This book is primarily about a form of peasant economic activity predominant among the Minangkabau of the modern Indonesian province of West Sumatra during the period of field research between 1970 and 1972, that is to say, the production and distribution of commodities on a small, often individual scale. It is at the same time an attempt to account for the predominance of this economic form in a specific place and time.

This focus on the economy I feel needs little justification in the context of modern Indonesia, and indeed questions of poverty and underdevelopment are central concerns of the people themselves. A study of the rural peasant economy is particularly relevant when estimates have it that as much as 60 per cent of national income is derived from rural areas, and 85 per cent of the people earn their living outside the towns (see Mackie in Glassburner, 1971, P. 22).

Any study of Indonesian peasant economy must inevitably come up against a number of particularly thorny questions. Why, for example, in spite of the relative richness of Indonesia's natural resource base, has rural income failed often to keep pace even with population growth? What are the reasons for the relative technological backwardness of peasant enterprises and the general absence, at least in the modern period, of large-scale enterprise in the peasant sector? Is class differentiation among the peasantry an inevitable result of contact with a capitalist economy?