The Peasant Marketing System of Oaxaca, Mexico

ix+419 pages with index, bibliography and charts. Royal octavo (9 1/2" x 6 1/2") issued in gold cloth with red lettering to spine and gold dust jacket with pictorial on cover and spine and black lettering on spine and cover. First edition.

This work analyzes the structure and functioning of an extensive regional peasant marketing system with aboriginal antecedents. It considers the impact upon such a system of the modern industrializing economy of Mexico-a system involving hundreds of villages and numerous marketplaces and traders serving nearly a million people in the distribution of goods valued at over a billion pesos annually. The study identifies the multiplicity of economic roles open to participants, the complexities of a specialized production system and the diverse ways it operates in relation to different commodities and the conduct of trade by various kinds of functionaries. Such problems as supply and demand, price, capital, market results, and the interplay of economic, cultural and social factors are delete with. Data on growth and change under the impact of the modern national economy in the last twenty-five years are presented for the system as a whole and for a specialized village. Throughout the work attention is paid to economic alternatives and the basis for choices made. In many ways, the marketing system described approaches the economist's ideal model of a free market. Because of the high degree of village specialization, in contrast to other peasant marketing systems, the Oaxaca system serves primarily the interchange of goods among the peasant villages rather than the provisioning of the City. As a result, the system shows remarkable adaptability and vitality in the face of influences from the industrializing national economy.

Condition:

Light edge wear. Dust jacket spine sunned, lightly soiled. A very good to fine copy in a near fine dust jacket.