Agroindustry and contract farmers in upland West Java

This study examines the experience of contract farmers in the hilly southern region of West Java, using illustrations from two types of upland contracting schemes. The nucleus in one case (smallholder dairy farming) is a co‐operative, and in the second (smallholder hybrid coconuts) a large nationalised plantation corporation. In both cases contract farming communities deviate markedly from the neo‐populist vision of homogeneous, modernising family farms; differentiation is quite marked, and wage labour common. In both cases the institutional framework surrounding contract farmers is in serious need of democratisation; the problem is not one of formal structures in need of revision but of actual function and substance of relationships, which reflect the nature and exercise of power in rural society.     

Digital Restructuring: Gender,Class and Citizenship in the Information Society in Canada

‘Digital restructuring’ denotes a phenomenon integral to but also distinct within economic and political restructuring broadly conceived. The concept of restructuring can be modified with ‘digital’ to forefront the important technological dimension of global restructuring, as well as to indicate developments associated with the new ‘information economy’. Digital technology and digitization have been integral to the scope and speed of the global economic and political restructuring of recent decades. They have constituted the technological conditions for some of the more characteristic aspects of this process; from the flexiblization or outright shedding of labour, to the mobility of production and capital and the globalization of trade and financial markets. This paper seeks to debunk much of the corporate and state mythology of digital restructuring currently in circulation by drawing upon the analyses of digital technology and restructuring advanced by critical scholars and progressive social movements, and to highlight the dangers to progressive political movements and discourses posed by the very nature of these representations.     

民营化:英国实践

我应邀去解释为什么民营化方案在英国会采取如此模式。为此,我需要对英国时下民营化的法律以及政治背景加以阐释。在这一过程中,我们将看到某些在他国少见而英国独有的因素。而这也引出了一个问题,那就是:究竟能够从英国的实践中汲取什么样的经验教训。一、法律背景英国在拥有一部不成文宪法方面完全可以说是独一无二的。但这并不意味着没有宪法。那只是说不存在一部宪法典,我们的宪法是一个包括制定法、判例法、条约以及非正式的惯例在内的混合体。这一结构的基石是议会主权原则,戴雪教授对此有着如此经典的论述:议会主权原则亦即如此,也就…