Showing papers in "The Journal of Peasant Studies in 1992"
TL;DR: The classic thesis proposed by Daniel Thorner concerning the existence of a built-in "depressor" in Indian agriculture is examined in the light of recent evidence and argument.
Abstract: The article reviews evidence on agrarian change in India, including studies of the impact of the ‘green revolution’, of agrarian politics, and of rural labour. The classic thesis proposed by Daniel Thorner concerning the existence of a built‐in ‘depressor’ in Indian agriculture is then examined in the light of recent evidence and argument. It is suggested that the thesis, like much of the literature on agrarian structure and change in India, crucially neglects the way in which agrarian processes are influenced by larger political economic forces, Taking a dialectical view of change must mean reversing this neglect of power and politics.
91 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the social implications of contract farming promoted in smallholding areas and argued that rather than resulting in overall proletarianisation of the local peasantry, contract farming may accelerate its differentiation and disintegration by converting rich peasants into peasant capitalists.
Abstract: This article examines the social implications of contract farming promoted in smallholding areas. It is argued that rather than resulting in overall proletarianisation of the local peasantry, contract farming may accelerate its differentiation and disintegration by converting rich peasants into peasant capitalists. The argument is supported by a historical analysis of socio‐economic and organisational processes in a Chilean smallholding community which experienced two consecutive waves of agribusiness expansion: a tobacco boom in the 1950s and a fruit export expansion in the 1970s and 1980s.
71 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the processes involved in the emergence, operation and eventual decline of the indentured labour system in the Assam tea plantations in India in the colonial period and argued that the indenture system designed to supply low cost labour to the expanding plantations was wasteful and inimical to the physical reproduction of the labour force.
Abstract: This article examines the processes involved in the emergence, operation and the eventual decline of the indentured labour system in the Assam tea plantations in India in the colonial period. As against the recent revisionist view which justifies the existence of indentured system of supply and employment of labour, it is argued here that the indenture system designed to supply low cost labour to the expanding plantations was wasteful and inimical to the physical reproduction of the labour force. The decline of the indenture system is attributed to the sharpening internal contradictions of the system rather than humanitarian actions on the part of the colonial state.
70 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a close examination of World Bank agricultural reform policies in Kenya and Ghana in the 1980s, the author argues that the structural adjustment agenda has been either aborted or, where implemented, has not had the results intended.
Abstract: On the basis of a close examination of World Bank agricultural reform policies in Kenya and Ghana in the 1980s, the author argues that the structural adjustment agenda has been either aborted or, where implemented, has not had the results intended. In both cases this is because the adjustment problematic assumes the presence of structures and conditions at variance to African realities. As a result, the main beneficiaries of adjustment tend to be the forces it ostensibly sets out to subvert.
55 citations
TL;DR: In this article, labour control and labour resistance in the plantations of colonial Malaya are discussed. But the focus is on the plantations and not on the workers themselves, as in this paper.
Abstract: (1992). Labour control and labour resistance in the plantations of colonial Malaya. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 19, Plantations, Proletarians and Peasants in Colonial Asia, pp. 87-105.
34 citations
TL;DR: In this article, Proletarianisation and deproletarianisation on the colonial plantation are discussed. But they do not consider the role of women on the plantations, and do not address the impact of gender discrimination.
Abstract: (1992). Introduction: Proletarianisation and deproletarianisation on the colonial plantation. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 19, Plantations, Proletarians and Peasants in Colonial Asia, pp. 1-40.
33 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the expansion of rubber production in colonial Indochina after 1910 can be understood through the changing patterns in the capitalist world economy, and hence can only be explained by reference to the localised socioeconomic conditions in which metropolitan capital and indigenous labour confronted each other.
Abstract: The expansion of rubber production in colonial Indochina after 1910 can be understood through the changing patterns in the capitalist world economy. However, the plantation system which evolved in colonial Indochina, including the methods of labour procurement, the closed compounds, the rigorous work regime and harsh disciplining of labourers, the forms of payment as compensation for expenditure of labour, and the strategies designed to speed-up and stretch-out labour-time, was embedded within an historically-specific context, and hence can only be explained by reference to the localised socio-economic conditions in which metropolitan capital and indigenous labour confronted each other.
31 citations
30 citations
TL;DR: The notion that a "coolie" was essentially a peasant, given to a generalised disposition of immobility, has been criticised by as mentioned in this paper. But the persistence of this fictive construction has served to obstruct and/or deny the proletarianisation of migrant coolie labour, spawning a set of contradictions that in turn revealed the contradictions inherent in the material practices of capitalism in Asia.
Abstract: This essay attempts to trace some of the more significant discursive and material practices of a gendered and racist colonial Asia of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that went towards constituting the category of 'the coolie'. Especially dear to the discourse in question was the notion that a 'coolie' was essentially a peasant, given to a generalised disposition of immobility. The persistence of this fictive construction, we argue, served to obstruct and/or deny the proletarianisation of migrant coolie labour, spawning a set of contradictions that in turn revealed the contradictions inherent in the material practices of capitalism in Asia. Chief among these contradictions was that of a peasant-coolie who was both immobile and unstable, hyper-settled and unsettled. These contradictions infected nationalist as much as colonialist literature, and persist to this day, not only in the rhetoric of emerging nationalisms of certain nation-states where 'coolies' are immigrants, but also, to one degree or another, in the discourses of labour unions and 'coolies' themselves. The resultant identity of a 'coolie' is best described as a fractured one, whose most poignant representations are to be found in the fractured moral identities of the female coolie and child coolie.
28 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors take issue with theories which suppose an essential contradiction between capitalist production and unfree labour relations using the history of sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic as a case study, it is argued that capitalist entrepreneurs tried very hard to restrict free wage labour relations.
Abstract: This article takes issue with theories which suppose an essential contradiction between capitalist production and unfree labour relations Using the history of sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic as a case study, it is argued that capitalist entrepreneurs tried very hard to restrict free wage labour relations On the Dominican sugar plantations this goal was reached by a system of differential mechanisation which brought about a rigid separation between the mass of unskilled field workers and the restricted number of (semi‐) skilled workers This labour division could be reproduced over a long period of time because the field workers were migrant labourers from Haiti liable to strong racial discrimination within Dominican society
23 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the sugar barons in the colonial Philippines were described as a class of native planter class in colonial Asia, and they were identified as a type of sugar baron.
Abstract: (1992). Sugar barons: Formation of a native planter class in the colonial Philippines. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 19, Plantations, Proletarians and Peasants in Colonial Asia, pp. 106-141.
TL;DR: In this article, the intimate relation between land tax and the nature of property rights in India under the British is brought out; and it is shown that British land laws tended to aggravate rather than mitigate the insecurity of peasants in the Bombay Deccan.
Abstract: The question of private property in land in the Eastern lands including India has been debated in Europe at least since the seventeenth century. It has been claimed that the British rulers had, for the first time, created private property in land and thereby conferred security on the owners. This claim is examined by analysing actually how land laws and land tax in the Bombay Deccan districts operated in the nineteenth century. The intimate relation between land tax and the nature of property rights in India under the British is brought out; and it is shown that British land laws tended to aggravate rather than mitigate the insecurity of peasants in the Bombay Deccan. The withdrawal of the state from public works or affordable loans to the peasants for land improvement was also a factor which exacerbated peasant insecurity and delivered peasants into the usurious net of the moneylenders. The debt process and the relation between ownership of tenure rights, the control over land, and insecure tenancy are e...
TL;DR: The article explores the manner in which peasant possession of land and other means of subsistence limited productive utilisation of capital and technology, triggered a certain demographic regime and, in turn, disrupted further developmental possibilities in India.
Abstract: Some of the most influential arguments about the failure of dynamic development in Indian agriculture during the colonial period have focused on the scarcity of capital, the absence of suitable technology, and demographic growth. This article assesses the role of those limitations, but contends that they describe the impasse of colonial Indian agriculture rather than explain why it happened. It is necessary to explain why available capital was not used productively, why formal potentials for technical improvements were not introduced into production, and why demographic growth should not have stimulated innovations rather than cause technological stagnation. To do so requires bringing into central focus the social‐property relations. The article explores the manner in which peasant possession of land and other means of subsistence limited productive utilisation of capital and technology, triggered a certain demographic regime and, in turn, disrupted further developmental possibilities. The article is base...
TL;DR: In this article, it is shown that with the improvement in the Soviet economy, Bukharin's ideas changed considerably from the pro-kulak stance of the mid-1920s.
Abstract: Was the Bukharin alternative feasible? It is first shown that with the improvement in the Soviet economy, his ideas changed considerably from the pro‐kulak stance of the mid‐1920s. Next, we focus on his concrete proposal, eschewing forced collectivisation, to overcome the crucial grain procurement crisis of 1927–29. Then follow counter‐factual exercises, drawing also on the experiences of contemporary developing and other late industrialising countries, on the prospects of Soviet industrialisation in the 1930s, within the NEP framework; the pace of development need not have slackened. Finally, the contemporary relevance of some of Bukharin's ideas is also underlined.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the role of enclave plantations, ‘hemmed-in’ villages and dualistic representations in colonial Ceylon in the context of land reform.
Abstract: (1992). ‘Enclave’ plantations, ‘hemmed‐in’ villages and dualistic representations in colonial Ceylon. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 19, Plantations, Proletarians and Peasants in Colonial Asia, pp. 199-228.
TL;DR: In this paper, the limits to such land accumulation may have been reached in some areas in rural Fiji and the effects observed have included landlessness and poverty, which is not because they are opposed to commercial agriculture or individual gain but more because their effective sovereignty over land has been lost to the state.
Abstract: Processes of class formation in rural Fiji have been suggested in a number of recent works. Land accumulation has been seen as a vital part of this and the effects observed have included landless‐ness and poverty. However, this article suggests that the limits to such land accumulation may have been reached in some areas. Because Fiji has retained a form of communal tenure over most of its land, indigenous Fijians have been able to resist continued loss of land through leasing. This is not because they are opposed to commercial agriculture or individual gain but more because their effective sovereignty over land has been lost to the state and returns to leasing are minimal.