The hoe and the vote: Rural labourers and the national election in Brazil in 1974∗

In this article notions about the political attitudes of rural labourers in present‐day Brazil—such as ‘labourers have no opinion. They vote for whom they are told‘—are questioned. It is shown that among a group of labourers in the interior of the state of São Paulo there is a well‐developed sense of class identity and of the need for solidarity (although actual solidarity is very limited'). Their lack of involvement in national politics in contrast with their activity in local‐level politics (an activity which is, however, non‐party and personalised) and their apparently contradictory views of the nature of the Brazilian state are seen to be perfectly rational responses to the objective circumstances in which they live and work. Moreover, they have well‐developed political attitudes. The article demonstrates in what way the life‐experience of the group and the resulting world view are the basic elements which help to explain the labourers’ ideas of the political struggle and their approach to the electoral process; and it shows that the structurally different roles of men and women are reflected in their respective political attitudes.     

Peasants and conflict in nineteenth‐century rural England: A comment on recent articles

This note replies to two previous contributions by Mick Reed in the Journal of Peasant Studies. The author agrees with Reed on the importance of family labour to the peasantry. While recognising that subsistence was significant, he cannot, however, agree that peasants stood outside the capitalist economy, since they depended on the market for the bulk of their living. However, within the capitalist economy the distinction between the peasant and estate systems is important, making attention to the open‐closed model a necessary part of studies such as those of Roger Wells and Mick Reed. In this context, the author asserts a more limited role for the concept of ‘conflict’, by distinguishing it from ‘friction’.     

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.     

Simple commodity production and wage labour in the American plains∗

Households which exclusively produce a single commodity have a dual character as enterprises and as families. Competition establishes a constant requirement for labour, while demographic variation prevents its continuous supply within the household. Using data from a county in the heart of the American wheat plains to illustrate the analysis, this paper applies a modified version of Marx's theory to the circuits of reproduction of simple commodity production, focusing on their intersection with markets in labour power. The analysis requires elaboration of the Marxist definition of class, in order to differentiate members of specialized commodity production households who work for wages as a temporary phase in the life‐cycle, from a permanent class of wage labourers. It concludes that simple commodity production, although it differs from capitalist production as well as from peasant households, requires for its reproduction a well‐developed market in labour‐power and thus an essentially capitalist economy.     

Class relations and capitalist development: Subsumption in the Colombian coffee industry, 1928–92

The concept of subsumption had a short life within Marxist analysis of family farming because analysts using the concept failed to appreciate the centrality of class relations in Marx's analysis of capitalist development. I argue that the concept of subsumption is best understood as a theorisation of the subtle cultural and historical processes through which labour is incorporated into capitalist development projects. I reinforce this theoretical discussion with an analysis of capitalist development in the Colombian coffee industry. This case demonstrates that capitalist development is as much project as process, as much the reformation of cultural identity as the restructuring of relations of production.     

Technology and the housewife in nineteenth‐century America

ALICE JAMES: A BIOGRAPHY by Jean Strouse. Boston. Houghton, Mifflin, 1980. 367 pp. ($15.00).

THE DEATH AND LETTERS OF ALICE JAMES edited by Ruth Bernard Yeazell. Berkeley. University of California Press, 1981.214pp. ($12.95)

CONVERSATIONS WITH KATHERINE ANNE PORTER by Enrique Hank Lopez. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1981). 326 pp., $14.95.     

Ascertaining the economic characteristics of peasant classes‐in‐themselves in rural India: A methodological and empirical exercise

In 1976 the author developed a simple labour‐use index for the empirical identification of classes‐in‐themselves within a cultivating population. This index was subsequently applied, along with other conventional grouping methods, to farm economics data relating to Haryana, India. This analysis was complete by 1981. Part I of this article summarises some results of this methodological exercise in ascertaining the economic characteristics of classes‐in‐themselves. Part II is a critical discussion of an article on a similar theme by Athreya, Böklin, Djurfeldt and Lindberg in a recent issue of this journal.     

Peasants,the state and policy constraints: The political economy of rural development in peninsular Malaysia 1957–69

This article draws attention to two propositions concerning the analysis of public policy formation. First, such analysis should take account of inherent constraints that the state faces in the formulation and implementation of its economic policies. Second, policy analysis must necessarily deal with specific historical contexts within which constraints on state policy formation operate. The main purpose of this article is to apply these two propositions to a study of the rural development strategy pursued by the Alliance government in Peninsular Malaysia. A second purpose is to derive from the empirical case certain theoretical implications which can be relevant for the analysis of the role of the state in economic development.     

The economic bases of demographic reproduction: From the domestic mode of production to wage‐earning

This article investigates the changes affecting demographic reproduction of population of peasant origin when they shift from self‐sustenance to market economy and wage‐earning. It shows how in the domestic mode of production, the birth‐rate and the survival of the pre‐productive generation until the age of production are dependent on the labour productivity of subsistence agriculture and on the techniques of conservation of crops, and how social reproduction is governed by the mode of distribution of the surplus‐product. The loss of control of the communities over their grain reserves, and their progressive integration into the market economy and wage‐earning, change the conditions of demographic reproduction, which comes to depend on money income, prices of subsistence, market supply, level of employment etc. These circumstances and the concomitant insecurity favour both a burst of natality as a means of social security and the survival of the younger generations for longer periods; and they accentuate the demographic effects of famines or unemployment. Hence the dramatic consequences of the monetary policy implemented in the dependent countries on the physiological conditions of the proletarianised rural populations.     

Organized labor in the political process: A case study of the right‐to‐work campaign in Ohio

The 40-year anniversary of the Equal Pay Act in 2010 brought a new notoriety to what was once an obscure dispute – the Ford sewing machinists’ strike of 1968. Even a film, Made In Dagenham, has now been released in Britain and the US and, as described below, a number of letters and articles have appeared celebrating what is universally described as ‘a strike for equal pay’. Yet the sewing machinists’ placards at their union conference proclaiming ‘Equal Rights’ are probably the nearest the workers themselves got to a demand for equal pay. That demand was instead developed by the male trade unionists who came to control the dispute. The one woman in the case who enthusiastically embraced the concept of equal pay – Minister of Labor Barbara Castle – did so only in order to get the women back to work. Classifying the 1968 strike as ‘a strike for equal pay’ conceals its real importance as a protest against injustice and exploitation.     

Social change and social conflict in nineteenth‐century England: The use of the open‐closed village model

Following earlier articles on social change and conflict in rural England 1780–1850, we assert the relevance of the open‐closed model of social structure, particularly to the study of Burwash by Wells [1981]. This paper demonstrates that no parish was insulated from economic and other influences exerted in and by neighbouring parishes. More especially, although open parishes challenged the upper Establishment, they were not devoid of internal strife, since different interests were not subject to the overriding influence of the large landowners who dominated the populations of closed parishes.     

Green multiculturalism: articulations of ethnic and environmental politics in a Colombian ‘black community’

This paper analyzes the intersection of two parallel developments that have had a curious impact on agrarian politics in Colombia: on the one hand, attempts to appropriate land for ‘green’ ends such as biofuel production, which have become ubiquitous all across Latin America, and on the other, the implementation of multicultural reforms, which in Colombia resulted in the collective titling of more than five million hectares of land for ‘black communities’. Although these two developments can be read as contradictory – with ‘green grabs’ threatening ethnic groups’ territorial rights and multicultural reforms purportedly safeguarding them – I argue that, together, they produce a unique political articulation which I term ‘green multiculturalism’.

My analysis of oil-palm cultivation in a ‘black community’ in southwestern Colombia reveals three interrelated consequences. First, I suggest that green multiculturalism produces ‘black communities’ as ‘green’ collective subjects charged not only with being wardens of nature, but also bearers of the responsibility to right environmental wrongs. Second, I note that the agrarian practices associated with oil-palm cultivation act as disciplining technologies that seek to transform local rationalities into entrepreneurial ones. Finally, I contend that these initiatives are ‘landscaping projects’ that seek to transform forms of interspecies relating.     

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.