Meet the author: The Laissez-Faire Peasant
Posted on 5th February, 2025
Earlier this month, Jovana Diković’s fascinating open access book The Laissez-Faire Peasant was published. We caught up with her to talk about her fascinating research in Serbia and Kosovo, why peasants are misunderstood and just why ‘Kill your darlings’ was a useful piece of advice she received when completing her PhD.
Tell us about yourself.
I am an economic anthropologist. At the University of Belgrade, I obtained my Bachelor diploma in social anthropology and Masters diploma in political sciences. In 2012, I moved to Zurich to complete a doctoral degree in economic anthropology.
Since then, my main research interests have centred around agriculture and food systems, peasantry, cooperation, rural economies and sustainability. As an avid rural explorer, I conducted more than two years of fieldwork research in villages in Serbia and Kosovo.
During longer research stays at the University of Ottawa and University of Pittsburgh, I furthered my studies in cooperation, self-governance, and property rights. Since 2022 I have headed a research unit on sustainable development and inclusive growth at the Centre for Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, at the School of Management in Fribourg. In the past eleven years, I have taught several courses on rural economy, development, environment and sustainability at the University of St. Gallen, University of Fribourg, and University of Zurich.
What motivated you to write and publish The Laissez-Faire Peasant?
Serbian peasants were my main motivation. In the book I attempt to show that peasants are not the victims of state politics or market economy which is a prevailing image of them but are rather autonomous and competent actors. Peasants are the architects of their own and local wellbeing, and their conceptions of development are often opposed to state plans for agriculture and rural development. Moreover, state plans for rural development in Serbian villages have been continuously distorted and interrupted by autonomous actions and values of peasants because the state programs do not provide what peasants seek. It is less known that peasants’ values determine the level of their cooperation with the state and are the main drivers of individual and local wellbeing.
Contrary to this explanation, the rural scholarship predominantly focuses on the diverse forms of peasants’ marginalization, completely neglecting that even when that is being true, such a marginalization is often intentionally sustained in order to protect peasant’s autonomy, their ownership of land, way of doing things, and safe distance from the state. In other words, peasants know how to deal with their marginalization. Such an insight questions mainstream interpretations of power relations between the peasants and the state in the literature and public discussions, and urges rethinking theoretical conceptions of the peasantry, and generally paternalistic agricultural policies.
In a nutshell, the book questions the broader implications of the purposefulness of state programs for rural development (which are doomed to fail in the local context), and whether peasants need state rural development at all.
How and why did you get into this subject area?
In my mid-twenties, I got an opportunity to accompany an older colleague and conduct research on vernacular architecture in several rural municipalities in Serbia. This allowed me to became familiar with the vernacular building techniques and the ways local people preserve their built heritage.
During that time, I discovered a fascinating world I did not know much about. It was the experience of being and living in villages among villagers – not the results of research – that hooked me. I discovered the world of our co-citizens about which we usually believe we know much, and eventually we either misinterpret or romanticize their realities. I wanted to pick up a village life in its entirety and to explain what matters in rural communities, particularly in regard to local rural development. And so, in my thirties, I undertook research on rural development in three villages in Vojvodina province in Serbia.
Why did you choose to publish your work Open Access?
Typical university publisher books are often expensive and out of reach for the interested and non-academic audience. I always have hard time deciding to purchase a book that costs more than €50. In some parts of the world people live on a less than a $3a day- buying books investing in education is often sacrificed first in those societies.
My intention was to publish a book which is accessible, downloadable, and easily available for anyone with an interest in the topic. Open access has allowed me to do this.
Open access has a noble intention of making the books available for everyone and disrupting the monopolies of publishers who established the system for generating enormous profits at the expense of authors.
How do you see your research contributing to a better understanding of the world, and what potential benefits might it offer in the future?
My contribution is in bridging the gap towards understanding peasants’ motivations and realities; these are generally not understood by outsiders or are subjected to severe criticism.
When peasants are not perceived as victims, they are often accused of being severe polluters and free riders. By getting to know them and their farming practices we can understand their attitudes beter. This has the potential to lead toward sound and effective agricultural and rural policies. If we extend the ideas of my book to agri-environmental context and fixing bad practices in agricultural production, they contain an important moral: subtle and direct coercion of peasants will not force them to work toward environmental goals.
Finding a cooperation threshold for sustainable agriculture will not be possible without a dialogue between peasants, consumers, legislators and policymakers. Without this dialogue, the incentives and agendas of sustainable agricultural policies will be failing, one after another. Policymakers, legislators, and consumers need to have an understanding of those whose practices they intend to change – in this case those of the peasants – and to understand what is realistic on that path.
Surprise us with something unexpected you encountered in your research for this book.
‘Land never stays uncultivated, no matter the political and economic conditions’, was one of the most revealing statements by a peasant. It means that peasants will cultivate their land even when they are facing high costs, bankruptcy, or when it is a complete loss for them. In another words, peasants are not only utility maximisers. That was a turning point which changed my perspective and made me rethink my research questions. It forced me to examine the issue of the relationships between the peasants and land, and peasants and the state from an unorthodox angle and understand their viewpoint freed from layers of scientific knowledge installed by post-socialist and rural studies about peasants. It also inspired me to explain why existing scientific conceptions about peasants are wrong, which occupies a special place in my book.
What do you see as the most exciting future directions for research in your field, and what breakthroughs do you hope to see in the coming years?
I am eager to see how the understanding of land property will develop in the era of vertical farming, GMO production, and speed technological advancements that at least hypothetically might enable satisfactory production on smaller and smaller plots of land, or in a laboratory. That will be indeed an exciting time, both for anthropologists and societies. I wonder how agriculture, practices of farming and farming knowledge will change, when practically anyone given meeting certain conditions such as vertical space, agri- or lab-tech, can become a farmer. So, this will change an image of farmers, who can be an everyman without agricultural knowledge and skills on how to use agricultural mechanisation, without which today’s agriculture cannot be imagined. If development of agriculture follows such a path, it will be a structural transformation urging reconsideration of the modern view of land property, concept of farmers, production, and production ethics.
What advice would you give to students who are interested in pursuing a career in your field, and what skills or qualities do you think are most important for success?
The worst thing one can do is to become a niche expert. This is important, to the limited extent which requires technical knowledge of the field and literature but it will not make you a good scholar. ‘Kill your darlings’, was one of the best pieces of advice when I was doing my PhD, and which I still find very useful in my career. It makes you step down from your ivory tower, challenge the niche knowledge and explore the world outside the domain of your expertise.
About the author
Jovana Diković is an economic anthropologist, publicist, and Head of Sustainable Development and Inclusive Growth at the Center for Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, School of Management, Fribourg.