This paper considers one aspect of the relationship between social organization and certain sorts of economic activity, using a particular setting, the internal market system in peasant societies (Mintz, 1959), as a frame of reference. The argument proceeds from the well-known fact that, in many of these market systems, much or even most of the distributive activity is carried on by women, and these women often engage in commerce more or less independently of the economic undertakings of their husbands. In such cases, husband and wife participate in distinguishably different risk structures, an arrangement having particular relevance to the nature of family life and culturally determined sex-role differentiation. Furthermore, since husbands and wives in such cases may carry on not only independent but also different economic pursuits, it would not be surprising if some of the attitudes related to the kind of economic activity also differed along sexual lines. Productive and distributive undertakings require different skills; probably they evoke different temperamental responses as well. One might claim that the tests of success for the middleman are different in character from the tests of success for the agricultural producer; those successful in one pursuit are not necessarily those most likely to succeed in the other. Of course this contention does not preclude some optimum combination of skills; many producers alsoengage successfully in intermediary and distributive activities, and some of the so-called underdeveloped world's most skilled traders began as agricultural producers (Bauer, 1957: 71; Bauer and Yamey, 1957: 104–5).

Our repertoire of concepts and theories concerning peasantries has been built up through contributions from scholars working in many parts of the world. Latin Americanists and India-wallahs, in particular, have played a major role in the development of models, but we have also heard from specialists in Indonesia, Japan, Europe, the Mediterranean world, and even Africa. But where is China in all this ? Why are students of the world's largest peasantry silent? In part, it is because we are so few and too preoccupied with our own peasants to have time for anybody else's. More to the point, however, the whole body of inherited anthropological wisdom concerning peasantries seems somehow alien and irrelevant to students of Chinese society.

The rate of modernization in Venezuela over the past forty years has been rapid, even startling, if attention is focussed on the more conspicuous institutions and processes. During this period an agrarian, patrimonially ruled, backward society has been transformed into a highly commercialized urban society governed by a political party system based on widespread popular participation in the electoral process. However—and this is a phenomenon of which social scientists in the United States have become increasingly aware—modernization does not affect people in an evenhanded, uniform manner. While the great transformation in economy and society which we call modernization improves the quality of life for many people, some groups or individuals are bypassed in the process, and some even come to suffer as a consequence of it. Therefore, the level of modernity and personal well-being achieved in the most advanced sectors of a society will often be irrelevant as an indicator of welfare in those pockets of deprivation left behind or created in the general march of progress.

Considerable attention has recently been given to depicting the present-day conditions of rural life in developing and industrializing states. Anthropologists have begun to doubt whether the familiar term ‘peasant society’ adequately represents those rural groups that are increasingly linked with an urban-based industrial economy and society. A number of alternate terms and constructs have lately been suggested. For example, in a recent article Erasmus (1967) explores what he calls the ‘upper limits of peasantry’ in portions of Bolivia, Venezuela and Mexico. By ‘upper limits of peasantry’ Erasmus refers to those segments of the rural population that are within a market economy and national polity and yet are only partially integrated within an emergent industrial society. To cite another recent example, Lopreato's study of a Calabrian village (1967) details how emigration and the subsequent remittances altered the social and economic structure of a long-impoverished South Italian community. Interestingly, Lopreato entitles his study Peasants No More; like Erasmus he too wishes to indicate the changed character of rural life in industrializing states.

The persistent vitality of groups that are neither traditional nor modern nor transitional poses one of the most stubborn conceptual and practical problems of political development. An examination of the political-religious sects of South Vietnam from the perspective of the paradox of non-modern and untraditional institutionalization questions the common hypothesis of unilinear development. It is facile to assume that such groups as tribes, castes, or millenarian movements will conveniently wither away under the onslaught of modernity or to condemn them as causes of the lack of development in the new states. Far from being aberrant vestiges of a past that is being overcome, the sects are but particular manifestations of historic and contemporary factionalism. What South Vietnam lacks is not a vigorous development of sub-national groups but a central government with responsive and directive capacity. Without such a center the concept of a system becomes meaningless and the sects have little reason for seeking security in interaction rather than incapsulation.