Persistence and polarisation: A study in the dynamics of agrarian contradiction

Backward agrarian economies like that of contemporary Bangladesh are generally held to be strongly subject to a process of polarisation between those with increasing ownership of land and those who become landless with nothing but their labour‐power to sell. Empirical evidence has often been at variance with such unilinear prognosis. Using data from south‐eastern Bangladesh, this study examines the complexity of the dynamics of backward agriculture. It is shown that the very process of polarisation itself generates a contradictory process of stabilisation of the small peasantry through the creation of supplementary income opportunities. It is the resultant dynamic which often manifests itself in the persistence of a large number of small‐owner farms amidst the process of polarisation.     

Working women in Maine: A note on sources

Corporate restructuring is a central feature neoliberal globalization. Despite the adverse social and psychological consequences of this market driven change, unions have, for the most part, viewed restructuring as an inevitable characteristic of the contemporary economy. This article argues that such market accommodation is the result of a political failure to critically engage the free market model and its social impacts. Analysis of this failure and the possible construction of a justice alternative is grounded in an analysis of union developments in Australia, South Africa and Brazil. In each country, unions were empowered and won critical struggles when they assumed a social movement form shaped by justice-orientated human liberation politics. This choice at a national level needs to be synchronized by a new labour internationalism if this challenge against market logic is to have any prospect of sustaining change.     

Persistence and polarisation in rural Bangladesh: Response to a debate

The authors here respond to the various comments on their original article in Vol.13, No.3 of The Journal of Peasant Studies. Their differences with the more traditional understanding of the process of differentiation of the peasantry are stressed and certain points arising from the comments are clarified. It is stressed that theirs is not an ‘equilibrium analysis’, but, rather, an analysis of the slow dynamics of differentiation, as opposed to the fast dynamics implied in classical Marxist models (including Lenin's).     

A note on the economic impact of the prerevolutionary nonimportation movements on urban artisans

Since Carl Bridenbaugh published The Colonial Craftsman in 1950, historians have asserted that artisans supported the pre-Revolutionary nonimportation movements largely because these trade stoppages benefited artisans economically. This article summarizes the historiography of this argument, highlights weaknesses in it, and offers evidence which demonstrates that most artisans were negatively impacted by the boycotts. Finally, it highlights the need for further research into the transition that urban artisans faced as they moved from their early dual roles as husbandmen and artisans to a near-exclusive reliance on their trades for sustenance.     

Rural transformation on the East Black Sea coast of Turkey: A note on keyder

This article questions the interpretation of modern Turkish agrarian history advanced in this journal in 1983 by Çaglar Key der. The preeminence of petty commodity production does not entail class homogeneity, any more than Lenin's analysis of class differentiation in pre‐revolutionary Russia was invalidated by Chayanov's theory of the family‐labour farm. Sharecropping illustrates the structural inequalities which characterise the social relations of Turkish agriculture. These are often founded upon uneven regional development. The argument is supported by fieldwork experience in the tea‐producing region of the Black Sea coast.     

Identity status in university women: A methodological note

Studies of correlates of identity status among university students indicate that males who have or are currently considering occupational and ideological alternatives exhibit characteristics superior to those who have not explored alternatives. Results with university women have suggested that females currently exploring alternatives do not show the positive characteristics associated with that status among males. An hypothesis is presented that differences in findings between sexes may be due to methodological procedures involving selection of differing aged samples. Evidence is presented to support the view that the exploration of alternatives has similar positive meaning for both males and females.Received B. Sc. in Psychology from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York; M. Sc. in Developmental Psychology from the New York State College at Cortland; Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Professional research interests are Piagetian and Eriksonian conceptions of adolescence and cognitive and personality development in children from a cognitivesocial learning perspective.