paysannerie

CONT: Peasantry. The one remaining category of non-urban society is the peasant. Peasants are not nomadic but sedentary (thus distinguishable from both hunting-gathering societies and pastoralists); they are not horticultural tribal societies but more intensively and fully agricultural; and neither are they urban, like populations who lived in the centres of the classic civilizations. Except for a few other characteristics, however, writers on peasantry have not agreed on a precise definition.