Peasants seem to have been around for a long time in history, for peasants are usually defined as farmers who produce surpluses for social elites. Their history is therefore as long as the history of the state.Whether peasants will continue to be around in the future is a trickier question, and there's now a lively debate about whether calling contemporary rural people "peasants" makes any sense at the end of the Twentieth Century. Indeed, in many cases it seems necessary to ask whether modern lifestyles make it possible to continue to make a clear distinction between "urban" and "rural" society.