Serfs, Peasants, and Socialists

Serfs, Peasants, and Socialists: A Former Serf Village in the Republic of Guinea by William Derman offers a detailed ethnographic and historical study of social transformation in the Fouta-Djallon highlands. Focusing on the Fulbe people and the descendants of their former serfs, Derman traces the impact of precolonial hierarchies, French colonial rule, and Guinean independence on village life. The book reconstructs the political and kinship systems that once organized Fulbe society, marked by stratification between chiefs, free Fulbe, bush Fulbe, and serfs, and shows how colonial taxation, labor demands, and the monetization of the economy gradually eroded these distinctions. At the same time, Derman documents how the colonial administration’s use of loyal intermediaries weakened the legitimacy of traditional chiefs and introduced new cleavages between rulers and ruled.At the center of the book is Hollaande, a village of former serfs, where Derman examines kinship, marriage, subsistence agriculture, market activity, and religious life in order to show how villagers negotiate the legacy of inequality under the conditions of postcolonial socialism. The account highlights continuities as well as ruptures: while legal serfdom was abolished and socialist policies stress equality, former social categories continue to shape local relations and identity. By situating this village within the broader Guinean project of President Ahmed Sékou Touré—who envisioned socialism as both process and goal—Derman connects micro-level ethnography with national political ideology. The book provides an invaluable contribution to African studies, illuminating the transformation of labor, kinship, and authority from serfdom to peasantry to socialism, and underscoring the uneven and contested nature of social change in the Guinean countryside.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.