Peasants and Capital: Dominica in the World Economy

Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s debut ethnography, Peasants and Capital: Dominica in the World Economy, dared to regard peasants not as vestiges of premodern economies but as instrumental to, and integrated in, a capitalist world system. A new edition of Peasants and Capital invites anthropologists to revisit the methodological innovations of this multi-scalar study and readers to meditate on the continued vitality of peasant livelihoods in the Caribbean today.

HAU Books recently published the new edition with an introduction by Ryan Cecil Jobson. Jobson’s introduction reminds us of the book’s enduring theoretical and ethnographic significance and asks us to consider how the entanglement of peasants from Dominica in national and world affairs has been impacted by more recent histories, such as the end of preferential markets for Caribbean bananas, the migration of “banana children” to regional and metropolitan urban centers, and the devastation of Dominica by Hurricane Maria. 

Find Peasants and Capital at HAU Books.