Showing papers in "The Journal of Peasant Studies in 1998"
TL;DR: This paper found that the incidence of both women-headed households and rural poverty has increased with the polarisation of agrarian production and the exclusionary restructuring of the migrant labour system.
Abstract: Migrant labour in Southern Africa is associated historically with rural poverty and a high incidence of women‐headed households. Poverty alleviation approaches to social policy ask whether in this context rural women‐headed households are poorer than those headed by men. Ample research from the region shows that the answer is not always, a finding once more confirmed here in an analysis of Botswana. This case suggests, however, that the wrong question is being asked. The incidence of both women‐headed households and rural poverty has increased with the polarisation of agrarian production and the exclusionary restructuring of the migrant labour system. We need to ask not whom to target, but what should be done when capital no longer needs the labour that it pulled from rural households over so many generations.
123 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines land and production, poverty and power, as coordinates of the agrarian question in South Africa, and uses them to sketch the context of the apartheid legacy, to interrogate the discourses of land and agricultural policy reform, and to investigate the paradox of the apparent marginality of reform in the ANC Government's agenda alongside a widespread and dynamic politics of land The authors.
Abstract: The article examines land and production, poverty and power, as coordinates of the agrarian question in South Africa, and uses them to sketch the context of the apartheid legacy, to interrogate the discourses of land and agricultural policy reform, and to investigate the paradox of the apparent marginality of reform in the ANC Government's agenda alongside a widespread and dynamic politics of land and farming. In particular, it confronts stereotypical views of large farm and small farm paths of agrarian development in post‐apartheid South Africa, and suggests the importance of recent work by Mamdani [1996] on the colonial state in Africa and its legacy to the politics of agrarian reform and its relationship with national democratic revolution.
77 citations
TL;DR: A small but growing number of commentators are now critiquing much neopopulist theorising on Chipko, and this article provides an overview of these critiques as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Although the Chipko movement is practically non‐existent in its region of origin it remains one of the most frequently deployed examples of an environmental and/or a women's movement in the South. A small but growing number of commentators are now critiquing much neopopulist theorising on Chipko, and this article provides an overview of these critiques. It then takes the debate further with reference to a more recent regional movement in the hills. By doing so, the author argues that it is possible to develop a more plausible account of gender, environment and the state in the Uttaranchal region, and illustrate common weaknesses in neopopulist understandings of Chipko and other social movements in the South.
68 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the history and political economy of the public distribution system (PDS) in India and conclude that in the most recent era, there are two contradictory tendencies (one coming from economic rationalisation, the other from populist politics) which push and pull the PDS in different directions.
Abstract: This article discusses the history and political economy of the Public Distribution System (PDS) in India. This food distribution programme, which dates from 1939, is meant to increase food security both at the national and the household level. Since its emergence, it has passed through several phases, the latest one starting in 1991 when India introduced a Structural Adjustment Programme. From a social constructivist perspective, this article aims at understanding (a) the most important features of this system in the various phases of its history, (b) the social processes that led to the emergence and subsequent development of distribution policy and (c) the various functions PDS has served in the course of its history. It concludes that in the most recent era, there are two contradictory tendencies (one coming from economic rationalisation, the other from populist politics) which push and pull the PDS in different directions. The latter tendency is so strong that a drastic curtailment of the food distri...
66 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that rather than challenging traditional inequities and revivalist tendencies, the historical representations, premises and prescriptions of ecofeminism (especially i.e., the historical representation, premises, prescriptions, and assumptions of eco-feminism) failed to provide a corrective.
Abstract: There is today a widespread recognition that for effectively managing local forests and commons, we need the active involvement of village communities. But what shape should community institutions for environmental management take? Many favour the revival or replication of traditional ones. But what would this imply for social equity? Indeed are even the newly emergent institutions challenging traditionally unequal social relations? While the issue of appropriate institutions for environmental management is still being debated, there is a striking absence of a gender perspective within the debate. This neglect of gender continues in the face of a substantial parallel literature (and movement) that has grown under the banner of ‘ecofeminism’, Why has ecofeminism failed to provide a corrective? To what extent can it so serve? It is argued here that rather than challenging traditional inequities and revivalist tendencies, the historical representations, premises and prescriptions of ecofeminism (especially i...
64 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the changes in village self-governance in the reform period and reflect upon the potential of village selfgovernance to contribute towards a broader democratization process in China.
Abstract: This article explores the changes in village self‐governance in the reform period. It reflects upon the potential of village self‐governance to contribute towards a broader democratisation process in China. It begins by reviewing rural governance in the pre‐reform period, drawing attention to the factors stimulating change. It then examines the newly emerging system of village self‐governance, focussing on the village committees, village assemblies and village representative assemblies. How this new system is implemented forms the subject of the third section. Finally the article considers the potential contribution of village self‐governance towards democratisation.
61 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors give a historical account of two cases of agrarian doctrine, one of nineteenth-century Quebec following self-government in 1848 and the other of twenty-first-century Kenya following political independence in 1963.
Abstract: Doctrines of development are understood through a distinction between intentional development and the immanent process of capitalist development. Agrarian doctrine consists of proposals, usually associated with official policy, to undertake agrarian schemes of development based on small‐farm, household production. The intention is to compensate for mass unemployment, urban poverty and the threat of rural emigration. This article gives a historical account of two cases of agrarian doctrine. The first, that of nineteenth‐century Quebec following self‐government in 1848, illustrates the intention of land colonisation schemes to prevent emigration from French Canadian territory to the United States. In the second case, that of twentieth‐century Kenya, schemes of household production were developed in the face of the emergence of mass unemployment; their promotion, especially after political independence in 1963, accompanied the development of indigenous capitalism. The social trusteeship of development is the...
58 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors re-examine the old question of whether the agricultural workforce on the (former) state and collective farms of rural Russia are properly to be called "peasants" and conclude that all possible answers to this latter question are gloomily ironic.
Abstract: This article re‐examines the old question of whether the agricultural workforce on the (former) state and collective farms of rural Russia are properly to be called ‘peasants’. It shows that the question itself involves an important degree of conceptual confusion. These people still, it is true, call themselves peasants, but this is an expression of their attitudes toward the state, not ‐ or not primarily ‐ a description of their economic or social role. The article then goes on to show, however, that the expansion of ‘private plot’ production in post‐Soviet Russia has been an important cause of the current crisis of large farm ('collective') production there. It ends by considering the question of how far this ‘triumph’ of private plot production over large‐scale production can be considered a ‘peasants’ revenge’ whether by the people themselves or by an ‘outside’ observer. It concludes that all possible answers to this latter question are gloomily ironic.
43 citations
TL;DR: The extension of successful land occupations to new areas has been based on the ‘transplantation’ of leaders and the recruitment of local cadres who have assimilated the lessons of the MST and created the basis for the extension of land occupations in regions beyond their original areas of strength.
Abstract: Land occupations led by Brazil's most dynamic social movement the Landless Workers Movement (MST) began as a regional phenomenon. The south‐east and the north‐east regions were initially the centres of land occupations. The successful occupations in these areas were influenced by the origins of the movement, their proximity to urban areas with sympathetic support networks, concentrations of landless workers and the availability of vast areas of uncultivated land. Initial land settlements led to successful occupations in adjoining areas. Conditions which led to successful organising were later systematised by the MST leaders into a national strategy. Subsequently this strategy directed social intervention in other regions and created the basis for the extension of land occupations in regions beyond their original areas of strength. The extension of successful land occupations to new areas has been based on the ‘transplantation’ of leaders and the recruitment of local cadres who have assimilated the lessons...
31 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the implications of different contracts found in the land market in the study village were analyzed based on original field data, and a variety of tenurial contracts including land mortgage, with different terms and conditions, have been found.
Abstract: Based on original field data this article analyses the implications of different contracts found in the land market in the study village. A variety of tenurial contracts including land mortgage, with different terms and conditions, have been found. However, landless labourers were discriminated against by lessors because of their lack of working capital and inadequate cash to lease in land on a cash payment basis. Land mortgage is resorted to by poor peasant as a strategy to mobilise funds for urgent purposes and thereby to stop land alienation. The behaviour of land sale and purchase transactions showed the sluggish nature of the land market, but distress sale is an important phenomenon found in the village. Both intra‐class and inter‐class land transfer were found and the process of differentiation was complex. Rich farmers have tried to consolidate and enlarge their land holdings through selling of low quality and unfavourably located plots and buying better quality and favourably located plots. The pr...
25 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors report the first results of fieldwork carried out in the mixed grain and dairy farming areas of northern and central European Russia in the summers of 1996 and 1997.
Abstract: This analysis reports the first results of fieldwork carried out in the mixed grain and dairy farming areas of northern and central European Russia in the summers of 1996 and 1997 The survey data collected show, predictably, a massive decline in output and investment on all farms — whether former state and collective farms or the new family farms The effects of the agrarian slump are not equally distributed, however A minority of the former state and collective farms in particular are surviving and restructuring in and through the present crisis This article describes and analyses this restructuring process and considers some of its possible implications for the future and for the development prospects of an agrarian capitalism in Russia
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine why populism persists as an explanation for environment-society interaction and the consequences of this for meeting local needs and argue that populist explanations have allowed the state to retain final control over the distribution of benefit streams from forests and respond to local demands with accommodative policy statements.
Abstract: In the last ten years, the definition of the national interest in forest policy in India has changed. Before 1988, the national interest had been defined as industrial forestry. Since 1988, the priorities are conservation and meeting local subsistence needs. This reorientation in policy has developed alongside a populist critique of the ideology of development in colonial and post‐independence forest management. This article examines why populism persists as an explanation for environment‐society interaction and the consequences of this for meeting local needs. It is argued that populist explanations have allowed the state to retain final control over the distribution of benefit streams from forests and respond to local demands with accommodative policy statements.
TL;DR: Byres as discussed by the authors examined the agrarian transition in the United Kingdom and the United States in the context of Capitalism from Above and Capitalism from Below: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy.
Abstract: Capitalism from Above and Capitalism from Below: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy, by Terence J. Byres. London: Macmillan Press, 1996. Pp.xxiv + 490. £60 (hardback). ISBN 0 333 66657 7 In his Capitalism from Above and Capitalism from Below: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy, T.J. Byres has as his concern an examination of the contemporary relevance of critical issues surrounding the development of agriculture in capitalist societies, as these unfolded in the past. Part of that relates to the agrarian roots of capitalist industrialisation. The historical experience, in this regard, of England, Prussia, the United States, France and Japan, is his chosen terrain, and in the present volume the manner of resolution of the agrarian question in two of these, Prussia ('capitalism from above') and the United States ('capitalism from below'), is addressed. In a rich, thoroughly researched and carefully argued examination of ‘agrarian transition’ in these cases ‐ in which he stresses that in the Uni...
TL;DR: This paper argued that the colonial state considered civil society antithetical to community, and that for colonial administrators African civil society represented the corruption of development, and thus resisted the colonial project of preserving community in the African countryside.
Abstract: Much current development literature equates civil society with community and invokes both in the name of development. Using Northern Ghana as a case study, this essay argues that the colonial state considered civil society antithetical to community. That is, for colonial administrators African civil society represented the corruption of development. Driven by forces of political and economic change, civil society pressed against the colonial project of preserving community in the African countryside. In response, the colonial state invoked the idea of community, not to encourage civil society but rather to block its emergence in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast.
TL;DR: The role of the contract farmers' co-operative associated with Pamol, a subsidiary of the giant Unilever company, in the South West Province of Anglophone Cameroon is examined in this paper.
Abstract: This study examines the role of the contract farmers’ co‐operative associated with Pamol, a subsidiary of the giant Unilever company, in the South West Province of Anglophone Cameroon. This cooperative is dominated by a small stratum of large producers with close links to the Pamol management and the state. Although they are the most important contract farmers in terms of quantity and quality of produce, they are most dependent on the management for their supply of inputs, as well as for transport, processing and marketing facilities. Little wonder that they were the farmers who formed a co‐operative in the early 1980s, when deteriorating market conditions for palm oil threatened the company's continuing existence and the farmers’ chances for capital accumulation. Unable to force the management to keep to the terms of the contract, the executive board of the co‐operative tried to achieve a larger measure of autonomy vis‐a‐vis the company by creating nurseries and transport and processing facilities of its...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a new framework for the analysis of the South Indian economy over the medieval and early modern epochs, centred on the effects of social property relations.
Abstract: In this article I present a new framework for the analysis of the South Indian economy over the medieval and early modern epochs, centred on the effects of social property relations. I argue that the overall pattern was one of steady economic development, but with a marked increase in trade and commodity development in the early modern era. This is explained through a transformation of intra‐class relations that followed the fall of the Vijayanagara Empire. Whereas in the medieval period, economic growth had been subject to the constraints imposed by effective lordly cohesion, which squeezed peasant income and limited trade, this cohesiveness gave way under the hammer blows dealt to it by Vijayanagara rulers. As the South entered the early modern era, lords found themselves without the traditional mechanisms of class organisation, and producers were able to capitalise on their weakness for economic gain. Nevertheless, production still remained peasant based, and, pace some of the more ambitious claims of ...
TL;DR: In this article, the state has intruded in the labour process of the highland wet-rice farmers of Central Sulawesi since the imposition of Dutch colonial rule in 1905, and the transformations in this work party over time and the resultant political ramafications are examined.
Abstract: The state has intruded in the labour process of the highland wet‐rice farmers of Central Sulawesi since the imposition of Dutch colonial rule in 1905. Capitalist development since that time has resulted in differentiation in the ownership of the means of production; however, class tensions have been countered by the New Order state's shrouding the work process in a ‘discursive traditionalism’ which transforms wage labour into a ‘work party’. The transformations in this work party over time and the resultant political ramafications are examined.
TL;DR: The authors argued that macroeconomic policies are inherently detrimental to the agrarian sector, are undermining the prospects for capitalism and the rise of a rural bourgeoisie, and are hindering economic growth.
Abstract: Since 1990, significant institutional and policy change has occurred in the Russian agrarian sector. A crucial question is whether these changes will facilitate rural capitalism and the emergence of a rural bourgeoisie. This article examines Russian domestic economic policies and international trade policies, arguing that macroeconomic policies are inherently detrimental to the agrarian sector, are undermining the prospects for capitalism and the rise of a rural bourgeoisie, and are hindering economic growth. Since the onset of agrarian reform, financial and material investments into agriculture have been slashed. Russia has also pursued an open trade policy which has witnessed an increase in food imports which pits higher priced domestic food against lower priced, better quality imports. As a consequence the agricultural sector is not fulfilling basic requirements for economic growth. Based on these trends, the article concludes that current prospects for the development of a rural bourgeoisie are not fa...
TL;DR: A conference volume, Economic Development and Agricultural Productivity, edited by Amit Bhaduri and Rune Skarstein, is reviewed in this article, which addresses the causes of low agricultural productivity in underdeveloped economies, and a group of scholars from various disciplines was invited to consider that issue.
Abstract: A conference volume, Economic Development and Agricultural Productivity, edited by Amit Bhaduri and Rune Skarstein, is reviewed. The aim of the conference was to address the causes of low agricultural productivity in underdeveloped economies, and a group of scholars from various disciplines was invited to consider that issue. Four sets of themes are covered: historical perspectives on agricultural productivity (with papers by Robert Brenner and Paul Bairoch), the role of the price mechanism (with papers by Servaas Storm and Hans‐Bern Schafer, both on India); the influence of class relations and the role of the state (with papers by Amit Bhaduri, Solon Barraclough, Mahmoud Abdel‐Fadil and KjellJ. Havnevik andRune Skarstein, which relate, respectively, to India, Latin America, Egypt and Tanzania); and ecological sustainability (with papers by Juan Martinez‐Alier and Lawrence Busch).The papers are discussed and some critical, political economy perspectives on them are suggested. Economic Development and Agri...
TL;DR: In this paper, the existence of a particular system of production organisation involving share tenancy and wage labour cultivation that obtains in the southern regions of the Sind province in Pakistan is explained using selected features in the functioning of the labour market in an environment characterised by an unequal distribution of land ownership holdings and the availability of profitable new technologies of production.
Abstract: This article attempts to explain the existence of a particular system of production organisation involving share tenancy and wage labour cultivation that obtains in the southern regions of the Sind province in Pakistan. The explanation invokes selected features in the functioning of the labour market in an environment characterised by an unequal distribution of land ownership holdings and the availability of profitable new technologies of production. The emphasis is on structural, endowment related as well as market‐based features of the institutional form within the overall context of a labour‐based explanation. Published macro‐level data have been used as well as micro‐level survey‐based information on contractual arrangements to substantiate the argument.
TL;DR: Cohen as mentioned in this paper argued that the Boxer Movement was a multi-stranded and complex response to mounting internal and external pressures, and pointed out the need to consider the endogenous factors that gave rise to the movement.
Abstract: History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth, by Paul A. Cohen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Pp.xviii + 249. £27.95/US$34.50 (hardback); US$18.50 (paperback). ISBN 0 231 10650 5 and 10651 3 On the one hand, the Boxers have been condemned as a product of uncivilised, irrational, superstitious anti‐foreignism among the common people. On the other, the Boxers are praised as patriotic anti‐imperialists. This latter characterisation remains the prevailing view not only in current Chinese writings but also in some recent Western accounts. While not denying the unsettling impact of certain aspects of foreign imperialism at the end of the nineteenth century, it is argued here that greater emphasis must be placed on the endogenous factors that gave rise to the Boxer Movement. In its broadest sense, the movement was a multi‐stranded and complex response to mounting internal and external pressures. A careful analysis of this conjuncture of factors will provide a more satisfactory ex...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on a critical element of early Bolshevik political discourse: the promotion of "common people" into prominent positions in the state and economic apparatuses during the first dozen years of Soviet power.
Abstract: This article focuses on a critical element of early Bolshevik political discourse: the promotion of ‘common people’ – peasants and workers ‐ into prominent positions in the state and economic apparatuses during the first dozen years of Soviet power. Programmes to bring in industrial workers to leading positions in the Central government in the Soviet Union have been thoroughly investigated by historians. Those to promote peasants have not. By 1929 the highly publicised programmes to promote peasants into leadership positions, which had been pursued for nearly a decade, had been deemed a failure. In this article, for the first time, peasant promotion is considered. Based on research done in newly opened Soviet party and state archives, it details for the first time the peculiar nature of programmes to promote peasants into the central offices of the largest Soviet ministry, the People's Commissariat of Agriculture. Examination of the planning and execution of, and reaction to, these programmes between the ...