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. Each of the reforms has far‐reaching implications for the form and content of rural social institutions. This article attempts, as far as is presently possible, 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.     

Genetically modified soybeans,agrochemical exposure,and everyday forms of peasant collaboration in Argentina

Since the 2000s, both the production of genetically modified (GM) soybeans and the cases of agrochemical exposure have grown exponentially in Argentina. Drawing on ethnographic research, I analyze how peasant social movements understand the socio-environmental problems caused by the expansion of GM soybeans. I argue that at national, provincial, and local scales, the institutional recognition of peasant social movements and the performative actions of authorities discourage contentious collective action through subtle yet powerful mechanisms. The article contributes to social movement research and to the literature on peasant resistance by analyzing the cultural dynamics that constrain contention and shape processes of peasant collaboration, which are arguably as important as peasant resistance, although much less studied.     

The politics of peasant burden in reform china

This article analyses the changing nature and role of the state in rural China during reform by examining the issue of peasant financial burdens. It argues that, despite some successes in transforming China's countryside, the state has not been reduced since the reform began in 1978. Rather, it is being reshaped (with certain distortions) with its major role changing from ‘redistributive’ to ‘regulatory’. This transition, epitomised by continuing expansion of the state and growing unruly exaction from peasants by local state agents, has been in the direction of neo‐patrimonialism where resources are contested by state, officials, and the masses. This three‐way struggle has led to tensions among the state, cadres, and peasants.     

From peasant to entrepreneur in Italy and Japan

From Peasant to Entrepreneur: the Survival of the Family Farm in Italy, by Anna Bull and Paul Corner. Oxford: Berg, 1993. Pp. ix + 174. £29.95. ISBN 0 85496 309 X.

Bull and Corner's historical study of the development of the ‘pluriactive’ rural household and its impact on the structure of industry in one region of Italy might go unnoticed by those concerned with rural change in other parts of the world. However, the clear similarities between the experience they describe and contemporaneous developments in Japan suggest the possibility of an alternative pattern of agriculture/industry relations over the course of industrialisation in economies where the small‐scale, multi‐functional, rural household prevails.     

Islam,the Mappilas and peasant revolt in Malabar

Stephen Frederic Dale, Islamic Society on the South Asian Frontier: The Mappilas of Malabar, 1498–1922, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980, pp. 290, £17.50.

The Mappila outbreaks of the nineteenth century, culminating in the rebellion of 1921, have usually been seen as fundamentally either economic or religious phenomena, and have been treated in isolation from rural protest and revolt elsewhere in India. It is argued here that the outbreaks can best be understood in a specifically peasant context and constituted only one of several forms or strategies of Mappila peasant mobilization and protest: they shared, moreover, characteristics with many other peasant movements in India. In such a context religion and economics are not alternative causations, but intimately interwoven elements of peasant perceptions and self‐expression.     

Peasant insurrection in China reconsidered: A preliminary examination of the Jun Mountain peasant rising,Nantong county, 1863

Focusing on a concrete historical example ‐ the Jun Mountain Peasant Rising, a small‐scale, mid‐nineteenth century insurgency in the Yangzi delta region ‐ this article re‐evaluates standard interpretations of peasant action and resistance in China. Although obscure and abortive, the Jun Mountain rising illuminates the developing role and interpenetration of ‘outsider’ communities, sectarian ideology/organisation, class formation, and long‐term trends in peasant culture in the emergence of an insurgent politics which at once built upon and transcended local ties. Preliminary examination of these politics thus contributes to current debate about the nature of Chinese peasant rebellions.     

Differentiated childhoods: impacts of rural labor migration on left-behind children in China

This article draws on data from research that includes 400 children who lived separately from their migrant parents in 10 rural communities in China, to explore the deep impacts of rural parents' migration on the care-giving and nurturing of children left behind. It shows that parent migration has brought about multiple impacts, mostly negative, on the lives of children, such as increased workloads, little study tutoring and supervision, and above all the unmet needs of parental affection. Children's basic daily care and personal safety could become problematic since surrogate caregivers, mostly elderly, are usually exhausted with livelihood maintenance. With illumination on the family dysfunction in children's development due to migration-induced family separation, this article highlights the social cost to rural families of parental migration. Urbanization in developing countries is obtained at the expense of rural migrants and their families, especially children left behind. Further attention is required to improve left-behind children's well being within split family structures and interregional migration.     

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.     

Dynamics of family size and composition: A computer simulation study with reference to rural India

This study attempts to understand the dynamics that produce the persistent observation of a strong positive correlation between family size and extent of landholdings in predominantly agrarian economies. Such a correlation can arise from different types of demographic configurations including the rules of family formation. For example, big landholdings may be associated with large families, despite the lack of differentials across holdings of different size in fertility and mortality, simply because these families may remain undivided for long periods. In the absence of conclusive data to analyse this relationship in the Indian case, this study sets up a computer simulation model for studying the results of alternative demographic configurations.     

Dynamics of family size and composition: a computer simulation study with reference to rural India

"This study attempts to understand the dynamics that produce the persistent observation of a strong positive correlation between family size and extent of landholdings in predominantly agrarian economies [in India]. Such a correlation can arise from different types of demographic configurations including the rules of family formation. For example, big landholdings may be associated with large families, despite the lack of differentials across holdings of different size in fertility and mortality, simply because these families may remain undivided for long periods. In the absence of conclusive data to analyse this relationship in the Indian case, this study sets up a computer simulation model for studying the results of alternative demographic configurations."     

新中国工会50年

本文对新中国工会的５０ 年做了简要回顾。说明新中国工会在中华人民共和国的各个历史发展时期, 始终坚持在中国共产党的领导下开展自己的工作, 为团结广大职工群众完成党和国家在各个时期的中心任务, 维护职工群众的合法权益, 发挥了主要的社会作用, 做出了重要的贡献, 成为党和国家全局工作中的一个重要组成部分和职工利益的主要代表者。文章提出在人民共和国每一次重要的历史转变关头, 都曾发生过有关工会问题的广泛争论。这些大的论争都是围绕着社会主义国家中工会的性质、地位、作用、基本方针和基本职能, 以及工会与党、工会与政府的关系等一系列工会工作中的基本问题进行的。本文作者联系历史, 着眼当前现实, 对这些基本问题提出了自己的看法     

The peasant mode of production in the work of A. V. Chayanov

Is there a peasant mode of production? Chayanov's work can be construed as a theory of the peasant mode of production at the level of the labour process. This labour process is analysed in terms of the forces of production, the relationship between the peasant and the means of production, and that between the peasant and the product. When subjected to an historical critique, from the point of view of the formation and decomposition of the peasantry, Chayanov's theory of a peasant mode of production yields to the idea of peasantry as a specific combination of structures.     

Emigrants,spinsters and priests: The dynamics of demography in Spanish peasant societies

In Spanish peasant societies, aspects of social organisation such as patterns of marriage and inheritance and cultural traits like courtship and the concept of honour are examined as functional equivalents of demographic mechanisms such as fertility control and migration. Whether a demographic mechanism reinforces tradition or generates social change is found to be dependent on social structure.     

New Dreams of China: The China Novels of Anne Duffield

This article examines the work of a forgotten novelist, Anne Duffield, whose early novels set in China merit re-examination. Utilizing but also subverting the romance novel formula and alert to the utopian appeal of entertainment, Duffield’s The Lacquer Couch and Lantern-Light create a dream of China that invites intercultural connection, friendship and understanding. As China in the 1920s was rocked by anti-foreigner violence, the vision of these two novels was an appealing and hopeful alternative to the resurgent fears of malevolent fiends reminiscent of an earlier ‘Yellow Peril’ discourse. In addition, Duffield’s China, though romanticized, is also a modern and cosmopolitan one—an important counter to a tendency to imagine China as antiquated and entombed in the past.     

Outside earnings in the Russian peasant farm: The case of Tula province 1900 to 1917

Employment in, and income earned from, crafts and trades (promysly) played an important role in the peasant budget in Tula province before the revolution. This income was earned in both domestic and migratory occupations of various types—many directly related to the urban industries of the town of Tula. Overall, these side earnings played a reciprocal role to farming proper—a point which is demonstrated within the province geographically, according to the size and ‘scale’ of the farm and according to its organisation and layout. This income was therefore primarily supplementary, so that rather than weakening the peasant household farm as an economic unit, industrial or other ‘off‐farm’ work served to maintain the peasant farm at a time of economic change and industrial growth.     

M. L. Darling and the Punjab peasant in prosperity and debt: A fresh look

More than half a century ago M. L. Darling contended that the volume and burden of debt in the Punjab province of British India were higher for the more prosperous farmers or areas. This thesis has enjoyed considerable intellectual respect over the years. The present article attempts a closer inspection of Darling's data and argues that though the prosperous farmers had a larger volume of debt its incidence was lower. The findings of the All‐India Rural Credit Survey (1951–52) corroborate this contention.