It is indeed a pleasure to be invited to address economists and economic historians regarding the dynamics of peasant economic integration into a national economic system. The particular subject of these meetings, “The Organizational Forms of Economic Life and their Evolution,” is an appropriate one for us since, as anthropologists, we are generally interested in the “Evolution of the Organizational Forms of Life.” Today we will examine the organizational form of peasant economic life in Brazil in an effort to develop a fuller understanding of the socio-economic transactions which take place within this traditional—better, transitional—agrarian society.