This chapter deals with the organization of labour in Fontelas. Two aspects of this area of social life stand out clearly: the first of these is the large number of agricultural activities which require the recruitment of additional labour from outside the household. In Fontelas the truly self-sufficient peasant household is non-existent. The second aspect concerns the imbalanced and unequal exchanges of labour at large harvesting tasks. I deal with each of these topics in turn.

The first section describes the annual cycle of production and forms of household labour involving only the members of the domestic group. Some mention is made of simple exchange labour involving small labour-teams with a few recruited helpers. Secondly, I deal with communal labour-teams formed for the repair or reconstruction of public property. The third section contains two descriptons of conspicuously large tasks requiring the complex coordination of labour, time, and the rotation of house-by-house turns. These are examples of intermediate forms of agricultural labour, located between the two extremes of the individual household and the entire hamlet. In the last section, I formulate an analytical question concerning all three of these forms of cooperation: to what extent can labour exchanges in Fontelas be termed ‘egalitarian’? Further, do these work exchanges in fact reveal underlying structures of social hierarchy and inequality?

Household labour

Each household in Fontelas confronts common problems of production within this mountainous region of Trás-os-Montes. But it would be misleading to term the household the ‘basic unit of production’. Each household is in reality insufficient in equipment, animal traction, and labour resources and cannot act entirely on its own.