Peasant Times: Wine, History, and the Future Past of Farming

Wine and viticulture are phenomena with deep roots on the European continent. Long missing as topics of anthropological inquiry, both have recently become focal points for discussing important theoretical matters such as petty commodity production, commodification, heritagisation, and conceptions of nature and culture. While this literature consistently makes mention of peasantry, to date no study on wine producers puts peasants front and center. Conversely, the ample literature on European peasantries makes little mention of viticulture or wine, despite how the latter product often invokes ideas about peasants. The present study closes this gap. It attends to a number of politically radical small-scale wine producers in Italy, whose peasanthood is a matter of utmost concern for themselves. Based on 15 months of participatory fieldwork, the study tells us who these producers are, what they do in the course of producing wine, and why they elect to work as they do to begin with. The study remains with these actors' own concern for their own peasant identity. Thus, it conducts an inquiry - ethnographic, historical, philosophical - into what peasanthood means for these actors, how it has come to mean that which it does, and what it would entail for anthropological theory to take this meaning seriously. The study has potential implications for the study of wine, viticulture and Italy, as well as for debates on historicity, nature, the temporal politics of peasant radicalism, and methods of analysis for European ethnographic materials.