Peasant agency, collective action, and institutions in early medieval societies: an approach from NW Iberia

Abstract

This paper engages critically with the idea that the individual household is the basic unit of social production and reproduction in peasant societies. Building upon a relational approach to agency and a critical approach to institutions, it argues that in order to develop a comprehensive theoretical framework on peasant agency in early medieval societies, we must account for the attested forms of collective action and consider the institutions that may have served as an interface between individual and collective agency. To demonstrate the potential of such approach, the paper addresses the role of property and commons as institutions mediating access to natural resources and conditioning individual agency. For this, the paper focuses on the extant written sources from NW Iberia. Ultimately, the aim is to explore avenues for dialogue between different disciplinary and methodological approaches to peasant agency in early medieval societies.