Of white whale and countrymen in the eighteenth‐century Maratha Deccan. extended class relations,rights, and the problem of rural autonomy under the old regime 1

The problem is simply stated, but resists solution. We begin with the classical historiographic images of Old Regime societies of South Asia and suggest that beneath the surface of abstract formulations for and against these images, unrecognised difficulties of assumption and method allow them to persist in the contemporary imagination. This not only hampers understanding of historic societies, taken individually, but prevents proper assessment of their comparative significance on an international plane. The relationship between these images of discontinuity and similar sociological images of European peasantry is not coincidental. The errors of the latter are demonstrable through an abundant historiography; the burden of this essay is directed towards a solution to the former. We provide an empirically‐based structural study of social relationships in the countryside of Maharashtra in the 150 years preceding European occupation: a) to begin the accumulation of examples that contradict the received images; b) to provide an analysis of one Old Regime society for its own comparative sake. By examining the social distribution of certain types of right and of access to control of land, we demonstrate the existence of powerful forms of social dominance transcending the frontiers of the village, and strongly influencing the organisation of social, economic and political life in the countryside. Whilst we focus on a specific structural problem (namely, the conception of social totality and its internal ordering), the conclusion and footnotes permit the actual dynamism of the forms of relationship studied to emerge in incipient statement on social change under the old order.?     

Using Private-Public Linkages to Regulate Environmental Conflicts: The Case of International Construction Contracts

The article takes a pluralistic view of the 'trade-environment' conflict by exploring one of the settings of this conflict: the lex constructionis – international construction law. It seeks to unravel the way in which the unique structural-cultural attributes of this legal domain have affected its environmental (in)sensitivity. The article's main argument in that context is that the contractual tradition of the lex constructionis (as manifested in the standard contracts that dominate this field) and its unique institutional structure, have created a culture of ecological indifference. This culture has important practical consequences because of the deep ecological problematic of international construction projects. The article develops an alternative contractual model, which depicts the construction contract as a semi-political mechanism, rather than a private tool. This conceptual change seeks to break the public/private separation that characterizes the contractual discourse in the international construction market. The article explores, further, whether this alternative contractual vision could be realized in practice, and proposes several implementing modules which could further this goal. While the article explores a particular international regime, its methodology and conclusions – in particular, the political-constitutional interpretation of the contract and the critique of the public/private dichotomy (see sections III.3 and III.4) – should be relevant to the regulation of many other (national or international) environmental dilemmas.