Showing papers in "The Journal of Peasant Studies in 1984"
TL;DR: In this paper, Gramsci's ideas give fresh emphasis to the central importance and dialectical nature of elite-subaltern relations in rural India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and stress upon the negative and derivative aspects of peasant culture and ideology needs to be qualified by an awareness of the strengths and relative autonomy of subaltern politics within the overall structure of elite domination.
Abstract: Such key Gramscian concepts as hegemony and passive revolution, hitherto discussed mainly in relation to Western industrial societies, also have a direct relevance to the study of peasant societies. Critically applied, Gramsci's ideas give fresh emphasis to the central importance and dialectical nature of elite‐subaltern relations in rural India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His stress upon the negative and derivative aspects of peasant culture and ideology needs, however, to be qualified by an awareness of the strengths and relative autonomy of subaltern politics within the overall structure of elite domination.
70 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the way in which rural artisans in one municipio of Guatemala organize production and how this organization impedes the differentiation of the artisanal population into owners and workers.
Abstract: In this paper I discuss the way in which rural artisans in one municipio of Guatemala organize production and how this organization impedes the differentiation of the artisanal population into owners and workers. I show that categories of owners and workers exist in the municipio, but that these categories do not reproduce themselves as classes; instead, they reproduce each other through the life cycle. In order to explain this phenomenon, I look at internal relations of production, the external environment of large‐scale capital, and the role of migration and the stale in the creation of a permanent Guatemalan proletariat and in the creation of an undifferentiated artisanal economy.
40 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the dynamics of rural industrial commodity production in capitalist development in the Oaxaca Valley, Mexico and concluded that labour-intensive industries in capitalism today may not be as uniformly retrograde as some have argued they were in earlier periods of capitalism.
Abstract: This article examines the dynamics of rural industrial commodity production in capitalist development. Data from fieldwork in the Oaxaca Valley, Mexico, are presented and analysed around issues such as the relationship between agriculture and industry, factors influencing the incidence of rural industrial production (between households, communities and districts), the role of household demographics in rural industry, the difference between simple commodity and simple capitalist production, social differentiation and class formation as related to different rural industries, and the role of labour‐intensive rural industrialisation in developing capitalist economies. A general conclusion is that labour‐intensive industries in capitalism today may not be as uniformly retrograde as some have argued they were in earlier periods of capitalism.
33 citations
TL;DR: Chevalier's Civilization and the Stolen Gift as mentioned in this paper provides an anthropological treatment of the cultural elements involved in creating and sustaining distinctive forms of production, by elaborating some of Pierre Bourdieu's notions about social practice in creating cultural as well as material life.
Abstract: Jaques M. Chevalier, Civilization and the Stolen Gift: Capital, Kin and Cult in Eastern Peru, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. In an important new book, Jacques Chevalier advances the concept ‘form of production’ by giving it explicit theoretical treatment. In doing so he reveals a number of significant differences in the way various scholars have used the concept, especially on the central question — the relationship between capitalist and non‐capitalist forms of production in peripheral social formations. This is an old problem, but one that refuses quietly to die. It thus deserves continued discussion. What makes Chevalier's book worthy of extended discussion, however, is that it provides an anthropological treatment of the cultural elements involved in creating and sustaining distinctive forms of production. It does so by elaborating some of Pierre Bourdieu's notions about social practice in creating cultural as well as material life. The two sets of issues are not as far apart as one might...
28 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine how women facilitate Taiwan's comparative advantage in the world economy by considering the ways in which women from a small village community act in defence of the patriarchal family; what their interests may be in maintaining such a family; and how development affects their lives.
Abstract: To maintain political stability and a cheap, elastic labour supply necessary for contemporary capitalism to operate in Taiwan, the government allocates a large share of its budget to national security, a small share to a social welfare infrastructure, and encourages an ideology of patriarchal familism. This paper examines how women facilitate Taiwan's comparative advantage in the world economy by considering: (1) the ways in which women from a small village community act in defence of the patriarchal family; (2) what their interests may be in maintaining such a family; and (3) how development affects their lives.
23 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the various forms of rural protest directed against the United Fruit Company in Colombia between 1900 and 1964 and explore the three factors that explain the tensions between the rural population and the Company: structural tensions between a peasant economy and the export sector; the relationship between peasants and wage-labourers; and the effects of international market cycles on local conditions.
Abstract: This paper examines the various forms of rural protest directed against the United Fruit Company in Colombia between 1900 and 1964. It explores the three factors that explain the tensions between the rural population and the Company: structural tensions between the peasant economy and the export sector; the relationship between peasants and wage‐labourers; and the effects of international market cycles on local conditions. In concluding, it questions the usefulness of typologies that, by positing a structural distinction between peasants and proletarians, neglect the historical dynamics of class formation.
23 citations
TL;DR: A review of the major contributions to a debate between left-wing Turkish intellectuals and political activists during 1969-71 over the character of Turkish agriculture and rural class structure and over the appropriate political strategy for the left can be found in this paper.
Abstract: This article is a review of the major contributions to a debate between left‐wing Turkish intellectuals and political activists during 1969–71 over the character of Turkish agriculture and rural class structure and over the appropriate political strategy for the left. The crux of the disagreement, as in similar debates taking place at the same period in Latin America and India, was the extent to which feudal’ or ‘capitalist’ relations predominated in the countryside, and the implications for the class struggle ‐ in particular for the strategy of class alliances. On the one hand were those who supported a strategy for a ‘national democratic revolution ‘involving cooperation between peasants and workers and the progressive elements of the bourgeoisie to eliminate feudal relations and structures; on the other were those who argued that the Turkish countryside could in no sense be characterized as predominantly feudal, that the mass of rural producers were subject to essentially capitalist forms of exploitati...
19 citations
TL;DR: Gramsci adopted a developmentalist position after becoming a marxist as mentioned in this paper and departed from earlier Italian positions in foreseeing a society in which peasants would eventually though not immediately be peasants no more after the introduction of modern methods of cultivation.
Abstract: Antonio Gramsci adopted a developmentalist position after becoming a marxist. He thus departed from earlier Italian positions in foreseeing a society in which peasants — understood as a structure of petty property and its dependants ‐ would eventually though not immediately be peasants no more after the introduction of modern methods of cultivation. After the success of fascism in 1922 he began to reconsider his assumption that the peasantry were destined to disappear in a new mode of production, which would replace the backward dual economy of Italy. If the peasantry were not always in secular decline before the onward march of capitalism, but could, as in Italy, increase in numbers and political strength even under capitalism, then this called for a reassessment of their social and political role in a marxism which was not simply developmental in the old sense. In the 1930s in particular, Gramsci therefore started to develop strategies for change which assumed that: (1) the peasantry would remain in the...
18 citations
TL;DR: The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. III, No. 11, Kritsman and the Agrarian Marxists, pp. 85-143,.
Abstract: (1984). III. Class stratification of the Soviet countryside. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 11, Kritsman and the Agrarian Marxists, pp. 85-143.
11 citations
11 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the underlying causes of agrarian agitation in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Ireland are uncovered. But the authors focus on the Irish peasantry's defence of traditional rights and customs with regard to the ownership, occupation and use of the land.
Abstract: This paper seeks to uncover the underlying causes of agrarian agitation in eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century Ireland. It argues, in contrast to existing explanations, that rural unrest was a highly complex form of popular protest, disciplined and with clear objectives. These objectives centred on the Irish peasantry's defence of traditional rights and customs with regard to the ownership, occupation and use of the land. It is further argued that these rights and customs were in turn grounded upon a system of social norms, beliefs and obligations which governed the relationship between land, kinship and identity in Irish peasant communities.
TL;DR: The authors pointed out that up until the midnineteenth century at least India's integration into a colonial empire was marked by a broad-based process of under development of which deindustrializa.
Abstract: One of the more remarkable but neglected features of the growth of commercial capitalism on an international scale from the sixteenth century consists of widespread processes of monetization affecting a number of Asian societies, and especially India. This was in turn connected with commercialization of both agrarian and urban economy, and the development of markets and manufactures. By the middle of the eighteenth century, this development had become distorted through increasing European intervention in both trade and manufacture; in this respect colonial occupation was both a culmination of earlier processes, and the means (through political monopoly, use of violence, control over the taxation system) for the East India Company to destroy competition and drive prices downwards in an increasingly competitive world. The corollary was that up until the mid‐nineteenth century at least India's integration into a colonial empire was marked by a broad‐based process of under development of which deindustrializa...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used Patnaik's concept of net hired labour ratio to examine the agrarian class structure in North-East Brazil and found that the incidence of agricultural capitalism in the "homestead" population is relatively high, contrary to the current notions that the homestead population is homogeneous with respect to labour market participation.
Abstract: Patnaik's concept of ‘net hired labour ratio’ is used to examine the agrarian class structure in North‐East Brazil. This analysis goes beyond Patnaik's original contribution by using discriminant analysis to test the mean difference between social classes with respect to variables representing access to means of production, family size and participation in commodity production. The basic result obtained is that the incidence of agrarian capitalism in the ‘peasant’ universe of North‐East Brazil is relatively high. This empirical result contradicts two current notions: (1) that the ‘homestead’ population is homogeneous with respect to labour market participation, and (2) that capitalism only dominates agriculture in an ‘indirect’ way, confined to the circulation sphere.
TL;DR: This article argued that conflict extends beyond protest, and was a phenomenon of both 'closed' and 'open' parishes, and further argued that Swing and the opposition to the New Poor Law did not end in unmitigated failure.
Abstract: Contributions to the debate over social change and conflict in nineteenth‐century England, despite differences, have much common ground. Particularly, they have a conception of conflict that limits it to a category called ‘protest’. In addition, they subscribe to social control models, to a greater or lesser extent, with detriment to our understanding of rural society. The so‐called ‘open/closed’ dichotomy. which has become a major dimension in the debate, assumes that conflict is absent from the ‘closed’ parish. This paper argues that conflict extends beyond protest, and was a phenomenon of both ‘closed’ and ‘open’ parishes. It further argues, particularly against Wells, that Swing and the opposition to the New Poor Law, did not end in unmitigated failure. A brief examination of the implications for the ‘open/closed’ model is made, with a suggestion that models of class conflict are more appropriate for the study of rural society.
TL;DR: The history of the German agricultural worker from the early nineteenth-century abolition of serfdom up to 1914 is examined in this paper, where the authors examine the history of German agricultural workers from 1820 to 1914.
Abstract: This paper examines the history of the German agricultural worker from the early nineteenth‐century abolition of serfdom up to 1914. Initially, peasant labour services and the compulsory farm service of peasant youth on Junker farms were replaced by contractually hired farm servants and the cottager system. The latter involved the exchange of labour for an allocation of the land, whereby the worker become a petty commodity producer and also an employer of labour, in the form of the ancillary workers (Hofganger) he was obliged to provide. Subsequently, from the middle decades of the century, this form of labour was increasingly replaced by confined labourers living in tied cottages, who were virtually landless and paid largely in kind; and were therefore effectively economic objects. At the same time, especially from the 1870s, conditions necessitated increasing reliance upon labourers receiving cash wages. However, this category remained relatively small, and largely impervious to socialist ideology, on a...
TL;DR: In this paper, Kritsman and the Agrarian Marxists discuss the agrarian research in its political context; state policy and the development of the Soviet rural class structure in the 1920s.
Abstract: (1984). II. The agrarian Marxist research in its political context; state policy and the development of the Soviet rural class structure in the 1920s. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 11, Kritsman and the Agrarian Marxists, pp. 61-84.
TL;DR: In this article, a socio-economic differentiation among Sinhalese villagers in a tea-growing area of the Uva Highlands is discussed, focusing on the identification and explanation of a fundamental process of polarisation between households in a given village in terms which are both historically specific and more general to the logic of capitalist penetration into the countryside.
Abstract: The article is concerned with socioeconomic differentiation among Sinhalese villagers in a tea‐growing area of the Uva Highlands. Theoretically, and on the basis of a reassessment of ‘the alternative heuristics of structure and process’, it takes an ‘anti‐structuralist’ approach at odds with recent mode of production analyses, but no less materialist inform and content. The analysis concentrates on the identification and explanation of a fundamental process of polarisation between households in a given village in terms which are both historically specific and more general to the logic of capitalist penetration into the countryside. This provides the materialist basis for a class analysis of the political history of the village over the last 50 years. The conclusion drawn is that only twice have circumstances been such that villagers could begin realistically to put together a political identity as ‘poor peasants’ and ‘rural workers’. Otherwise, there has been no genuine representation of their interests i...
TL;DR: Goodman and Redclift as discussed by the authors consider a book which attempts to present and evaluate Marxist debates on agrarian transition without at first clarifying its own position on Marxist theory and concepts, leading to misinterpretations and misrepresentations of some of these debates, together with a devaluation of the significance of their political inception.
Abstract: David Goodman and Michael Redclift, From Peasant to Proletarian: Capitalist Development and Agrarian Transitions, Oxford: Blackwell, 1981. Pp. xii + 244, £15 (cloth). This review article considers a book which attempts to present and evaluate Marxist debates on agrarian transition without at first clarifying its own position on Marxist theory and concepts. It is suggested here that this omission, combined with a compressed treatment of complex arguments, results in misinterpretations and misrepresentations of some of these debates, together with a devaluation of the significance of their political inception.
TL;DR: A review of a collection of studies of the turbulent Indian state of Bihar emphasises the need for a clearly defined unit of study and for an adequate analysis of social structure as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Arvind N. Das (ed.), Agrarian Movements in India: Studies on 20th Century Bihar, The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3, Special Issue, London: Frank Cass, 1982. Pp. 152; also in hardback; £19.50. This review of a collection of studies of the turbulent Indian state of Bihar emphasises the need for a clearly defined unit of study and for an adequate analysis of social structure. The review examines the diversity of colonial era peasant movements, the importance of nationalism and communalism, and the contrast between the colonial and post‐colonial situations. The review also criticises the misleading presentation of the colonial era peasant leaders as committed radicals and comments that even nowadays the goals of peasant protest are generally reformist rather than radical.
TL;DR: In this article, a Filipino farmer kept his own record of his experience with the new high-yielding rice varieties and their accompanying technology over a period of eight years, since in some seasons he accepted the government's technology and credit package, and in other seasons he managed the farm independently, the record enables comparison of management strategies and results.
Abstract: A Filipino farmer keeps his own record of his experience with the new high‐yielding rice varieties and their accompanying technology over a period of eight years. Since in some seasons he accepts the government's technology and credit package, and in other seasons he manages the farm independently, the record enables comparison of management strategies and results. It suggests how erratic and expensive the new technology is, and indicates that both costs and risks increase under the state's finance and supervision. The liabilities and implications of agricultural research and assistance ‘packages’ are discussed.
TL;DR: The roots of rural agitation in India, 1914-47: A comment on charlesworth's reply is given in this paper, where the root of rural agitations in India are discussed.
Abstract: (1984). The roots of rural agitation in India, 1914–47: A comment on charlesworth's reply. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 118-121.