The World Bank on ‘agriculture for development’: a failure of imagination or the power of ideology?

The paper provides a critique of the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report on the role of agriculture in the development process, specifically its conception of capitalist farming as a pathway out of rural poverty. It is argued that the Report is unable to overcome a fundamental deficit in development thinking based on modernisation theory and an ideological predisposition towards (and belief in) the agency and working of the market. The paper also argues that the failure of the Report to propose radical land redistributive measures for tackling rural poverty derives from its failure to grasp the fundamental cause and dynamics of rural poverty.     

‘After years in the wilderness’: The discourse of land claims in the New South Africa

This article examines land restitution in the new South Africa, and the intersecting roles of land‐claiming communities, forcibly resettled from their land during the apartheid years, and the NGOs and — since 1994 — Government Commissioners who have helped them to reclaim the land. Ideas and practices concerning land, community and development that emerge from the interaction between these different players are mutually constitutive but sometimes also mutually incomprehensible. A populist rhetoric, evident both ir: discussions with former land owners, and in much of NGO publications such as Land Update, depicts land as something communally owned which must be communally defended. This sense of uniformly experienced injustice and shared resistance against outside intervention obscures the fact that claims on land derive from a series of sharply differentiated historical experiences and articulate widely divergent interests, such as those — in the case of the farm Doornkop for example — between former owners and their former tenants. The restitution of land to these former owners, while of great importance to them as a source of identity and as a redress of past injustices, is not necessarily the key to solving ‘poverty, injustice and misery’ as claimed for the process of land reform in South Africa as a whole.     

Modernising subordination? A South Asian perspective on the World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development

The World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development argues that the solution to rural poverty in South Asia is through commercial smallholder farming, rural waged labour in farm and non-farm activities, or outmigration. Critically evaluating the Report from a South Asian perspective on the basis of agrarian structure, market-led agrarian transformation, the power of monopoly capital, and the option of off-farm livelihoods, it is argued that the Report has a deeply flawed understanding of the process of capitalist development in rural South Asia. Its path-dependent vision of the future of agriculture is rooted in modernisation theory, and predicated on the continued subordination of the majority of those who live in the South Asian countryside.     

Bolivia's soy complex: the development of ‘productive exclusion’

A significant transition is underway in Bolivia where both domestic and foreign capital are monopolizing commercial agriculture and leading a highly mechanized, capital-intensive production model which has considerably diminished the need for labour. This paper explores mechanisms and processes of ‘productive exclusion’ in the soy-producing zones of Santa Cruz in relation to the expansion, concentration and mechanization of the ‘soy complex’. We provide an analysis of how the agrarian structure has developed since soy was adopted – from ‘putting land into production’ to ‘expanding the agricultural frontier’ and ‘controlling the agro-industrial chain’. We explore how and the extent to which the penetration of new capital is leading to new processes of agrarian change which exclude the rural majority from accessing the means of production. While a process of ‘foreignization’ of land began to take shape in the early 1990s, new processes of capital accumulation are eroding the ability of small farmers to engage in productive activity, potentially leading to ‘surplus’ populations no longer needed for capital accumulation.     

The World Development Report 2008: inconsistencies,silences, and the myth of ‘win-win’ scenarios

The World Development Report 2008 (WDR-2008) on agriculture and development has been received with much expectation and controversy. This paper welcomes some aspects of the WDR-2008 that help us reinvigorate some debates on agricultural development, so far marginalised in international development policy agendas. The paper, however, focuses on some critical problems in the report and the World Bank's stance on agriculture. First, there are tensions between advocacy and research and between the World Bank's rhetoric and operational realities. Secondly, the report suffers from the usual adherence to superficial win-win scenarios that mask conflict of interest and power relations. Thirdly, the WDR-2008 is caught in a tension between neo-populist pro-small farmer views and ‘modernist’ pro-agribusiness stances. Fourthly, the analysis of agricultural development in isolation from broader development processes and especially without a systematic analysis of industrialisation and agriculture–industry relations seriously limits the analytical and empirical value of the report.     

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.     

Beyond the ‘big three’: the development of feminist theory into the 1990s

Abstract

This paper examines some of the changes that have taken place in Western feminist theory during its recent past. It begins by questioning whether previous practices of labelling feminism as liberal, Marxist or radical are still useful. It then considers those influences that have especially effected feminist thinking, particularly Lacanian psychoanalysis and post-structuralism. The paper argues that the nature of feminist theory has been profoundly transformed since the early days of second wave feminism. While some of these changes have been positive, others have had unfortunate and negative consequences. The paper concludes with some suggestions as to how the usefulness and political potential of feminist theorising might be harnessed for the future.     

Queering the ‘straight’ line: men’s talk on paying for sex

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with eight men who identified as clients of women sex workers, but who also spoke about paying to secretly explore their sexual desires for trans women and men. I draw on queer theory to approach the question of how, and to what extent, men’s paid sexual encounters functioned as sites where they could resist the constraints of compulsory heterosexuality and navigate more fluid sexual identities. Highlighting the complex nature and meanings of paying for sex, I argue that the secrecy of the paid sexual encounter provided a space for ‘breaking out’ of the confines of heterosexuality whilst simultaneously being the very thing that allowed men to stay ‘in line’ with what was expected of them within the heteronormative realities of their everyday lives.     

The ‘Great Offender’: feminists and the campaign for women's ordination

Few scholars have investigated the relationship between feminism and religion in the aftermath of suffrage. This article explores how feminist organizations and individual feminists supported campaigns for women's ordination within the Anglican Church and their concern for gender equality within British churches more broadly during the forties and fifties. Focusing in particular on the 1944 ordination of the first female priest within the Anglican Communion (The Bishop of Hong Kong Ronald O. Hall ordained Chinese Deaconess Florence Li Tim Oi) and the institution of female chaplain's assistant positions in 1942, it argues that a full understanding of mid twentieth-century feminism requires consideration of the struggle for women's representation in their churches. The forties and fifties have often been portrayed by historians as the nadir of twentieth-century feminism, yet feminists continued their work for women's rights and religious identity and issues could be motivating factors for their activism. Feminists were neither anti-religious nor militantly secular and this article seeks to foster work which explores the connection between religion and women's political and social activism since the nineteenth century.     

‘i pray for the factory to continue earning money’: the familial factory regime of the ‘Sun’ food factory in Turkey

This paper explores the factory regime in the ‘Sun’ food processing factory in Turkey, drawing on participant observation in the factory, informal interviews with women workers and in-depth interviews with the managers of the factory’s ‘gherkin department’ in which I worked. This paper argues that the ‘Sun’ bottling and canning factory is best understood through my concept of the ‘familial factory regime’. By ‘familial factory regime’ I mean a factory regime in which the features of the extended patriarchal family are used to manage the labour force by obtaining women workers’ consent. Indeed, the paper suggests that there is a tendency for patriarchy to be reconstituted in the workplace through the presence of a familial factory regime.     

‘The Injustice of the Woman's Vote’: opposition to female suffrage after World War I

Winning the vote in 1918 for British women over the age of thirty and, in 1928, on equal terms with men, did not mean that the controversy over the legitimacy and soundness of women's suffrage ceased to exist during the interwar period. In the context of the backlash against egalitarian feminism, many men and women remained opposed to women's suffrage. This article presents the views of three individual women, Arabella Kenealy, Charlotte Cowdroy and Charlotte Haldane, who, although they held diverging views on politics and feminism, agreed that female suffrage might have adverse consequences for the future of Britain. They shared the widely accepted views on the disappearance of sex differences and on the danger of ‘race degeneration’, which led them to advance critical views on female suffrage.     

‘Civilizing’ the pastoral frontier: land grabbing,dispossession and coercive agrarian development in Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes frontier dynamics of land dispossessions in Ethiopia’s pastoral lowland regions. Through a case study of two sedentarization schemes in South Omo Valley, we illustrate how politics of coercive sedentarization are legitimated in the ‘civilizing’ impetus of ‘improvement schemes’ for ‘backward’ pastoralists. We study sedentarization schemes that are implemented to evict pastoralist communities from grazing land to be appropriated by corporate investors. It is argued that frontier imaginations of pastoral lowlands legitimate coercive practices of ‘emptying’ the lowlands for investments. ‘Improvement schemes’ enroll private investors and enterprises affiliated with Ethiopia’s ruling party in the politics of ‘thickening’ state presence in the pastoral frontier. Agricultural extension packages serve to expand state control over sedentarized pastoralists and make lowland resources more extractable, for investors and for the ruling regime.     

Examinations as Cultural Capital for the Victorian Schoolgirl: ‘thinking’ with Bourdieu

By focusing on the second half of the nineteenth century, the article will demonstrate that girls’ success in public examinations has a long history. It will highlight that opportunities for girls to take such examinations were limited by Victorian perceptions of what might be acceptable for their gender and, more especially, by their social class. The data presented in the article is analysed using a Bourdieusian framework.     

‘The Worst Job in the World’: Reform,Revolution, and the Secret Rebellion in Florida's Cane Fields

Governments around the world are embracing guestworkers as a flexible labor force. The untold story of 1960s-era strike wave among Caribbean sugarcane cutters in Florida shows how the longest-running US guestworker program – the H2 Program – has functioned. The program, which began in 1942 and continues today, provided Florida's sugarcane industry with its sole source of harvest field labor, and became all the more important in the 1960s as the Cuban Revolution and the embargo that followed it caused Florida's industry to expand exponentially. Expropriated Cuban sugar moguls adopted the labor practices pioneered by the US Sugar Company, importing mostly Jamaican peasant farmers as temporary workers and deporting those who refused to accept their terms. Federal efforts to mitigate growers' exploitative practices only encouraged worse labor abuses. Cane cutters defended themselves with frequent strikes but deportations made insurgency's gains ephemeral.

‘No ebery ting wha got sugar a sweet’.

Jamaican proverb 1 1. Frank Cundall 1924 Cundall, Cundall. 1924. Jamaica in 1924: A Handbook for Visitors and Intending Settlers with Some Account of the Colony's History, Kingston, Jamaica: The Institute of Jamaica.  [Google Scholar]: 56].      

Labour relations in the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors: Report of a case study in South Gujarat,India—Part I

The fate of peasants, agricultural labourers and others who leave the agrarian sector, either temporarily or permanently, to seek employment in towns and cities, must be of great interest to anyone concerned with the peasantry. Yet it is an area about which we are remarkably ignorant. Jan Breman's study of the ‘labour relations’ (or, one might say, the ‘poverty') of those who are, to a significant extent, first‐generation town‐dwellers, or who, indeed, although they seek employment in towns, have not yet severed their connections with the countryside, is extremely enlightening in this respect. Although it is not directly about peasants we publish it as an important contribution to our knowledge of this hitherto ‘dark’ area, in which rural origins or connections are of manifest significance. The author employs the ‘informal'/'formal’ sector dichotomy, with suitable scepticism, to examine in great detail the labour system outside agriculture in the Valsad district of South Gujarat.?     

‘Between Slavery and Freedom’: the expulsion and enslavement of free women of colour in the US South before the Civil War

For free black women in the pre-Civil War American South, the status offered by ‘freedom’ was uncertain and malleable. The conceptualization of bondage and freedom as two diametrically opposed conditions therefore fails to make sense of the complexities of life for these women. Instead, notions of enslavement and freedom are better framed as a spectrum. This article develops this idea by exploring two of the ways in which some black women negotiated their status before the law—namely though petitioning for residency or for enslavement. While these petitions are atypical numerically, and often offer tantalizingly scant evidence, when used in conjunction with evidence from the US census, it becomes clear that these women were highly pragmatic. Prioritizing their spousal and broader familial affective relationships above their legal status, they rejected the often theoretical distinction between slavery and liberation. As such, the petitions can be used to reach broader conclusions about the attitudes of women who have left little written testimony.     

’Not Septimus Now‘: wives of disabled veterans and cultural memory of the First World War in Britain

Much of the writing on gender and the First World War has looked at the ways in which pre-war gender norms were reasserted in British society after the War. The article looks at the experiences of one group of women, the wives of men psychologically disabled by the experience of war, to show how disability could prevent the reassertion of pre-war gender roles. The experiences of these women, as expressed in the disability files created by the Ministry of Pensions, is then compared with the dramatisations of wives of disabled veterans in two post-war novels. This comparison highlights the ways in which such dramatisations turned the figure of the wife of the disabled veteran into a symbol of suffering that may be compared to the similarly symbolic figures of the neurasthenic veteran.     

The British,the Tudeh party and the 1947 World Federation of Trade Unions’ visit: battle for labour reform in Iran

ABSTRACT

After the British-Soviet occupation of Iran during the Second World War, Iran became the key battleground for the international labour movement. The plight of the workers had become an important political issue with the Iranian government in conflict with the socialist Tudeh party for leadership over the trade unions. The Labour government in Britain was also deeply interested in the matter but regarded the Tudeh as too dangerous and too aligned with the Soviet Union to be supported. Within this climate, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) made an official visit to Iran. With its international delegates, they represented different views over the Tudeh, which caused much conflict during the visit. This article sheds crucial light on this important visit and reveals how international the Labour questions were in Iran and how the WFTU visit brought the various tensions to light. This research will also show how the timing of the visit may have impacted on the removal of the Iranian strong-man Ahmad Qavam by the end of 1947. This work is of particular significance as it looks at the previously understudied role and interest of the British government on the Iranian labour.     

‘The Message Is in the Book’: What Virago's Sale in 1995 Means for Feminist Publishing

This article examines the UK publisher Virago, the world's largest women's imprint and the best known of the second-wave feminist publishing houses that sprang up during the 1970s and 1980s. Feminist publishing remains a peculiarly unacknowledged and underexamined aspect of feminist history, but one that had real influence and effect. This article gives a historical account of Virago, noting its intention to enact feminist politicking through the act of publishing books. The author looks at the effect Virago had on the industry more widely, on literary culture and on attitudes to women. The author also examines changing formulations of feminism and how these were reflected—or not—through Virago's published output. The author then moves on to her central proposition: that Virago's sale in 1995, rather than marking the death of feminist publishing (as was stated in media comment at the time), was in fact the point at which it was saved. Virago's move into Little, Brown, coinciding with the rise of an increasingly commodified consumer culture, the conglomeration of the book industry and more pluralized expressions of feminism, allowed it to continue to work as a publisher of women's writing while none of its contemporaries survived. The author looks in detail at the changes post-1995 within the book industry, within feminism and in wider culture, as well as at Virago. The author asks whether Virago still has value as a ‘feminist’ imprint and how it has sought to remain vital and relevant.     

Fighting for Fame: The ‘Heroines of Pervyse’ and the Disputed Construction of a Public Image

Abstract: This investigative analysis bases itself on an array of documentary material from the archives of the Imperial War Museum in its effort to recover the intricate story behind the two British volunteer nurses who made their name during the First World War with the first-aid station they set up in Pervyse, a mere stone's throw away from the Belgian firing line. The essay juxtaposes a variety of documentary sources—the unpublished diaries of the two women, Geraldine Mitton's reconstruction of the story out of the nurses' journals and letters in The Cellar-House of Pervyse (1916), and two photograph albums, ‘The Women of Pervyse’, bequeathed to the Imperial War Museum—in a quest to understand how the two nurses came to acquire their status of national heroines. Sifting through the source material, this investigation reveals the numerous inconsistencies and gaps that exist between the published and the unpublished accounts of the dressing station, whose true genesis is obscured by several competing narratives. A close reading of Mitton's account and the photographic portraitures discloses that neither of these documents ought to be taken at their face value. They need to be understood as valuable tools in the nurses' own battle for authority, public recognition and their opportunity to feature as genuine protagonists in the arena of war.