Peasants. A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or farmer with limited land ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord.
In Europe, peasants were divided into three classes according to their personal status: slave, serf, and free tenant. Peasants hold title to land either in fee simple or by any of several forms of land tenure, among them socage, quit-rent, leasehold, and copyhold.
In a colloquial sense, peasant often has a pejorative meaning that is therefore seen as insulting and controversial in some circles, even when referring to farm laborers in the developing world; as early as in 13th-century Germany the word also meant villain, rustic, robber. In 21st-century English, the term includes the pejorative sense of an ignorant, rude, or unsophisticated person.
The word rose to renewed popularity in the 1940s-1960s as a collective term, often referring to rural populations of developing countries in general-as the semantic successor to 'native', incorporating all its condescending and racial overtones. The word peasantry is commonly used in a non-pejorative sense as a collective noun for the rural population in the poor and developing countries of the world.
Via Campesina, an organization representing about 200,000,000 farm-workers' rights around the world, self-defines as an International Peasa
In Europe, peasants were divided into three classes according to their personal status: slave, serf, and free tenant. Peasants hold title to land either in fee simple or by any of several forms of land tenure, among them socage, quit-rent, leasehold, and copyhold.
In a colloquial sense, peasant often has a pejorative meaning that is therefore seen as insulting and controversial in some circles, even when referring to farm laborers in the developing world; as early as in 13th-century Germany the word also meant villain, rustic, robber. In 21st-century English, the term includes the pejorative sense of an ignorant, rude, or unsophisticated person.
The word rose to renewed popularity in the 1940s-1960s as a collective term, often referring to rural populations of developing countries in general-as the semantic successor to 'native', incorporating all its condescending and racial overtones. The word peasantry is commonly used in a non-pejorative sense as a collective noun for the rural population in the poor and developing countries of the world.
Via Campesina, an organization representing about 200,000,000 farm-workers' rights around the world, self-defines as an International Peasa
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