New peasant family forms in rural China

"This article explores the responses of peasant households in China to the quite new and radical demands made on their resources as a result of the various recent rural economic reforms....[It attempts] to identify current changes in size, structure and activity of domestic and kin groups, and to analyse the new socio-economic relations within and between households. It argues that in order to mobilise and maximise their labour and other resources to arrange for the production, consumption and welfare of household members, close kin and neighbouring peasant households have combined to give rise to a new family form, the aggregate family. This study analyses the factors leading to its formation, identifies the characteristics of this new family form and examines its relations both within and beyond the village."     

‘Life here is just scraping by’: livelihood strategies and social networks among peasant households in Honduras

This paper analyses the diverse ways in which peasant households struggle to earn their living and cope with distress amid the processes of globalisation, the decreasing role of agriculture, and market-based models of rural development, by drawing on research conducted among peasant households in northern Honduras. Special attention is paid to the socio-political processes that shape the opportunities and constraints of local households in diversifying their livelihoods and to social networks, cultural norms, political power relations, and institutional mechanisms that mediate people's access to different livelihood options. The results of our study show that although peasant households engage in an array of livelihood practices, their sources of income are sporadic and their strategies of living are vulnerable. An overemphasis on the capacity of the poor to reshape their lives and reformulate their livelihood strategies easily underestimates the ways in which the inequitable socio-economic structures and political power relations constrain the livelihood options of the poor.     

Diana,Princess of Wales

Abstract

Ben Shaw, mechanic of Preston, Lancashire, began to write his family history in 1826. It describes the disruptions caused by industrialization and migration to Ben and Betty Shaw and their extended families. This article reflects upon the domestic economies Shaw describes and sees these households as key institutions for mutually organised survival and betterment and as the focus for the diverse activities of women's work. Households were linked into wider support networks between kin and neighbours. Reciprocity was rarely calculative. Gendered power relations could also be close affective relations, despite conflict. Women were vital to this bargain between care and resources which, for this family at least, helped negotiate the contradictions in social identities shaped by both gender and class across the public/private divide     

Market-driven dairying and the politics of value,labor and affect in Gujarat,India

Ethnography in Gujarat, India’s poster-state of market reforms, recovers what transpires when the individual embraces capital for market-driven production. This contribution reports on resource-poor rural households who embark on dairying through buffaloes acquired with microcredit. The essay discusses the politics of economic value, and economic value encountering other values, lifeworlds and affective relations related to work, humans and non-human others. These phenomena interrupt commodity production. Human–animal relations challenge both capitalism’s treatment of bovines as machines, and the bovine politics of Hindu nationalism rooted in ignorance of rural economy, lifeworlds and livelihoods.     

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.     

Northern Thai peasant society: Twentieth‐century transformations in political and Jural structures

This article describes changes in politico‐jural structures in a peasant sector of Northern Thailand as between two specific periods 1910–50 and 1950–70. Peasant households and local communities, village elders and headmen, ideological practice and changing types, causes and means of settlement of disputes and trouble cases are analysed in a context of increasing socio‐economic differentiation. Changes and continuities are theorized in terms of two transitional conjunctures in a shift from a precapitalist mode of production. The small‐scale anthropological study is set in the theoretical framework of the Thai social formation as a whole, whose agricultural sector is shown to be increasingly dominated by capitalist relations of production.     

Rural artisans and peasant mobilisation in the socialist international: The fasci siciliani

This article explores the conditions under which peasant cultivators and rural artisans participate in movements of social transformation, a case in point being the Fascio movement of Sicily in the late nineteenth century. It analyses the reasons why artisans could play a critical role in politicising local protest and articulating it with pan‐European socialist movements, by describing their relations to other classes in a differentiated peasant community.     

The transformation of rural labour systems in colonial and post‐colonial Northern Nigeria

The study attempts to highlight the interrelation between three central points in the ongoing debate on the political economy of development: viability, surplus, and class‐formation. A case study of the development of rural labour systems in Northern Nigeria is meant to provide both a better qualitative and quantitative idea of this interrelation. After an analysis of the socio‐economic effects of forced and bonded labour during colonial times, the articulation of different systems of family and non‐family labour has been investigated. Class‐specific effects of labour and capital input do even result in an increasing use of communal labour by rich and middle peasants after the Nigerian Civil War: its form remains, but its content changes fundamentally. The socio‐economic and material base for small‐scale peasant subsistence production has been gradually destroyed.     

From Communism to Capitalism? Russia's Agrarian Relations in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

The introduction to this collection discusses Russia's agrarian relations in a historical and contemporary context, placing questions of current economic development firmly within the political economy issues that were relevant in the early twentieth century in Russia. The analysis focuses on the question of peasant adaptation and resistance. The concept of resistance is discussed comparatively and as it pertains to contemporary Russia. Survey data from 800 households in five regions are used to explore rural adaptation according to economic strata. Specifically, data are presented on business income, total landholdings and total household income in order to address the issue of who adapted. Statistical analysis is presented to explore the relationship between household affluence and the use of social networks, and between household affluence and household satisfaction.     

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?.     

Rural responses to reform in Post-Soviet countries

This review article discusses three books on post-communist agrarian reforms. At the heart of the discussion are questions over the efficacy of market reform and rural responses to reform policies. The article argues that the conception of reform that stemmed from the Washington Consensus was often too narrow and did not always lead to expected results, and indeed, sometimes led to unwanted, unintended results. Nonetheless, the three books are highly suggestive of rural adaptation in most post-communist nations. The nature and degree of adaptation to a new economic environment across several post-communist nations represent a critical mass of rural responses. Instead of seeing rural responses as resistant to change, or victims of change, a more nuanced view of reform appreciates the transformation in social and economic relations engendered by market reform.     

The peasant image and agrarian change: Representations of rural society in nineteenth‐century French painting from millet to van Gogh

In the upsurge of rustic themes in French painting during the second half of the nineteenth century is articulated a range of urban responses to agrarian and industrial transformation of country and city at the time. The recreation through art of ‘peasant culture’ was rooted in preoccupations about work and production, changing social relations and forms of sociability, the idea of the nation and the growth of political consciousness. This article examines some of the processes underlying the abundant production of peasant images ‐ the role of patronage, the growing importance of contemporary art criticism in formulating and diffusing values and sensibilities — as well as the complex and, at times, contradictory strains within the iconography of rural life in nineteenth‐century French art.     

Lineage networks,land conflicts and rural migration in late socialist China

A new form of migration in parts of rural China involves the members of small descent groups being pushed out of their residential villages by larger descent groups and relocating to their ancestral villages. Although such households were said to be ‘returning’ to their ancestral villages it was often decades or centuries since the immigrants' direct family members last had contact with members of their ancestral villages. So the returnees were in fact new immigrants to new communities. This article draws on original fieldwork to consider how the place-claiming activities of revived traditional social networks underpinned this household relocation. Our analysis of this phenomenon contributes to a wider body of literature on the revival of traditional networks in late socialist societies. In particular we suggest that the revival of these networks and their territorialisation of space are responses to the conditions of late socialism such as ‘fuzzy’ land and property rights, and insecure economic livelihoods.     

Rural industry and uneven development: The significance of gender in the Irish Linen industry

From the middle of the eighteenth century, the Irish linen industry grew on the basis of unequal relations of exchange between spinning and weaving households. This regional division of labour in turn depended on unequal relations of production between women and men within rural industrial households. The ‘proto‐industrialisation’ thesis has tended to obscure this process by focussing on the household as a bounded entity, and by failing to recognise the significance of inequalities within the household production unit. Once gender relations are made central to the thesis, it can be expanded to explain regional differences in rural industrialisation and deindustrialisation.     

Reflections on Peasant Adaptation in Rural Russia at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: The Stolypin Agrarian Reforms

The Stolypin reforms in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century are usually understood as a revolutionary attempt to destroy the peasantry and peasant culture through legal coercion; in fact, they were a more moderate attempt to encourage change through voluntary procedures. In terms of both the numbers of peasants embracing them and their social impact, the reforms were also more successful than has traditionally been acknowledged. A key reason for their success was the synergistic relationship between the reform process and the deepening marketization of rural and urban economic environments in conjunction with the peasants' increasing willingness to adapt to and take advantage of the new opportunities these processes created. The reforms' positive outcomes contrast sharply with the results of current reforms in Russia and highlight the critical role of market supporting institutions in creating a supportive environment.     

From collectives to markets: Restructured agriculture‐industry linkages in rural China: Some micro‐level evidence

The article attempts to put together micro‐evidence for constructing an initial sketch of the emergent structure of linkages between agriculture and rural industry. It focuses mainly on three aspects : (i) the transfer of land from peasants to industrial and other enterprises, (ii) mechanisms and practices for absorbing peasant labour into the rural non‐farm sector, especially in the form of wage labour, and (iii) the forms and relative dimensions of various direct and indirect financial flows between rural enterprises and the agricultural sector. The article also offers some observations concerning the likely implications of the restructuring of rural economic relationships for rural (and agricultural) accumulation, for the efficiency of resource use, for equity and welfare in the rural sector, and for social processes in the countryside. The article provides a comparative perspective, whereby the post‐reform forms, pattern and nature of rural agriculture‐industry linkages are set against the lapsed context of the rural people's commune.     

Women,poverty and agricultural growth in India

This article explores the interlinkages between gender, poverty and agricultural growth in India. It shows how women and female children of poor rural households bear a disproportionately high share of the burden of poverty. This is manifest especially in a systematic bias against females in the intra‐household distribution of food and health care. However, there are significant cross‐regional differences in the extent of the bias which is much higher in the north‐western states relative to the southern. Some of the likely factors ‐ economic, social, historical ‐ underlying these differences are discussed here. The specific problems of female‐headed households are separately considered. Also, the on‐going debate on the relationship between rural poverty and agricultural growth is critically examined. In addition, a detailed quantitative analysis is undertaken of the differential effects of the new agricultural technology, and associated growth, on the employment and earnings of female and male agricultural labourers (who constitute the bulk of the rural poor). The association between changes in these economic variables and others, such as in the incidence and pattern of dowry payments, is also examined, as are the implications of both these aspects for the situation of rural women in poverty in different geographic regions.     

Rural women migrant returnees in contemporary China

This essay focuses on the experiences of female returnees in rural–urban migration in contemporary China. Based on in-depth interviews with women migrants, returnees, their family members, friends and fellow villagers in both sending and receiving areas, the research examines rural migrant women's return migration process. It investigates rural migrant women's decision-making in the process, the ways women returnees construct their lives in the countryside, their identity negotiation as returnees and the impact of patriarchy on women's experiences of the return and resettlement process. The author argues that despite women's active involvement in migration and the ‘empowerment and agency’ gained through migration, the patriarchal power relations within rural households remain intact and continue to shape rural female returnees' life in their villages.     

Stability and change 1300–1700: The socio‐economic context of the self‐perpetuating family farm in England

The article examines the not inconsiderable role played by alteration in the pattern of inheritance custom in bringing about the transformation of the medieval peasantry into a self‐respecting group of small‐holders. Where child‐portions in the form of cash or education were accepted as legitimate equivalents to land and stock, sixteenth‐century holdings remained large, 30–100 acres. Where the principle was not accepted, the medieval pattern of overcrowded twelve‐acre holdings either persisted or reappeared.

The very considerable differences, in cultural and economic terms, between the small‐holder of the thirteenth‐century in England and the small‐holder of the eighteenth century has been largely obscured and overlooked by the use of the term ’peasant’ to designate both groups. Thus the medievalists discuss the disappearance of the peasantry in the fifteenth century and modern historians and sociologists probe the causes of the disappearance of the peasantry in the eighteenth. Both have in mind the self‐perpetuating family farm but they are discussing two very different types of rural economy. Such confusion is surely an indicator of the need for a closer definition of terms among those concerned with rural studies.     

The Rise,Fall and Future of the Jamaican Peasantry

This article examines the crisis of the Jamaican peasantry. Jamaica's peasants are struggling against pressures old and new, with the burden of their spatial inheritance magnified by a withering state, rising food imports following trade liberalisation, and oft-conflictive social relations. It begins by examining the historical formation of the peasantry after Emancipation, emphasising the unevenness of the landscape and the tensions between individualism and cooperation, before describing the protracted process of de-peasantisation, which has sped under structural adjustment reforms. Current conditions and future prospects are assessed through the insights and experiences of peasant farmers situated on the periphery of a plantation landscape. Ultimately, the future of peasant farming in Jamaica is seen to be bound up foremost in the struggle for land reform, and it is hoped that the current de-stabilisation of the plantation system will provide a new window for historic change.