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).