Thoreau in the 21<Superscript>st</Superscript> Century

Laura Dassow Walls’s superb biography of Henry David Thoreau is the most important study of this author thus far in the twenty-first century. Beautifully written, and packed with rich detail and subtle interpretation, Walls’s book teaches us much that is new about Thoreau and, furthermore, prompts us to think more deeply about and reassess this complex person and challenging writer—a writer whose range and mass of published and unpublished work, produced during his all too brief life (he died at age 44), is astounding. Thoreau is an inspiring radical voice for personal change and social reform, yet he is, at the same time, extremely self-centered and highly skeptical about the capacity of readers and audiences to bring about the transformations that he advocates.     

Crafts and trades (english): Comment on T. Shanin

Eric Hobsbawm's outline of the concept of social banditry suggest certain conditions of existence for that mode of primitive rebellion. Primary among these conditions are the presence of a ‘traditional peasant environment and the absence of ‘industrial capitalism’. This paper presents a critique of Hobsbawm's specifications, and suggest two alternative conditions: the presence of class conflict which unites direct producers, and the absence of effective, institutionalised political organisation of producers’ interests. This reformulation is illustrated by reference to the Kelly Outbreak in late nineteenth century Australia.     

Juveniles in the rural work force of sixteenth‐century castile

Peasant children in sixteenth‐century Castile helped their families with various domestic chores and agropastoral jobs. Used as unpaid workers, they enabled the typical peasant family to diversify its activities, and often to raise its standard of living. Hired juvenile workers were also quite important in Golden Age Castile. These seemingly entered the job market because their own families lacked the resources to enable them to remain at home. The experience of active participation in productive activities served all juvenile workers, whether paid or unpaid, as a sort of apprenticeship in preparation for adult membership in the peasant community.     

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.