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For nearly four decades, anthropologists have grappled with the empirical and theoretical implications of the work of the Russian economist Alexandre Chayanov. At the centre of Chayanov's theory is the premise that the internal dynamics of peasant societies, principally in terms of the ratio of workers to consumers, is the prime determinant of domestic productive intensity. Anthropologists have tested Chayanov's thesis in a wide variety of ethnographic and historical settings, utilizing a number of methodological approaches. The purpose of this article is to examine the wider theoretical implications of Chayanov's approach as it has been used in anthropology, especially in terms of the role of empiricism in ethnographic inquiry. The argument presented here is that an overly zealous devotion to “dutiful empiricism”, to use Geertz's (1961: 18) term, is apt to limit anthropology's epistemological usefulness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]