Awkward Class or Awkward Classes? Class relations in the Russian peasantry before collectivisation

This article develops some criticisms of Teodor Shanin's thesis concerning the class structure of the Russian peasantry up to the end of the 1920s. Rival Marxist approaches are then discussed, especially that of L. N. Kritsman and his school who saw the relations of production of the Russian peasantry as characterised by exploitative class relations between households and thus called into question all approaches asserting the social homogeneity of the peasantry as a class.     

Where is the backward Russian peasant? Evidence against the superiority of private farming, 1883–1913

This contribution deals with agricultural dynamics in late-Imperial Russia. Based upon a comprehensive micro-level data set on annual yields between 1883 and 1913, we provide insight into regional differences of agricultural growth and the development prospects of Russian agriculture before WWI. Making use of the fact that contemporary Russian statistics distinguished between mostly communally governed open fields and privately owned land, we are able to test the implications of different land tenure systems for agricultural yield growth. In a broader sense, we seek to challenge the common narrative of Russia as an exception to the pan-European picture of economic development during the era of industrialization.     

Retracing the contours of her figure … slippages begin to appear: Reckoning the limits of the archive with Senam Okudzeto’s Large Reclining Nude

Large Reclining Nude (2004) by transnational artist and scholar Senam Okudzeto is an 86-inch by 63-inch acrylic drawing of a nude, black female body released into a bare milieu. At first glance, the figure is grounded as shadows cast across her body hint at the presence of a foundation. However, outside the bounds of the body, Okudzeto resists three-dimensional perspective, calling into question the necessity of mediational signifiers for the orientation of the figure. How are we to read this solitary body after Scenes of Subjection, after Saidiya Hartman recontextualizes black corporeality as social relationality, throwing the “autonomous individual?…?into crisis?” For this article, the author reads the lone, floating body of Okudzeto’s 2004 Large Reclining Nude for new openings into Hartman’s archival reckoning in Scenes of Subjection. She offers a meditation on the aesthetic techniques evident through the visual aporia of the drawing – irresolvable contradictions in the field of the visible – suggesting Okudzeto offers alternative reading practices that afford reengagement with Hartman’s work.     

Labor strategies and agribusiness counterstrike during the Bracero Era: the peculiar case of the National Farm Labor Union, 1946–1952

This article investigates the responses of the political establishment and the agro-industry to the militant actions of the National Farm Labor Union (NFLU) from 1946 until 1952. It confirms the well-known hypothesis that the maintenance of the bracero program affected the efforts to form agricultural unions in California, but it also underlines strategies and the roles played by the agro-industry, California Farm Placement Service and other federal instances of government in the weakening of agricultural unionization. It argues that the agricultural unions’ weakness in California throughout this period can be attributed to the needs of the food-processing industry and the latter’s special relationship with the political establishment. I demonstrate that while the failure to consolidate agricultural unions in California during the postwar years, is not attributable to the strategies adopted by the NFLU per se, it is closely related to a lack of support from the major political players and to the privileged relationship they built up with Mexican officials. The influence of some public servants, political representatives and agribusiness lobbyists has been crucial for the continuation of the bracero program and has also obstructed the NFLU to organize efficiently strikes and boycotts.     

Legal empowerment of the poor: with a little help from their friends?

In 2005 the initiative to create a High Level Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, to be co-chaired by Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto and former US Foreign Affairs Secretary Madeleine Albright, was launched with strong support from the Norwegian government. This article first reviews some of the debate surrounding the initiative, giving special attention to the role of Norwegian civil society organisations that questioned central assumptions of the Commission as well as its composition and working procedures. Next, the article looks at the propositions made by the Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor and argues that it was very much a top-down affair that called on those in power to behave in favour of the poor and relegated organisations of the poor and civil society to a supportive role. Issues of political power thus were downplayed. This also is reflected in the fact that the question of (re)distribution of assets is hardly addressed by the Commission. Questions of power or the distribution of assets were sidestepped by focusing primarily on the legal dimension and formalisation. And, although the Commission mentions macro-economic conditions it fails to critically analyse the conditions that account for poverty and informality, which basically are attributed to legal arrangements. Such an analysis would require a (critical) political economy perspective.     

Collectivization in china: Some comparisons with the USSR∗

The ‘collectivization’ of agriculture, in 1955–56 in China, and after 1929 in Russia, marked the transition from a private to a predominantly collective system of agricultural ownership, production and distribution; it was probably the most important event in the agrarian histories of the post‐revolutionary periods in these two countries, and the unique way in which it took place has had profound implications for the subsequent development of China and Russia. It would appear obvious that any discussion about’ the transition to collective agriculture would have a great deal to gain from looking at the comparative experience of these countries; this paper is a preliminary attempt at this task.¹     

Families with Daughters,Families with Sons: Different Challenges for Family Relationships and Marital Satisfaction?

In a longitudinal study, the links between family relations and marital relations were examined in families with early adolescent children. Over the course of 4 years, 128 mother–father–adolescent triads were investigated annually. They completed questionnaires assessing family climate and marital relationships. Longitudinal analyses revealed that the initially large discrepancies between adolescents' and their parents' perceptions of family cohesion, support, and expressiveness decreased significantly over time. As adolescents approached late adolescence, however, the family members' perceptions of a lowered family closeness increasingly converged. Families with sons experienced stronger emotional distancing than families with daughters. However, the emphasis on adolescent independence was highly similar in families with daughters and sons, as was the extent to which rules and organization determined family life. Mothers and fathers did not depict their marital relationships as particularly critical during their children's early adolescent years. Moreover, in families with daughters, husbands and wives did not experience more marital conflict than in families with sons. The consistent associations revealed between marital communication, family closeness, and the opportunity for personal growth within the family suggest a bilateral focus for the study of parent–adolescent relationships.     

Queering the World or Worlding the Queer? New Readings of Anna Kavan’s Who Are You?

Abstract

This essay explores world-literary and queer approaches to Anna Kavan’s little discussed 1963 novel Who Are You?. It argues that world-literary scholarship demonstrates the centrality of white colonial masculinity to capitalist modernity, while a queer reading highlights the anxious performativity at the heart of such power. The most distinctive feature of Kavan’s text is its unusual format, whereby the story is told once, in detail, before immediately being retold, in more concise fashion and with some adjustments. What both fields add to the analysis of this formal deviation is a shared concern with the failings of normative order—whether that be the bourgeois, heteropatriarchal family or the capitalist system itself—and, in turn, the relationship of such failure to narrative disjuncture.     

Whatever happened to the women in folktale?

This study examines the representation and function of women in English romance, specifically their development from older traditional Western narrative forms. It considers three English romances and their analogues: Le Petit Berger from the Lorraine valley, Cu Chulainn and the Wooing of Emer from Ulster, both folktales, and The Lord of Learn, a Scottish ballad. Then to show how the function of women dilates in romance, Sir Orfeo, Havelok the Dane, and King Horn are examined. In Western folktales women are stock characters who symbolically complete the hero's experience; their marriage provides a resolution to the action. In romance, however, women begin to determine the hero's sense of himself and his role in the world. This study provides a new way to look at the structural function of women characters in a genre that is thought to reinforce the values of the ruling class.     

What's Love Got to Do with It? Dynastic Politics and Motherhood in the Letters of Eleonora of Aragon and her Daughters

This article analyses interpretations of motherhood in letters from the duchess of Ferrara, Eleonora d'Aragona, to her daughters, Isabella and Beatrice d'Este. Following the girls’ marriages in 1490 and 1491, the duchess used letters to maintain a close surveillance and authority over them, as well as to offer advice and direction as they established intimacy with their spouses, faced the rigours of childbirth and took on new political responsibilities. In their side of the correspondence, Isabella and Beatrice reveal their anxieties about marriage and transfer to a new environment. The author argues that despite the constraints of writing mainly through secretaries and according to formulaic epistolary conventions, the women communicated effectively, revealing both their struggle to adhere to conventional interpretations of filial and maternal duty and the personal costs borne by them for the sake of their family's dynastic and political survival.     

Parenting of Divorced Fathers and the Association with Children’s Self-Esteem

Research suggests that high parental support and control improves children’s well-being. However, a large part of these studies have focused on the parenting of married parents. Research on parenting after a divorce, mainly has focused on parenting of divorced mothers, with few exceptions concentrating primarily on non-residential fathers. Therefore, we compared both parenting dimensions support and control of fathers in different family structures (non-residential fathers, fathers in joint custody and married fathers). We also investigated the association between fathers’ parenting dimensions and children’s self-esteem, controlled for the parenting dimensions of the mother. Data from 587 children (50?% girls) between 10 and 18?years old and their parents were examined. Results revealed that non-residential fathers (n?=?225) were less supportive and controlling than fathers in joint custody (n?=?138) and married fathers (n?=?224). Nevertheless, having a supportive father was beneficial to children’s self-esteem in each family structure. We conclude that, even after a divorce, fathers have the capacity to enhance children’s self-esteem and we suggest that future research should investigate this capacity.     

Nothing wasted: engaging values and the imagination. How can working with feminist speculative fictions enthuse and engage students with social justice and sustainability in an age of austerity?

In the context of contemporary higher education, post white paper, ‘Students at the heart of the system’ [BIS, 2011. Students at the heart of the system [online]. Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/31384/11-944-higher-education-students-at-heart-of-system.pdf, (Accessed 5 Feb 2014), in which funding and commodification of learning and of students dominate university mission statements and agendas, it is crucial that we collaborate with our students to engage imagination and critical faculties with issues of value, and of social justice. Teaching and researching contemporary feminist speculative fictions and feminist critical practice offer a priceless opportunity to make a difference, to challenge the intellectual impoverishment that this new austerity brings with it. Learning and teaching research into threshold concepts and signature pedagogies combine here with feminist critical practice in a discussion of teaching two speculative fictions which engage criticality and values: Atwood [Atwood, 2003. Oryx and Crake. New York: Nan A. Talese.) and Hopkinson [Hopkinson, 1996. A habit of waste. Skin folk. New York: Aspect, 183–202] each of which critiques flawed societies using tropes of waste, and rejection of difference. Each suggests recovery from damage done in the name of austerity, and imagines futures for the critical imagination, social justice, self-worth and agency.