Socio?economic differentiation and relations of production among rural?based petty producers in central Peru, 1880 to 1970.

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Abstract
In an attempt to uncover the complexity of socio‐economic differentiation, detailed evidence is presented of the changing production relations among the Huasicanchinos of Central Peru over a period of ninety years. It is argued that the process of differentiation can only be understood within the context of a quite specific system of production. An examination of the specificity of the relations of production in a particular period then reveals the complexity of this differentiation process and exposes some of the difficulties involved in a class analysis where capitalist relations have not been generalised throughout the social formation. The study of this group of Central Peruvian petty producers over ninety years reveals that the differentiation process was a function of specific features of the relations of production in each of three periods; these relations were themselves emergent from the articulation of huasicanchino petty production with the changing form of dominant capitalism in Peru. As a function of differing relations to large capital, petty production units took on a variety of forms. Qualitative differences in the form of small production units in one period then gave rise to quantitative differences in control over resources in a subsequent period. Quantitative differences were in turn expressed in variations in relations of production between controllers and direct producers, and so on. It is concluded that assumptions about inevitable polarisation should not obscure the complexity of a process which can only be understood by reference to the particular history of a social formation.

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