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While population growth has undoubtedly played a role in this process, the development of market relationships is surely the main cause of the increasing disequilibrium between population and resources at the local level. Social organizafion Social organization basically involves land-tenure arrangements and various kinds of relations of production between individuals and social groups that have legal, cultural and historical rights and obligations relative to the productive use of land as a resource.

Peasant smallholdings, family farms, large estates, plantations and communal-tenure systems may exist within the same national society. Often. 4frica) or when the large estate exchanges labour. produce and services with surrounding peasant holdings (Latin America). The various systems use the reso~ces at their disposal in different ways. It cannot be said that there exists a single optimal combination. Historical, political, social and institutional factors are as important as economic and technical ones.

Asian extremity) would seem to have elective similarities (which in fact are structural) with the model of egalitarian and frugal socialism which starts with agrarian expropriation and has its socio-political and economic basis in the commune-in the Chinese style. This characterization obviously does not commit these countries to agrarianism (China is industrializing), and the proletarian ideal of life is not excluded. But it colours the transition process with the hues of an almost direct democracy, of an anti-bureaucratic approach and of a puritan (in fact on-urban) renewal of life styles which separates them considerably from.