Exit from agriculture: a step forward or a step backward for the rural poor?

World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development recommends that rural smallholders unable to compete in higher value production should exit agriculture. For the old and new landless, the way forward is wage labour in agriculture, in rural off farm work, or in urban areas. Disjunctively, the Report also proposes ‘farm-financed social welfare’ as a safety net when urban workers are ejected back to countryside at times of ‘urban shock’. My essay contrasts the Report's narrative about felicitous trajectories away from and back to the farm with the historical and contemporary experience of Asia's rural poor.     

Agrarian political economy and modern world capitalism: the contributions of food regime analysis

This paper provides a selective survey of food regimes and food regime analysis since the seminal article by Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael in 1989, and further traced through their subsequent (individual) work. It identifies eight key elements or dimensions of food regime analysis, namely the international state system; international divisions of labour and patterns of trade; the ‘rules’ and discursive (ideological) legitimations of different food regimes; relations between agriculture and industry, including technical and environmental change in farming; dominant forms of capital and their modalities of accumulation; social forces (other than capitals and states); the tensions and contradictions of specific food regimes; and transitions between food regimes. These are used to summarise three food regimes in the history of world capitalism to date: a first regime from 1870 to 1914, a second regime from 1945 to 1973, and a third corporate food regime from the 1980s proposed by McMichael within the period of neoliberal globalisation. Questions of theory, method and evidence are noted in the course of the exposition and pulled together in a final section which criticises the ‘peasant turn’ of the ‘corporate food regime’ and the analytical and empirical weaknesses associated with it.     

The autobiographical you: letters in the gendered politics of the labour movement

In this article, I consider the importance of epistolary narratives in the interface of autobiography and politics. In doing this, I read the letters of Fannia Mary Cohn, a Jewish immigrant worker, trade union activist and ardent labour organizer in the garment industry in the USA in the first half of the twentieth century. Cohn was a prolific writer and political activist and left a rich body of labour literature, but never wrote an autobiography or a diary or journal. It is in her letters to her comrades and friends in the labour movement that short autobiographical stories erupt and it is on such stories across her correspondence that this article focuses. The analysis is informed by Hannah Arendt's theorization of narratives in their interrelation with politics and history. Drawing on a rich body of feminist literature around the relational self, what I argue is that an Arendtian reading of epistolary narratives is a useful analytical tool in understanding gendered politics in the diverse histories of the labour movement.     

试论我国资格刑的缺陷与完善

资格刑是以剥夺犯罪人的某种资格的刑罚.通过剥夺行为人实施某种行为的资格和能力,彰显其实现刑罚特殊预防目的的独特功能.因而资格刑的存在是必要的.就我国现状而言,现行资格刑种类单一、针对性不强、设计不甚合理.不仅如此,大量具有资格剥夺性质的处罚游离于刑罚体系之外,发挥资格刑的作用.因此,我国资格刑亟需完善:一方面,针对资格刑种类单一,应将散见其他法律条文中具有剥夺资格的内容进行整合纳入刑罚体系,同时,对现行的资格刑进行分解,以完善我国资格刑种类;另一方面,针对资格刑适用方面的弊端,应增加资格刑的复权制度以完善资格刑的执行制度.     

论刑讯逼供产生的内在诱因

刑讯逼供是指司法人员采用肉刑或变相肉刑折磨被讯问人的精神或肉体以获取口供的一种审讯方法。我国《刑事诉讼法》第43条明文规定禁止采用刑讯逼供非法获取口供。然而,时至今日,这种古老而又野蛮的审讯方式依然存在,并成为我国司法体制的一颗顽固毒瘤,而诠释刑讯逼供产生的内在诱因是解决问题的关键。     

“兴地睦边”农田整治重大工程调查研究

搞好土地整理,不仅改善农业农村的生产生活条件,提高农业综合生产能力,促进新农村建设,还将从根本上缓解土地资源供需矛盾,保障经济社会可持续发展。西部生态建设地区云南省“兴地睦边”农田整治重大工程是国土资源部在云南省西南边境地区开展的一项兴边富民工程,重点对区域内田、水、路、林、村等进行综合整治,并配套较完备的农田基础设施。该文认为项目的建设对改善区域农业生产环境、提高当地人民生活水平、促进边境地区民族团结、维护边疆稳定产生重要意义,并就项目的实施、管理、研究等问题提出了建议。     

Piecing Together the ‘Turkish Puzzle’ on Female Labour Force Participation: Comparative Insights from Southern Europe

Southern Europe has seen remarkable turnarounds in female labour force participation (FLFP) over the past four decades. In Turkey, however, scores of women have yet to join the labour force. To address this ‘Turkish puzzle’, we present comparative data on women’s work in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece (SE-4) and Turkey. Through Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we identify the factors behind rising FLFP in Southern Europe to explore the prospects for a steeper rise of FLFP in Turkey. We reveal two causal pathways to rising FLFP: (i) left party rule, or (ii) combinations of higher levels of take-up of early education and care, higher levels of tertiary education among women and larger size of service sector employment.     

Race and Class

This article examines the rise of the Independent Workers Union (IWU) in Ireland, North and South, in relation to the bifurcation of trade unionism on the Island, from 1900 until the demise of the so-called Celtic tiger in the early years of the twenty-first century. It is argued that two competing ideological and political trajectories defined the major divisions in the Irish labour movement and where given added impetus with the formation of two separate states after 1920. One tradition was committed to an idea of a progressive British empire, while the other was born of a movement linking together trade union, class and national autonomy. A trade union with a long history and recent past, the IWU represents a labour movement formation whose tradition extends the latter: it is committed to developing forms of opposition to state and capital. If more subdued since the partition of the island, this tradition was reignited with the implosion of Social Partnership in the South and the rise of the new sectarianism in the North. Neoliberalism, with its consequent assault upon labour and its various institutions more broadly, provided additional impetus to the creation of the IWU in 2004. The article also assesses its various alternative union and community organising strategies.     

The fiction of female dependence and the makeshift economy of soldiers,sailors, and their wives in eighteenth-century London

Using accounts from the Old Bailey Proceedings, this article examines the economic side of military marriages in eighteenth-century London, outlining a fundamental disjuncture in eighteenth-century attitudes to working wives. While all wives were expected to work, state and parish records of military wives repeatedly stress their total dependence on men's wages and bounty money. In actual fact, soldiers, sailors and their wives made use of a much wider range of survival strategies. By stealing, taking odd jobs, pawning goods, and accepting aid from kin or friends, both husbands and wives might significantly augment military pay and/or poor relief.     

The Case for a Participation Income: Acknowledging and Valuing the Diversity of Social Participation

Anthony Atkinson's idea of a participation income draws attention to the various ways in which people contribute to society. Current discussions on social participation go beyond paid work to include volunteering, education, and caregiving to kin. With the idea of the participation income, various forms of contribution can be highlighted and acknowledged. This article investigates how the idea of a participation income is reflected in Danish, Finnish, German and Dutch social policies. It shows that different elements of a participation income are incorporated in active labour market policies: Denmark adopted a narrow focus on paid work; Finland seeks tailor‐made solutions for the long‐term unemployed; Germany reformed many policy areas to achieve a better activation; and the Netherlands acknowledges a wide range of social participation forms. These country differences highlight that governments can adapt the idea of a participation income to achieve the focus they desire.