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Agrarian Inequality and the Theory of Peasant Rebellion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Mitchell A. Seligson
Mitchell A. Seligson*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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Insurgency has largely subsided in Central America, but the academic debate over the causes of the violence in the 1980s waxes hotter than ever. As scholars, we have an obligation to subject our theories to the acid test of reality. As individuals interested in the policy process, we must evaluate the outcomes of those policies, even though they are sometimes based on faulty readings of our theories. The increasingly rich body of literature and data available on Central America compels observers to move away from the speculation that dominated early scholarship on the region and toward serious empirical tests of our theories. In doing so, scholars will be in a position to evaluate the policies pursued by the United States and various Central American governments. My article in this journal on land tenure in El Salvador attempted to address both theory and policy with new data (Seligson 1995). Judging by the reactions of Martin Diskin and Jeffery Paige, the conclusions that I drew have succeeded in stimulating a rich debate.

Type
Commentary and Debate
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , 1996 , pp. 140 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

I would like to thank Ariel Armony, John Booth, Juliana Martínez, and Vadim Staklo for reading and commenting on a draft of this essay.

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