Class Of Landowners Research Articles

“Build the New City as Fast as Possible”: Speculation as Subsistence in Peri‐Urban Myanmar

AbstractThis article examines an ambitious plan to construct a built‐from‐scratch new city outside Yangon, Myanmar and sheds light on the contradictory responses sparked by rapid urban expansion. Despite fears that this megaproject would threaten the region's way of life, hopes for the new city's construction remained high throughout the project's early phases. Residents of areas targeted for development went so far as to publicly demand the city be built “as fast as possible”. In this article, I highlight the gap between residents’ pro‐project enthusiasm and the expectations of civil society activists and development actors, who predicted locals would reject the planned new city. I argue that this divergence exposes the perceived limitations of solutions held out for populations facing de‐agrarianisation. Equally, it refocuses attention on how project‐affected populations envision their own post‐agrarian future. In doing so, I demonstrate how and why speculation on peri‐urban land has emerged as a compelling mode of subsistence for even the poor among the region's landowning class.

Class, Family, Income and Wealth: Farming and Non-Farming Landowners in the Occupational and Social Class Orders in Turkey

This study presents the trajectory of changes in land ownership and land use and of the differences observed since the mid-1990s in the average amount of annual disposable income (and of wealth) within and between farming and non-farming landowning households in Turkey. The study makes use of the data sets of the Household Budget Surveys conducted by the Turkish Institute of Statistics (TUIK) in 1994, 2002, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2017. The data sets have been analysed in connection with four main themes: (i) the patterns of structural change in landownership and land use, (ii) the patterns of structural change in the locations of farming and non-farming landowners in the occupational and social class orders, (iii) the patterns of changes and the persistence of differences in the average amounts of annual disposable incomes and wealth within and between the social classes of farming and non-farming landowners and (iv) the effect of family type on the differences of income and wealth. The results indicate that Turkish agrarian structures have undergone significant structural changes in the last quarter of a century, and there are persisting and significant differences of income (and of wealth) at the national level as well as among farming and non-farming landowning households. However, the same kind of differences do not hold true for differences in the average amount of farm land owned. On the contrary, these differences have strong associations with family type among farming as well as non-farming households.

The Making of a Periphery: How Island Southeast Asia Became a Mass Exporter of Labor

The Making of a Periphery: How Island Southeast Asia Became a Mass Exporter of Labor

Commercialisation and landed proprietorship on the Malabar Coast in the eighteenth century

This article proposes a systemic connection between cash-crop gardening, commercialisation and individually-owned landed property in late eighteenth-century Malabar on the southwestern coast of India. The discussion starts with a focus on the English East India Company’s (EIC) early nineteenth-century investigations into land tenure and land tax. It identifies an agreement of opinion between two EIC revenue officers, Thomas Munro (d. 1827) and Francis Whyte Ellis (d. 1819), otherwise known to occupy rival intellectual positions. Both of them agreed on the existence of privately-owned landed assets in the region. This article calls this agreement ‘the Malabar consensus’ and argues that it was founded on an objective, if not intimate, examination of a set of specific historical conditions. The first section explores the tenurial category janmam or the aṭṭipēṟu of the eighteenth century and describes certain procedural innovations in the realm of landed and agrarian assets which mark a generalised transition along the coast of Malabar during the early modern centuries. The second section attempts to explain a set of economic opportunities that the aṭṭipēṟu stakeholders, finding themselves in a political and economic transition, found available in the eighteenth century. These innovations and the opportunities they provided were instrumental in creating a substantial class of parvenue landowners, and also an equally significant social class of share-croppers and wage-earners whose emergence characterised the early modern Malabar experience.

A Defence of the Concept of the Landowning Class as the Third Class

Abstract Although Marx dubbed landowners one of the ‘three great classes’ of modern society, the most prominent Marxian and socialist thinkers of capitalism and land over the past century – from Lefebvre to Massey to Harvey – have implicitly or explicitly argued that landowners are not capitalism’s ‘third class’, and that the social relations of land are marginal or contingent to the mode of production as a whole. Through assessing the work of Marxist geographers, political economists, value-form theorists, and others who have dismissed the class-status of landowners and blurred the line between ground rent and interest, this article argues that the theory of the landowning class is fundamental to the understanding of the totality of capitalist social relations, as well as to developing more incisive analyses of struggles around housing, land, and movement today.

An Analysis on Statutory and Customary Land Ownership in Cameroon: Two Parallel Ways

Land is essential for every human activity on earth as it is the source of all material wealth. In order to regulate the ownership, use and development of land and land resources, nations over the world have instituted land ownership systems aimed at consistent balancing of the interests of the government, the land owning class and the landless class. This paper examines the parallel nature of statutory and customary land ownership in Cameroon, how it has evolved over the years until 1974 when a single land law, otherwise known as the 1974 Land Ordinance, which were established to harmonize and regulate land ownership in the country. The paper further contends that the present land ownership system in Cameroon as found in the ordinance is advocating inclinations with excessive state control of land ownership, use and development. In connection with our above objectives, we adopted an in-depth content analysis, which is based on primary and secondary sources of data collection imperative to the study. The paper concludes that such land system cannot effectively support the indigenes and development initiatives as it creates too much bureaucracy in land transactions, land registration and land titling. It recommends an urgent balance between the statutory and customary land ownership to facilitate access to land with ease for various purposes.

Class, cash and control in the South Sudan and Darfur borderlands

ABSTRACT This article argues for a better understanding of the market foundations of ‘elite’ autocracy, and for a re-centring of the construction and exploitation of labour markets, in histories of economic and political power in South Sudan. Based on conversations with residents and migrant workers on the borders between north-western South Sudan and southern Darfur in Sudan over 2017 to 2019, it explores how cycles of wars, displacement, resettlement and reconstruction since the 1980s have rapidly monetised and commodified working lives, land and relationships. This has precipitated rapid class stratification, cash debt and worker exploitation, and sharp controls on the emerging cheap cash labour pool via border violence, wage depression, land alienation and rents, and the construction of a private educational market, which have all undercut older forms of collective work and mutuality. These changes have been encouraged and exploited by growing classes of private landowners, commercial farmers and military entrepreneurs, and been supported by the development and humanitarian system’s investment in market forces and individual self-reliance.

Objects of Empathy

Objects of Empathy

The Political and Economic Origins of the Roman Revolution

The paper considers some economic and legal aspects of the struggle for the public land in Late Republican Rome. This period is one of the most controversial in ancient history; it brought many significant changes to the socio-economic and political life of Rome and contributed much to its transformation from Republic to Principate. Nevertheless, there is no special paper examining the competition between the Romans and Italians for the ager publicus populi Romani which started with the agrarian reform of Tiberius Gracchus in modern historiography. The first episode ended after the enactment in 111 B.C. of the lex agraria, when a large amount of public land was brought into private hands by its Roman possessors. A further part of the ager publicus populi Romani was still public and remained in hands of the socii. The logic of historical process, the economic changes of the second century B.C. which led Rome from Republic to Principate, demanded the formation of a new class of landowners. The latter would be the basis of the political system of the Roman Empire instead of the nobilitas; its political power would be based on private ownership of land. This was impossible without the full privatization of public land, and it is logical that the struggle for the ager publicus populi Romani was not ended in 111 B.C. Only after privatization of that land, which was possessed by the allies, the agrarian question in Rome could be fully resolved. The latter problem is of crucial importance for the further history of Rome, because it not only caused the Social War but also radically changed both the social structure and the political balance within Roman society during the last decades of the Republic.

La problemática concejil en El Bierzo durante la crisis del Antiguo Régimen: los enfrentamientos antiseñoriales e interconcejiles

This research analyses the degree of hostility towards the aristocracy/ landowning class and the rivalry amongst parish councils in the Bierzo province of León, Spain. It is based on the study of legal documents and takes in the period comprising the crisis of the Ancien Regime (1800-1850).Both the low level of anti-aristocratic feeling and the small number of disputes amongst the councils are casily seen, the latter usually caused by conflicts concerning pastureland or rights to water.

Labor scarcity, land tenure, and historical legacy: Evidence from Mexico

How does labor scarcity shape institutional development? We examine the long-term impact of Mexico's 16th-century demographic collapse on landholding patterns through the present day. We show that the collapse, which reduced the indigenous population by between 70 and 90 percent and differed in severity across space, facilitated land concentration and the rise of a landowner class that dominated Mexican political economy for centuries. To identify the impact of the population collapse on land arrangements we use an instrumental-variables identification strategy exploiting climatic shocks associated with an epidemic in the 1570s that roughly halved the indigenous population. Though landholding patterns were transformed following the Revolution of 1910, we also show that disease-impacted areas now have more land in common-property institutions with limited property rights. The population collapse thus had a persistent impact on Mexican political economy, but the nature of this impact has changed radically over time.

"The “Nightmare” of the Great Famine: Guilt-Ridden Paralysis in Ulysses"

The Great Famine of the 1840s, one of the most catastrophic events in the history of Ireland, had been nearly absent from Irish writing until the 1990s when Eagleton noted that the Famine was hardly referred to in the Revival literature or Joyce. It can be said that the Anglo-Irish Protestants, leading the Revival and belonging to the land-owning class, evaded the tragic event which their immediate ancestors had survived mostly intact. Joyce, the Irish Catholic, was not free from the historical trauma either, which makes him only allude to it in his work, particularly Ulysses. The Irish Catholics were not completely innocent victims but often complicit in their own tragedy. The Church inculcated them with the scrupulousness of morality, which made them starve rather than withhold the landlord’s rent during the Famine. Their submissiveness to the Church led them to be indifferent to the suffering and death of others as well as their own. Thus, the Irish feel a sense of guilt for the horrible memories of the Famine, which inhibits them from remembering the history altogether. The memories come back only as a nightmare or a ghost, like the ghost of Stephen’s mother in Ulysses. The mother’s ghost, evoking the starving and dying during the Famine, symbolizes the guilt of the Irish Catholics, as well as Stephen’s personal guilt of declining his mother’s last wish. Stephen, only trying to awake from the nightmare of his mother’s ghost without confessing his guilt, remains paralyzed. With the Famine memories missing, Irish history remains a nightmare from which they will never awake.

The Role of Employment Diversification in Reducing Vulnerability to Poverty among Marginal and Small-holder Agricultural Households in India

This article combines two relatively nascent and inter-related approaches to poverty analysis and measurement, that is, the asset-based approach and the vulnerability approach to assess the poverty status of various land-owning classes in rural India. Contingent on the finding that marginal and small-holder households constitute a high-risk group in terms of the incidence of current poverty and vulnerability to future poverty, the study explores the role of non-agricultural activity in providing livelihood security and tackling poverty and vulnerability among land-poor rural households. The findings reveal that while most types of rural non-farm employment have significant poverty-reducing effects, human capital constitutes the most potent element in tackling poverty in the target group. We therefore suggest that an emphasis on skill upgradation of marginal and small landholders, coupled with policies directed towards development of non-farm activity, could provide an effective, permanent solution for curbing poverty and mitigating livelihood risks among these households. JEL Classification: I31, I32, J21, O18

Peasant differentiation and service provision in Colombia

AbstractThis paper contributes to agrarian debates through a discussion of the interactions between the interests and incentives of the rural classes, focusing especially on the leadership exercised by middle‐size farmers. In the recent past, class analysis associated with Marxism has given way to models of individual rational maximization, not least because of the lack of specific findings about the effects of peasant differentiation beyond the dichotomous class conflict between peasants and landlords. Information has replaced asset distribution as the main factor affecting effective governance and service provision. According to these theories, politicians did not deliver less because they were responding to the preferences of the large landowning classes, or because seemingly competitive elections were games of rotating chairs within a single dominant class but, rather, because the voters did not have enough information about the candidates and programmes. I bring the discussion back to peasant differentiation and class endowments using the case of communal action boards in Colombia, showing how the demand for information on candidates and developmental resources matters, but is dependent on class structures. I suggest that different rural groups access, use, and manipulate information with differing aims, and that the rural middle class is a fundamental actor in the demand for public goods.

RURAL MASTERS AND URBAN MILITANTS IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY SOUTH AFRICA

AbstractWhite farmers in South Africa, a landowning class that subordinated black tenants and workers, also participated in the suppression of white workers’ movements before and after the First World War. This article explores how class interest limited and then overrode the farmers’ expected ethnic and political solidarities. It focuses especially on the contradictory ways in which farmers related to the great mineworkers’ strike and rebellion of 1922. Some contemporaries expected that racial solidarity, Afrikaner nationalism, and familial links would lead landowners to side, even militarily, with the white workers. Appeals were made to farmers by both sides of the struggle in 1922, and there was some significant support for the strikers from them. But the upheaval ran counter to landowners’ interests, notably by dislocating their primary urban market at a time of severe economic difficulty. In the end, farmers rode once more into the towns against the workers.

247 - Does Bone Marrow Cellularity (BMC) Have a Role in Predicting Prognosis and Survival in Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS)?

An empirical model of landowners’ conservation incentive program choice is developed in which information about landowners’ socio-economic and property characteristics and their attitudes, is combined with incentive program attributes. In a Choice survey landowners were presented with the choice of two incentive programs modelled as 'bundles of attributes’ mimicking a voluntary choice scenario. Landowner behaviour and decision and the type of conditions and regulations they preferred were analyzed.Based on choice survey data, landowner heterogeneity was accounted for using a latent class approach to estimate the preference parameters. Three latent classes of landowners with different attitudes to the role and outcome of establishing conservation reserves on private land were identified: multi-objective owners; environment owners; and production owners.Only a small proportion of landowners, mostly environment owners, would voluntarily join a program. Although compensation funding contributed to voluntary program choice for multi-objective owners and environment owners, welfare losses were around 4000 AUD per hectare, which is less than the average agricultural land value in Tasmania.Landowners for whom compensation funding contributed to voluntary program choice were also most likely to set aside land for conservation without payment. This raises the possibility that the government’s compensation expenditure could potentially be either reduced or re-allocated to landowners who will not voluntarily take conservation action. Increasing participation in conservation incentive programs and minimizing the welfare losses associated with meeting conservation targets may be best achieved by offering programs that allow flexibility in terms of legal arrangements and other program attributes.

Diffusion of things and thoughts

In the 19th century the population of the Faeroe Islands grew from 5,200 in the 1801 census to 15,200 in the 1901 census. The leading question in this paper is derived from this fact. What was the material and ideological background for this profound change that caused changes in all parts and corners of the society? This leads to the problem definition: ”Where did the new things and thoughts come from, and who came with them?” Theories on innovation and diffusion are implemented in the analysis. In the 1st section of the paper the situation in the Faeroese society is described with concrete examples. The 2nd section applies the diffusion theory with the concepts carriers and barriers. The 3rd section adds the concepts base and superstructure that are coupled with the already mentioned concepts in the second section. In the 4th section some concepts and methods from economic geography, population potential and threshold values are presented and used. In the ending an effort to quantify the innovation process is presented. This leads to a recapitulation of concepts in the foregoing sections, but also to new questions as the result of these, especially figure 4, are unforeseen and provoking. A society as the Faeroese, tiny in scale and remote in location, and therefore with a low population potential, cannot be expected to produce many ”things and thoughts” by itself. In the 5th section some local persons of virtue are mentioned, as well as a row of civil servants who all came from mainland Denmark. These were carriers of ideas from the European enlightenment movement and other ideas that widened the material base of the growing population. The legal base, laws and statutory elements, that changed the possibility for the landless class to acquire land came from outside, from the King, and generally the barriers were the local land-owning class. A main point in this process of change is the introduction of the Amtmand, the Governor of Prefect, in 1816, that was the beginning of the setting up of a local centralized administration. Later, with the Danish Constitution coming into force in 1849, the first democratic assembly on the Faeroe Islands was elected. Further, the Constitution had no place for the Royal Monopoly Trade; it was abolished in 1856.

Les fondements sociaux du premier essor de la botanique en Russie, 1700-1830

It is a well-known fact that the development of academic botany in Russia was stimulated by a series of expeditions set up to explore the natural resources of the Empire. This article aims at completing the usual picture by considering other categories of actors, who studied plants in their relations to pharmacy, agriculture and “Gartenkunst”. As often in Russia, the State played a crucial role in that process, notably by promoting the art of gardens (“Gartenkunst”), but also through its interest for the improvement of agriculture and forestry, and its support to pharmacy. Yet, these imperial initiatives would have produced nothing without the backing of a group of noblemen who started to imitate the examples set up at Tsarskoe Selo. Beyond the creation of pleasure gardens, with the help of foreign designers, a rising class of landowners, gathered after 1765 in the “Free Economic Society”, became indeed interested in the development of a profitable agriculture. Some of its members, such as Prokofij Demido...

Om kyrkjebygging og kristning i Rogaland i tidleg mellomalder

This article researches six church sites founded in Rogaland during the early stages of Christianisation in Norway in the High Middle Ages. The areas selected for investigation are the coastal skipreider (administrative units) Time and Klepp incentral Jæren, and Jelsa and Suldal in non-coastal Ryfylke. The sites have been assessed in relation to their surroundings, to shed light on the issues of actor, time and choice of location. The investigation revealed two types of church site: siteswith proprietary churches erected by a local magnate or middle-ranking landowner, and churches built by the villagers as a collaborative enterprise, in accordance with provisions in the section on church law in Gulatingslova (the Gulating Law) –called Kristenretten (Christian Law). The location of church sites relative to older pagan cult sites was assessed, to ascertain to what extent the location of a particular church represented continuity or change. The issue of monumentality appears to have been central in determining the location of proprietary churches, while accessibility seems to have been a consideration that influenced the location of churches built collaboratively by members of the community.It is suggested that Kristenretten was instrumental in spreading Christianity in Norway, in that the provisions on church building and related regulations encouraged the building of churches by a class of middle-ranking landowners.

Sliding-scale environmental service payments and non-financial incentives: Results of a survey of landowner interest in Costa Rica

This study presents the results from a survey of landowner interest in a propositional payment modality for Costa Rica's Pagos por Servicios Ambientales (PSA) program that is based on a sliding-scale payment scheme. This payment scheme would transition from higher monetary payments per hectare per year for the first units of land invested, to lower payments per hectare per year for additional units of land invested; however, as payments per hectare decrease, monetary payments would be supplemented with non-financial rewards. This program structure is designed to 1) offer higher per-hectare financial incentives to smaller-scale landowners, who would otherwise face steep trade-off costs by transitioning to conservation-based land-use, and 2) offer greater non-financial incentives to larger-scale landowners, who face less sharp trade-off costs, and who might be more interested in prestige- and status-based non-financial incentives than the currently meager PSA payments. I found support for the proposed program modality across all classes of landowners. Interest in PSA participation by small- and medium-scale landowners showed sensitivity to proposed payments, with landowners indicating a strong desire to participate in conservation land-use as soon as the proposed financial incentives were sufficient to cover their opportunity costs. Large-scale landowners showed little sensitivity to payment size, and in general—with mode=10 and median=7 responses on a 10 point Likert-scale—indicated strong willingness to participate in the PSA program under the proposed structure, even if financial incentives per hectare were decreased significantly for large investments of land, but prestige- and status-based awards were introduced. These results are discussed in the context of an emerging literature on signaling theory, conspicuous conservation, and the interaction of financial incentives and social norms.