Integra-
ted Peasant Economy.
The core of IPE is the fact that most peasants did not rely only on ag-
riculture for their subsistence. The household economy was an integrat-
ed economy that combined agriculture with market-oriented activities.
Household economy came together by incomes from all three econom-
ic sectors: agriculture (primary), manufacturing (secondary), and service
(tertiary). While peasants have always had a mix of incomes from differ-
ent activities, the Early Modern peasants came to benefit from an increased
market activity and became important players in an economy outside agri-
culture. Life as a peasant was characterised by having an integrated econ-
omy and this became an attribute for peasants up to the 20th century. Par-
ticularly peasants from upland areas came to develop an economy with
multiple income sources, in part due to the limitations of agriculture pro-
duction and their need to obtain money in order to purchase the grain they
7
Jesper Larsson and Luca Mocarelli
In our quest to understand ordinary people’s lives we need tools to disen-
tangle peasant economy. With the introduction of the concept Integrated
Peasant Economy (IPE), we have a tool that can enhance our understan-
ding of how peasants who mixed different income sources organised their
activity, and were able to manage a complex household economy. The term
“integrated economy” was used by Gauro Coppola to describe the eco-
nomy in the Italian Alps and has been developed into a useful concept for
analysing peasant economy by Aleksander Panjek, who coined it Integra-
ted Peasant Economy.
The core of IPE is the fact that most peasants did not rely only on ag-
riculture for their subsistence. The household economy was an integrat-
ed economy that combined agriculture with market-oriented activities.
Household economy came together by incomes from all three econom-
ic sectors: agriculture (primary), manufacturing (secondary), and service
(tertiary). While peasants have always had a mix of incomes from differ-
ent activities, the Early Modern peasants came to benefit from an increased
market activity and became important players in an economy outside agri-
culture. Life as a peasant was characterised by having an integrated econ-
omy and this became an attribute for peasants up to the 20th century. Par-
ticularly peasants from upland areas came to develop an economy with
multiple income sources, in part due to the limitations of agriculture pro-
duction and their need to obtain money in order to purchase the grain they
7
