Extracting labour from the neighbour: class dynamics of agrarian change in Sumatran oil palm

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent global ‘land grabbing’ has evoked concerns about the dispossession of agricultural smallholders. This concern often assumes that the current smallholders are the continuation of the undifferentiated ‘middle peasantry’ (‘peasant family’), only with a new crop. Drawing from Sumatran oil palm farming in Indonesia, this paper shows that the majority of smallholders are petty landowners who must sell their labour to survive and are thus part of the labouring classes. On the other hand, a few smallholders are among the capitalist farmers, those who extract their neighbour’s labour for accumulation. Exposing capital-labour relations between smallholders implies that any resistance to dispossession can no longer take for granted that all smallholders are opponents of corporations and states.