Colonial legacies,armed revolts and state violence: the Maoist movement in India

Abstract

This article examines the connected histories of armed tribal and peasant revolts in colonial and postcolonial India with reference to the ongoing Maoist conflict in rural and tribal areas of central and eastern India. The article makes two interrelated arguments about the violent continuities that endure from colonial to postcolonial contexts: (1) the nation-state system, in its efforts to establish control and influence, creates a hierarchy of citizenship engaging in the hostile policing of marginalised subjects, thereby engendering armed revolts and political violence; (2) the postcolonial state’s response to these armed revolts by marginalised subjects who challenge its sovereignty and monopoly over violence, is equally violent and repressive. Most significantly, the state’s response is legitimised in the same colonial idioms and justifications that mark epistemic and physical violence against the third world.     

Investment penetration,agrarian change,and political conflict in developing countries

This research employs a cross-national design to explore the association between direct foreign investment in agriculture, changes in the agricultural labor force, and political conflict and violence in developing countries. The results reveal different patterns of relationships for Latin American, African, and Asian societies. In Africa, foreign agricultural investments are related to higher employment in the agricultural sector, which in turn is associated with lower levels of political protest. In Latin America, Foreign agricultural investments were directly related to more protest, suggesting a xenophobic nationalist reaction to foreign penetration in this sector. There were no apparent relationships between these variables among Asian states. These results challenge the often-found contention that economic disturbances in the agricultural sector are a fundamental cause of violent uprisings and rebellions. John M. Rothgeb, Jr. is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Miami Univeristy in Oxford, Ohio 45056. He is the author ofDefining Power: Influence and Force in the Contemporary International System (St. Martin’s Press, 1993),Myths and Realities of Foreign Investiment in Poor Countries (Praeger Publishers, 1989) and numerous articles in professional journals. His current research interests include the study of the international and domestic implications of interdependence and the analysis of how economic resources may be used to exercise power in international relations.     

State,bureaucracy and change in India

The article discusses the nature of the Indian state and of the Indian bureaucracy. During the 1980s, it was widely believed that the Indian bureaucracy constituted a dominant class and that this dominance is the root cause of economic stagnation. When confronted with empirical evidence, this assertion seems less convincing. The complex picture that emerges of the Indian state does not totally contradict the dominant view. This complexity points to a need for a more elaborated theoretical understanding of the role of the state and of the public bureaucracy. The article concludes by sketching the outlines of such a possible revised theoretical framework.     

Airbnb,technological change and disruption in Barbadian tourism: a theoretical framework

This paper focuses on how Airbnb, an internet platform which has created the possibility for mass participation in the tourism market, is resulting in class conflict between new entrants and the ‘traditional’ tourism industry. Specifically, it studies how traditional tourism interests in Barbados have responded to Airbnb by seeking to restrict participation in the industry and presents this as a microcosm of broader class transitions and conflicts associated with new technologies. The paper utilises a Marxist theoretical perspective buttressed by Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of ‘creative destruction’ – places emphasis on the process of destroying productive systems to understand how specific industries expand and survive – and Clayton Christensen’s notion of ‘disruptive innovation’ – a process by which a disruptive product transforms a market – for studying how transformations in technology are impacting the tourism industry in Barbados. Its aim is to provide an account of how the process of disruption is unfolding in Barbados by highlighting the reactions of the main hotel lobby group to Airbnb, while also applying the ideas of Marx, Schumpeter and Christensen as useful theoretical lenses through which to examine the unfolding of the process of disruption of settled class and historical control of a dominant economic sector by new technologies.     

Technical change and dualism within agriculture in India

The dichotomy between subsistence and market‐oriented farmers in many developing countries is a well‐recognized fact. There have been empirical studies in India of the differences between subsistence and market‐oriented or ‘commercial’ farmers; and interest is now developing in the impact of the new agricultural policy on dualism within agriculture. While the theoretical literature deals extensively with dualism between a traditional agricultural sector and an advanced industrial sector, dualism within the agricultural sector itself is less discussed.¹

However, this dualism has become of increasing practical importance in India with the introduction of the ‘New Strategy for Agricultural Development’ in 1966–67.² This policy concentrates on raising output per acre very sharply, especially for the food crops, by the use of new high‐yielding varieties of seeds and complementary inputs. In the beginning, at least, these measures are to be confined to a small part of the total acreage under food grains. Critics have also alleged that they have been confined to the larger farmers, thus accentuating the existing inequality of agricultural incomes, and that this inequality must have several undesirable social, economic and political consequences. But these consequences have not been elaborated, partly for lack of data, but partly also because the theoretical implications of technical change for a dualist development of agriculture have not been adequately discussed. The first object of this paper is to examine the changes in income distribution within agriculture when technical progress is confined to the commercial sector. Thereafter we show that if dualism cannot be directly attacked by such measures as land reform, the second‐best policy from the point of view of maximizing output may in fact be to encourage the use of ‘new’ inputs, such as fertilizers, in the commercial sector.     

Rural migration and agrarian reform in Russia: a research note

This study focuses primarily on trends in rural-urban migration in Russia and the former Soviet Union. "New data suggest that a historic shift in migration patterns is underway in Russia, a change that may have profound long-term effects on agrarian reform and the nature of the Russian countryside. We begin with a short review of past rural migration trends and the rural demographic situation, in part using archival data for an oblast in central Russia. We will then present new data on rural migration. Finally, we assess the implications of rural migratory trends for agrarian reform in Russia."     

Manufacturing corporate landscapes: the case of agrarian displacement and food (in)security in Haiti

This paper explores the historical and contemporary sources of food insecurity in Haiti. It begins by detailing the impact of colonial legacies on the Caribbean region as a whole and on Haiti in particular. The adverse consequences associated with this period include deforestation, soil infertility and food-import dependence. The paper then turns to more contemporary trends, namely the influence of 30 years of neoliberal ideology. It argues that the belief that Haiti can best achieve food security through the pursuit of comparative advantage, a notion advanced and supported by powerful international and domestic actors, has served to reinforce harmful historic trends. We support this argument with recent fieldwork findings that highlight how the construction of a new export processing zone (EPZ), following the 2010 earthquake, has generated troubling environmental and food security concerns.     

The challenge of locating land-based climate change mitigation and adaptation politics within a social justice perspective: towards an idea of agrarian climate justice

Abstract

The global land rush and mainstream climate change narratives have broadened the ranks of state and social actors concerned about land issues, while strengthening those opposed to social justice-oriented land policies. This emerging configuration of social forces makes the need for deep social reforms through redistribution, recognition, restitution, regeneration and resistance – book-ended by the twin principles of ‘maximum land size’ (‘size ceiling’) and a ‘guaranteed minimum land access’ (‘size floor’) – both more compelling and urgent, and, at the same time, more difficult than ever before. The five deep social reforms of socially just land policy are necessarily intertwined. But the global land rush amidst deepening climate change calls attention to the linkages, especially between the pursuit of agrarian justice on the one hand and climate justice on the other. Here, the relationship is not without contradictions, and warrants increased attention as both unit of analysis and object of political action. Understanding and deepening agrarian justice imperatives in climate politics, and understanding and deepening climate justice imperatives in agrarian politics, is needed more than ever in the ongoing pursuit of alternatives.     

The Perils of Bula Matari: Constraint and Power in the Colonial State

This review article argues that analyses of the food security implications of emerging powers in Africa could be strengthened through foregrounding the issue of perspective. Researchers working in this area should engage with food security opinion contests, and avoid obscuring these debates moving forward.     

From agricultural modernisation to agri-food globalisation: The waning of national development in Thailand

Agriculture has been central to accounts of Thailand's modernisation and the rise of the national development project between the 1940s and the 1970s. However, the role of agriculture in the waning of national development is rarely explored critically in the Thai context. This paper focuses on agriculture and the role of the state in the shift from national development to globalisation. The first part of the paper examines the beginnings of Thailand's modern agricultural sector, before turning to the state-sponsored diversification of agriculture in the 1950s. The paper locates shifting state responses to agriculture in the late 1950s and 1960s in the context of specific political and historical social forces, before exploring the emergence of agri-food exports in the 1970s and the rise of agribusiness in the 1980s and 1990s. The paper concludes by commenting on the significance of the Thai state's role in the national development project and the globalisation project.     

Colonial governance in the development of urban primacy

Urbanization increased substantially in developing nations during the middle of the twentieth century. Generalized least squares panel regressions are employed to examine urban primacy in approximately 100 nations from 1930–1980. While the level of urban primacy was not found to be related to colonial status, colonial nations became more primate throughout the 1950–1970 period. Nations that became independent in the 1950s were especially likely to become more primate. When the colonizer utilized “indirect rule” (British) former colonial nations were less likely to become primate, while those employing “direct rule” and assimilationist policies (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian) tended to produce more primate urban hierarchies.     

Colonial apologies and the problem of the transgressor speaking

Can state apologies help reconciliation between former coloniser and colonised? Much of the literature on political apologies is optimistic regarding their potential to aid reconciliation. Even critical work frequently dispraises particular case studies, while maintaining a normative commitment to apology. Building on a growing postcolonial literature on the subject, this article contributes a more fundamental critique of colonial apology. It argues that its inherent structure entails a format that accords the politician of the transgressor state an elevated speaking position. This results in the ritual being predisposed to problematic representations of the colonised and sanitised narratives of the transgression. The argument is situated within Edward Said’s considerations on representation in the colonial process.     

Cows and Conquistadors: A Contribution on the Colonial Origins of Comparative Development

Identification of the impact of political and economic institutions on economic development requires the use of valid instruments for institutional quality. Recent empirical studies use colonial settler mortality rates as such an instrument. Our paper develops a more eclectic theory of colonial development, and compares the performance of the settler mortality model to alternatives incorporating instruments reflecting the factor endowments of colonial economies. Ceteris paribus, colonies with a natural comparative advantage in pastoral agriculture were more likely to experience European settlement that led to non-extractive institutions.