The patron system in academia: Alternative strategies for empowering academic women

In this paper we present an typology of the academic patron system which differentiates among its various functions in terms of the type of power academic patrons have (formal or informal) and the kind of faculty orientation they have (professional or organizational). Using the dichotomies of authority (formal power) or influence (informal power) and professional orientation (cosmopolitan) or organizational orientation (local), four types of academic patronage are identified: professional authority, organizational authority, professional influence, and organizational influence. For each type of academic patronage, associated strategies for empowering women are discussed. These strategies are considered in terms of the extent to which they affect not only ‘professional enfranchisement’, i.e. access, but also ‘professional efficacy’, i.e. a sense of personal power, of being in control, of having the ability to make a difference, for academic women. We conclude that the effective use of professional and organizational influence offers the best hope for the inclusion of women in academia and for changing the academic bureaucracy from a system of ‘participatory autocracy’ to a system of true collegiality.     

A view on commercialisation in Indian agriculture and the development of capitalism

This is an attempt to investigate the reasons for the muted formation and development of capitalist relations in Indian agriculture, even while commercialisation in output markets has advanced considerably. Analysing the qualitatively differing character of exchange involvement, resting on the class basis of a differentiated peasantry, we have noted the differential dynamics that commercialisation entails for different classes and its overall, macroeconomic consequences. We argue that the desperate dependence on land as the basis for survival, with no alternative permanent means of livelihood, perpetuates the perverse exchange relations and retards productive accumulation. Most employment‐generating schemes sponsored by the state turn out to be ameliorative, providing only an intermittent supplementary source of income. This, along with the weak pull of a tardy industrial growth, only stabilises the petty‐holders. It is the preponderance or otherwise of petty‐holders, who are in no position to undertake productive accumulation themselves but could provide the ground for diversion of surplus into unproductive uses, that shapes the accumulation process.     

Is bonded labour a bound category? ‐Reconceptualising agrarian conflict in India

This article discusses the position of ‘agrarian struggle’ within agrarian labour relations in India. It is argued that local labour relations and conflicts should be understood within the context of a wider balance of power between the concerned groups, regionally as well as locally. When examining local relations from this perspective, a number of well‐established positions on agrarian conflict can be challenged. The interrelationship between patron‐client relations on the one hand, and (what is here labelled) class‐caste struggle on the other is reassessed, and it is found that they are not mutually opposed. The categories ‘unfree’ and ‘bonded’ labour relations are also reassessed. Such relations do not seem to necessarily entail the dominance normally expected. ‘Bonded’ labour relations may, in fact, not hamper collective initiative among the landless, whereas the ‘ general political dominance of the landed groups certainly may. The article is based on fieldwork data from Uttar Pradesh.     

Land reform in Iran a case study in the political economy of social engineering

This paper is a study of the Persian land reform between 1962 and 1972. It examines the genesis of the reform, its implementation and its effects, with reference to the specific features of the historical development of the Iranian society. It shows that land reform has not improved the socio‐economic status of the peasantry as a whole, while it has affected a large proportion of the peasants adversely. It offers theoretico‐empirical evidence that instead of creating an independent peasantry and a more autonomous urban bourgeoisie, the reform has led to the further consolidation of the traditional socio‐economic power of the state over all social classes.     

The new technology,class formation and class action in the Indian countryside

The central aim of this article is to try and assess, on the basis of the existing evidence, what influence, if any, the technological innovations that have been introduced into Indian agriculture since the mid‐1960s have hadupon class formation and class action in the Indian countryside. An attempt is made, further, to suggest, if only briefly, the significance of this for urban class formation and class action. The nature of the new technology and some of its implications for the labour process in agriculture are identified and it is held that the distinction between biochemical innovations and mechanical innovations, to the extent that those who make it argue that technological innovation can be limited to the former, is a false one. It is stressed that partly because of the intensified time constraint brought about by the application of biochemical innovations the pressure to mechanise is likely to be strong, as mechanisation becomes increasingly profitable. The evidence reveals that the new technology has meant certain class‐in‐ itself changes. It has hastened the social differentiation that was already in motion, although in complex ways that have yet to work themselves out fully. Some of the characteristics of a process of partial proletarianisation are noted and the’ nature of the emerging rural proletariat and of new relations between rural labourers and dominant classes analysed. What these changing structural features have meant with respect to the class consciousness and class‐for‐itself action of the rural proletariat is given attention, and the indeterminate nature of the outcome indicated by the contrast between north‐west India (where class action has been relatively weak) and the Tanjore district of Tamil Nadu (where the organised power and militancy of agricultural labourers have achieved substantial success). The growing emergence of a rich peasantry as a class‐in‐itself and a powerful class‐for‐itself is treated and some of the political implications of this drawn, especially in relation to Indian state power and its class basis.     

A neoliberalisation of civil society? Self-help groups and the labouring class poor in rural South India

This paper notes the prominence of self-help groups (SHGs) within current anti-poverty policy in India, and analyses the impacts of government- and NGO-backed SHGs in rural North Karnataka. It argues that self-help groups represent a partial neoliberalisation of civil society in that they address poverty through low-cost methods that do not challenge the existing distribution of power and resources between the dominant class and the labouring class poor. It finds that intra-group savings and loans and external loans/subsidies can provide marginal economic and political gains for members of the dominant class and those members of the labouring classes whose insecure employment patterns currently provide above poverty line consumption levels, but provide neither material nor political gains for the labouring class poor. Target-oriented SHG catalysts are inattentive to how the social relations of production reproduce poverty and tend to overlook class relations and socio-economic and political differentiation within and outside of groups, which are subject to interference by dominant class local politicians and landowners.     

The hoe and the vote: Rural labourers and the national election in Brazil in 1974∗

In this article notions about the political attitudes of rural labourers in present‐day Brazil—such as ‘labourers have no opinion. They vote for whom they are told‘—are questioned. It is shown that among a group of labourers in the interior of the state of São Paulo there is a well‐developed sense of class identity and of the need for solidarity (although actual solidarity is very limited'). Their lack of involvement in national politics in contrast with their activity in local‐level politics (an activity which is, however, non‐party and personalised) and their apparently contradictory views of the nature of the Brazilian state are seen to be perfectly rational responses to the objective circumstances in which they live and work. Moreover, they have well‐developed political attitudes. The article demonstrates in what way the life‐experience of the group and the resulting world view are the basic elements which help to explain the labourers’ ideas of the political struggle and their approach to the electoral process; and it shows that the structurally different roles of men and women are reflected in their respective political attitudes.     

Power and empowerment

Feminists are understandably ambivalent about accepting and using power within mainstream hierarchical structures that support relationships of domination and inequity. Many feminists accept their membership in a marginalized group but are wary of relating to the dominant culture which threatens to absorb them. Instead, they emphasize the importance of empowering women by helping them to see the special values of their ‘proper sphere’. This position involves a choice to continue operating within the boundaries of women's oppression, since it ignores the extent to which language and consciousness, as well as the structures of power, are all socially determined. It seems more desirable for feminists to reject idealist views of female nature. Instead of disassociating ourselves from power, we should determine the ways in which power can itself be purged of its own crippling effects. An oppositional consciousness must be developed which allows engagement between those feminists at the margins and those who accept responsibility at the center.     

On the politics of production: A comment on ‘peasants and politics’ by Eric Hobsbawn

This article examines how poor rural families in India cope with the food insecurity associated with seasonal troughs in the agricultural production cycle, and with calamities such as drought and famine; the effectiveness of the coping mechanisms they adopt; the intra‐household sharing of the burden of coping; and the appropriate state and non‐state interventions that would strengthen the survival mechanisms adopted by the families themselves. The family is seen here as a bargaining unit, the ability of different members to command food (among other resources) depending on their relative bargaining strengths, determined in turn by their ownership endowments (of land, labour, etc.), exchange entitlements, and external social and communal support systems. Gender and age both form the basis of intra‐family inequality in this respect. While seasonality reveals a face of the family which is one of co‐operation, famine mirrors one of disintegration. In both contexts, the burden of coping falls disproportionately on female members within poor households, traceable to women's already weak and further weakened (during calamity) bargaining position within the family. A re‐interpretation of existing facts about the 1943 Bengal famine illustrates the process of family disintegration and the abandonment of wives and children during a severe calamity. State efforts complemented by non‐state interventions therefore need to be directed to programmes that ‘empower’ poor families and the more vulnerable members within them.     

Peasants and politics

This paper discusses the political relations of ‘traditional’ peasants to groups and institutions outside their local community, with special reference to situations in which they encounter the political movements and problems of the twentieth century. It stresses the separation of peasants from non‐peasants, the general subalternity of the peasant world, but also the explicit confrontation of power which is the framework of their politics. The relative isolation of local communities, and their consequent ignorance, does not confine peasant politics only to parish pump or undefined millennial universality. However, it makes certain forms of nation‐wide peasant action without outside leadership and organisation difficult and some, like a general ‘peasant revolution’, probably impossible. The political problems of a ‘modern’ peasantry are briefly touched upon in conclusion.     

The failure of feminism in Greenwich Village before World War I†

One crucial element of the cultural transformation which pre‐World War I Greenwich Village radicals believed would pave the way for socialist revolution was the liberation of women, not only in political and economic terms, but also in terms of lifestyle. However, both male and female Village feminists found themselves shackled by vestiges of Victorianism and torn between visions of women as naturally maternal and pacifistic and other images of women which demanded sexual equality. The Village was a community supportive of the new feminism, but the variety of feminism that emerged from it suffered from the complacency of male feminists who believed that they could be patrons of feminism, the acceptance of inflated claims advanced by the women's movement, a tendency to accept sexual liberation in lieu of more profound socio‐economic changes, and a failure to create a feminism relevant to the masses of working women in society at large. The young people who came to the Village in the 1920's were more interested in social rebellion than in social reform. Sexual freedom became the sum total of feminism; the end product of the New Freedom was the Flapper.     

The view from below: Cuban agriculture in the ‘special period in peacetime’

This article examines the changes taking place in Cuban agriculture at the local level as a result of the demise of the socialist trading bloc and Cuba's subsequent economic crisis. Based on fieldwork in three municipalities of Cuba, the authors describe new developments in each of the three main sectors of Cuban agriculture: state farms, production co‐operatives and individual peasant producers. They conclude that the dominant trend of this period is the tendency toward decentralisation of the state farm sector ‐ culminating in the historic September 1993 decision to form production co‐operatives on the state farms — counterpoised to renewed attempts to impose greater state control over peasant producers. Overall, they find a good deal of experimentation and heterogeneity in the actual implementation of state policy at the local level.     

Smallholdings,land law and the politics of land tenure in Papua New Guinea

It has been asserted of Papua New Guinea that the nineteenth and twentieth century expansion of capitalism into that country occurred without the commodification of more than a small amount of land. The various arguments supporting this view are rejected, and the evidence to the contrary is presented. It is shown that from the 1950s smallholder production increases have been substantial, mainly but not wholly in export crops. The role of the state is examined, with particular focus upon the characteristics of state power and the politics of land which have underpinned the increase in smallholder production. Similarities in the quality and application of state power across both colonial and post‐colonial regimes is stressed.     

Interlinked modes of exploitation in Indian agriculture during transition: A case study

The article examines the nature of interlinked modes of exploitation on the basis of evidence from three villages in Uttar Pradesh (India). It is argued that the interlocked relationships arise out of a prior set of production relationships and the strategies of subsistence and accumulation of different classes, which may themselves change under certain conditions. The latter determine not only the form but also the dynamics of such relationships, and are, in turn, limited by the ways in which surplus can be appropriated. It is shown here that the interlocking displays systematic inter‐village features. With increasing capitalist penetration, such relationships are a significantly more important source of labour mobilisation.     

Citizens on the Shop Floor: Negotiating Class,Citizenship and National Identity in a Turkish State Factory

ABSTRACT

This paper examines discourses on citizenship and nation at shop floor level through Bak?rköy Cloth Factory – a state-owned factory in Istanbul, Turkey. Founded as a private enterprise in 1850, Bak?rköy became the State Industrial Office’s property in 1932 and of Sümerbank, the young Turkish state’s bank and industrial holding company in charge of textile production in 1933. Having survived such a drastic regime change, the factory’s first two decades under Sümerbank were shaped by the ruling classes’ zealous and simultaneous efforts of nation-building and industrialization. In the ruling classes’ popular projection, the alleged conversion of an unproductive industrial relic of the imperial past into an example of Republican hard work and patriotism provided opportunities for workers to repay their debt to the nation and its forefathers. In the context of the displacement and mediation of class conflict via nationalist discourses, this study explores how this industrial national space became the site of discursive struggles on national belonging and citizenship. Material from parliamentary debates and media coverage is linked with workers’ files to offer a micro-historical perspective on the interactions between class and nation.     

Invisible cities,hidden agendas

The Invisible City. Monetary, Administrative and Popular Infrastures in Asia and Europe, 1500–1900, by Frank Perlin. Aldershot: Variorum, 1993. Pp.xii + 366. £49.50. ISBN 086 078 342 1

This review article examines briefly the recent publication by Frank Perlin of a series of revised articles dealing with theoretical and methodological issues in South Asian history, in particular the period from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Perlin's approach to the problems he perceives is to analyse the ways in which the process of state formation is based on concentric and intersecting sets of social and economic relationships, which both establish the space for the evolution of state‐like political power and which can at the same time be themselves destroyed, transformed, constituted or reproduced by the existence of such powers. This approach also underlies his interest in the patterns and functions of local, inter‐local and international exchange of money‐media for roughly the same period. His purpose is at the same time to challenge the ‘substantivising’ assumptions about the bounded nature of both the historiographical problem and the object of study made by much modern historiography.     

There is nothing simple about simple commodity production

This essay offers a theoretical rethinking of simple commodity production that avoids two extreme notions of capitalism: one which readily embraces all relations of production found in the pervasive world system, and another which produces a rigidly eroded model to which everything else is externally articulated. It is argued that some specific forms of SCP can be treated as variations of capitalism integral to its polymorphous logic, and therefore as subjected, under determinate conditions, to a flexibly defined process of labour's subordination (formal and real) to capital. Self‐employed labour is also re‐examined in the light of (a) the basic exigencies of capital accumulation, (b) the contradictions inherent to capitalism, especially those pertaining to the confrontation between intraverted and extroverted economies, and (c) the active struggle of all working classes against their total dispossession from commodified wealth.     

African peasantries: A theoretical framework∗

The paper seeks to contribute to a framework for the investigation of the specific historical conditions and contemporary manifestations of the agrarian question in sub‐Saharan Africa. The latter is distinguished, inter alia, by the timing and modes of incorporation of African social formations in the international economy, and by the forms of intervention of the colonial and post‐colonial states in the absence of features classically associated with the agrarian question elsewhere, such as large landed property, the political power of landlords, and the formation of an agrarian bourgeoisie. The forms and degrees of subsumption of peasant simple commodity production in the circuit of capital, a process in which the state plays a central role, are seen as moving towards a situation in which peasant producers are constituted as ‘wage‐labour equivalents’.     

The nature and logic of the peasant economy 1: A Generalisation 1

This article discusses the major specific aspects of a general type of peasant economy: the family farm production‐consumption unit, the village as an economic organisation, the market and money in the peasant economy, the political economy of peasant societies. It concludes with an examination of the differing ideas of analysts who agree on the existence of a specific peasant economy but disagree on the relative importance of its characteristics. The aim is to provide a starting‐point for a systematic discussion of the general, the diverse, the relatively stable and the changeable in peasant economy, and the way in which it is affected by state policies; the latter aspects are dealt with in part II?.