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The writings of Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) on social change are of a significant interest in the study of the rural world. In two of his essays, Thomas Müntzer(1921) and Heritage of Our Times(1935), Bloch shows how nostalgia and proximity to nature turn peasants into people driven by the memory or dream of an ideal society combining primitive communism with arcadian nature. This peasant identity may be marshalled to utopian ends or, on the contrary, it can feed desires for regression and conservatism. These theories allow Bloch to fine-tune the cross-sectional analysis of peasant identity and its ties to religion, tradition, nature and politics. He thus finds his place within a tradition of heterodox thinkers on peasant identity who have influenced ecologist thought.