Demographic and social differentiation among northern Peruvian peasants.

"In this paper, [the authors] apply the concepts of demographic and social differentiation to the analysis of inequality among rural households in the northern Peruvian department of Cajamarca. While [they] demonstrate that social rather than demographic differentation is the more important process in this area, [they] illustrate the complementarity of Chayanov's methodological analysis of the family life cycle with a Marxist class-theoretical framework. Both enrich the study of patterns in the agricultural sector of household labor use, family structure and composition, and income inequality."

Measuring rural women's work and class position.

PIP: On the basis of experience gained in researching the economic roles of rural women in a national level study in Colombia and in a regional level study in Peru, some of the methodological problems of measuring rural women's economic participation by sample survey are considered. The specific objective of the sample surveys was to quantify the existing sexual division of labor among the peasant population. The rural household was the unit of analysis, and the focus of measurement was the division of labor by sex in such activities as daily maintenance, household production, and income-generating activitives pursued outside the household. The focus of the survey questionnaire is on the sexual division of labor, but it necessarily must be related to another series of socioeconomic or cultural variables for analysis. The selection of these variables needs to be derived from the hypotheses guiding the study, yet much attention must be given to narrowing the range of inquiry. The time constraint on the length of the questionnaire requires that certain choices be made in terms of the complementary variables to be included. The most important problem in the design of a representative sample survey is the selection of the population to be sampled. The choice of population needs to be compatible with the theoretical framework. Since the interest was to measure the sexual division of labor in terms of class formation, the sample had to be representative of the different class strata in the rural areas. The measurement of access to means of production ideally should be quantitative and qualitative. The choice of the population to be sampled is also constrained by the available data base, a particular problem in rural areas.^ieng