Peasantness

The China case was also incorporated in an international debate that centered on the conflict between conserving “peasantness” versus “peasant elimination” in the course of development and globalization (Bernstein 2006; Ellis 2000; Kitching 2001; Zaputovich 2009).

Ethnicity as a dimension of social identity thus contrasts with peasantness in not being based primarily in the productionist assumptions of the latter term.