Peasant Mode Of Production Research Articles

A repeasantisation in Poland? New farmers, the peasant mode of production and their situations in local communities

ABSTRACT This article discusses Poland's new farmers: people who have left the city to engage in agriculture and urban people with a ruralbackground who return to their villages to start farming. We analysed their mode of production using the categories of van der Ploeg (2018).: We also focused on the relations between the new farmers and their communities. The results show that new farmers farm in a peasant-like way. However, they also constitute a distinctive group benefiting from their urban links. Social and cultural capital plays a crucial role differentiating the new farmers/peasants from traditional peasants.

Accessing Global Capital Through Remittance: A Route to the Reconfiguration of the Peasant Mode of Production in Rural Eritrea

Migration and its resultant remittance have become the two powerful forces of peasant transformation in Eritrea in the last decade. If the former is responsible for uprooting labor from land, the latter is a replacement value to what the labor would have produced from the land. Using qualitative data gathered through an ethnographic fieldwork in the peasant region, this article argues that these two forces—migration and remittance—have resulted in gradual divorce of peasants from their means of production, land, in ways that seemingly appear productive to the peasants, rural–urban migration and a new form of relationship between peasants and state. In general, the outcome of the entire process is the emergence of quasi-peasant society which no more depends on land for survival because remittance has provided them alternative source. Therefore, migration and remittance in Eritrea have not only resulted in massive uprooting of labor from the land, but also heavily reconfigured the peasant mode of production.

Social identity, local knowledge and adaptive management by traditional communities of the babassu region in Maranhão

This paper examines productive strategies of traditional communities, which integrate agriculture and extractive activities in secondary forests of babassu palm in the Mearim Valley, Maranhão State. Underscoring the adaptive nature of agroextractivist practices, the analysis contributes to demystify dichotomies associated with peasant mode of production with regard to the apparent resistance of these communities to livestock. The article examines interpretations, choices and practices in the incorporation of livestock by these farmers. We highlight the need to contextualize the multiple connections involved in the integration of productive activities in complex environmental systems, which in turn redefine the ways in which resource users delimit patterns of perception and management of the natural environment.

Prácticas campesinas en un contexto feudalizado: las relaciones de benefactoría (siglos XI y XII)

Las relaciones de benefactoría del siglo XI expresan prácticas sociales derivadas del modo de producción campesino. Estas prácticas (dotación de tierras, padrinazgo, mediación en disputas interfamiliares, elección de jefe, hospitalidad) se desarrollan en los intersticios de un espacio feudalizado, por lo cual tienden a modificar sus contenidos. La transmutación de la práctica campesina es el mecanismo por el cual la relación de explotación feudal y sus formas políticas conquistan espacios libres. Este proceso concluye, en el área castellano-leonesa, hacia mediados del XII, momento en que se verifi ca la incorporación plena de estas formas sociales al modo de producción feudal.

Editorial Introduction

AbstractChris Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages is a towering comparative overview of Rome’s successor-states in the four centuries after its collapse in the West. Not only does it bring together evidence from across the continent in a way that will inform all subsequent serious discussions of the period, it also conceptualises an important, peasant-mode of production. Notwithstanding these strengths, Framing has been criticised for its structuralist, static characterisation of feudalism. The debates surveyed in this essay suggest that, while Wickham’s book will act as a milestone in the history of Europe, it should also act as a spur to further research and critical reflection on the period. Moreover, in the light of recent criticisms of Marxist historiography, Wickham’s book and the debate surrounding it point to the continued vibrancy of historical materialism.

Chris Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages

AbstractWhile recognising the power and fundamental importance of Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages, this essay explores some of the problems associated with the relative silence within the text about the issue of the forces of production and their development. By contrast, Harman suggests that Wickham’s most important contribution to our understanding of the period, his concept of a peasant-mode of production, is best understood against the backdrop of prior developments of the forces of production. Moreover, the peasant-mode’s temporality is itself best understood against the background of further developments of the forces of production.

Anthropology and development: understanding contemporary social change

* 1. Introduction: The three approaches in the anthropology of development * The discourse of development * Populism, anthropology and development * Entangled social logic approaches * Conclusion: the future of the entangled social logics approach and its work in progress (research in Africa and beyond) * 2. Socio-anthropology of Development: some preliminary statements * Development * Socio-anthropology of development * Comparativism * Action * Populism * A collective problematic * Social change and development: in Africa or in general? * 3. Anthropology, Sociology, Africa and Development: a brief historical overview * French colonial ethnology * Reactions: dynamic and/or Marxist anthropology * From a sociological viewpoint: sociology of modernization and sociology of development * Systems analysis * The current situation: multi-rationalities * 4. A renewal of anthropology ? * To the rescue of social science? * The 'properties' of 'development facts' * Two 'heuristic points of view' * Anthropology of social change and development and the fields of anthropology * 5. Stereotypes, ideologies and conceptions * A meta-ideology of development * Infra-ideologies: conceptions * Five stereotypes * The relative truth of stereotypes: the example of culture * The propensity for stereotypes: the example of needs * 6. Is an anthropology of innovation possible ? * A panorama in four points of view * Is an innovation's problematic possible in anthropology ? * 7. Developmentist populism and social science populism : ideology, action, knowledge * Intellectuals and their ambiguous populism * The poor according to Chambers * The developmentist populist complex * Moral populism * Cognitive populism and methodological populism * Ideological populism * Populism and miserabilism * Where action becomes compromise ... and where knowledge can become opposition... * ... yet methodology should combine! * 8. Relations of production and modes of economic action * Songhay-zarma societies under colonization: peasant mode of production and relations of production * Subsistence logic during the colonial period * Relations of production and contemporary transformations * Conclusion * 9. Development projects and social logic * The context of interaction * Levels of project coherence * Peasant reactions * Two principles * Three logics, among many others * Strategic logics and notional logics * 10. Popular knowledge and scientific and technical knowledge * Popular technical knowledge * A few properties of popular technical knowledge * Popular technical knowledge and technical-scientific knowledge * Fields of popular knowledge and infrastructure * 11. Mediations and brokerage * Development agents * A parenthesis on corruption * Development agents as mediators between types of knowledge * Brokers * The development language * 12. Arenas and strategic games * Local development as a political arena * Conflict, arena, strategic groups * The ECRIS canvass * 13. Conclusion : The dialogue between social scientists and developers * Logic of knowledge and logic of action * Action Research? * Training development agents * Adapting to side-tracking * On enquiry * Bibliography * Index

A Cultural Analysis of the Economy of Affection and the Uncaptured Peasantry in Tanzania

Is the ‘economy of affection’, as suggested by Goran Hyden, the key factor determining social relations in East Africa and elsewhere? According to this thesis, both villagers and city-dwellers are tied together in webs of kinship and tribal obligation that mitigate against the accumulation of wealth or capital necessary for the formation of either industrial modes of production or class-based societies. Hyden claims that the high values placed on personal relationships are dependent upon ‘a peasant mode of production’, and that, in the case of Tanzania, their persistence and perseverance has been the most significant factor inhibiting economic development. In short, the ‘smallness’ of the peasantry is a source of power.

Aspects of a Peasant Mode of Production: Exchange and the Extent of Sufficiency Among Smallholders in West Laikipia, Kenya

The Laikipia Plain in the north-western footzone of Mt. Kenya is one of the semi-arid areas where migrating Kikuyu cultivators go for land and permanent residence. However, unfavourable ecological and economic conditions create contradictions, and many households undergo a considerable risk to fall into marginality. In this paper, the autor aimes at reexamining the thesis that the extent of a household's sufficiency can rise if mutual exchange within a network is practised. The aspect of social networks is obviously manifest in the access to land and other key resources. With regard to the ability to survive in Laikipia, it is obvious too, that the migrants must rely on social capital and informal transactions. Thus it is argued, that the 'invisible' economy of affection is a predominant feature in order to succeed and to generate certainty and sustainability among the small-scale farmers.

Aspects of a Peasant Mode of Production: Exchange and the Extent of Sufficiency Among Smallholders in West Laikipia, Kenya

Aspects of a Peasant Mode of Production: Exchange and the Extent of Sufficiency Among Smallholders in West Laikipia, Kenya

Dialectics of evil: Politics and religion in an Amazon Mestizo community

Michael Taussig has constructed the prevalence of evil in the South American folklore as a sign of alienation [1]. Alienation has resulted from a change in the mode of production and the emergence of commodity fetishism. He proposes that the devil (an individual evil being) mediates the process in which the peasant mode of production is transformed into a capitalistic one; the devil expresses the workers' sense of bewilderment and of being threatened. In this essay I discuss the dialectics of evil in San Rafael, a Mestizo community in the Peruvian Amazon. In San Rafael, the peasant mode of production prevails (at least more so than in Taussig's examples), but other confrontations (which probably echo the up? coming changes in the mode of production) seem to feed and shape a rich folklore of evil. The confrontation between the people and the health care system, on the one hand, and amid different religious sects, on the other hand, are mediated by symbols of evil. These distinct contradictions are not totally separated from each other. The distribution of evil constituted by the catolicos sees evil as a matter of fact, as an intrahuman affair, which causes illness not curable in health centers, originates in envy and which is likely to stay within bearable limits if people interact in terms of economic justice.

Peasant Households, the Market and the Tanzanian State

The economie reality of the peasant households in Tanzania is situated at the convergence of three spheres : 1. the economy of affection, based on the peasant mode of production; 2. the market, which is dominated by parallel circuits; 3. the Tanzanian state, which is expanding continuously. Each of these spheres has its own logic with its own beneficiaries. The economy of affection redistributes income, often at the expense of market laws and official economic policies. The parallel circuits in the market system only benefit the black marketeers and the well-off. The state has expanded, sometimes in favour of peasant-farmers and workers, but most of the time for its own sake.KEYWORDS : economy of affection, parallel circuits, expanding state

Boerenhuishoudens Tegenover Markt en Staat in Tanzania

The economic reality of the peasant households in Tanzania is situated at the convergence of three spheres: 1. the economy of affection, based on the peasant mode of production; 2. the market, which is dominated by parallel circuits; 3. the Tanzanian state, which is expanding continuously. Each of these spheres has its own logic with its own beneficiaries. The economy of affection redistributes income, often at the expense of market laws and official economic policies. The parallel circuits in the market system only benefit the black marketeers and the well-off. The state has expanded, sometimes in favour of peasant-farmers and workers, but most of the time for its own sake.

Policy, response and alternative strategy: The process of change in a Polish highland village

The issue of government policy towards development, and its effect in terms of peasant response and the transformation of the peasantry, is of particular interest in the study of states with centralised planned economies. In Eastern Europe this issue has regularly come to the fore as peasant farmers have responded, negatively or positively, to their governments' plans to collectivise or socialise agriculture. As the process of industrialisation follows its course, growing numbers of peasant-workers and worker-peasants form a new semiproletariat, partly integrated into the market or national economy, and partly maintaining traditional forms of subsistence agriculture. We can see how social change is simultaneous with economic change, as the family-centred peasant mode of production alters to facilitate new economic activities; as education and communications lessen the gap between the small rural communities and the ever expanding urban centres; and as the non-agricultural work of young villagers, of poorer villagers and of women leads to new patterns of authority, stratification and interaction. While social organisation is often affected by economic change, the reverse is also true. Social factors may be instrumental in determining the attitudes and actions of the peasants, and may place constraints on the ways in which they respond to change.

Dorset, Kincardine and peasant crisis: A comment on David Craig

David Craig's paper ‘Novels of Peasant Crisis’ is to be warmly welcomed. But Craig provides no adequate analysis of the peasant crises underlying the novels which he considers. This paper considers one of Craig's novels; Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song. Craig's explanation of this book in terms of depopulation and the destruction of the Kincardine peasantry from outside is seen to be inadequate. Sunset Song is about the crumbling of a peasant mode of production through the working out of internal contradictions within that mode of production. As an introduction to this discussion of Sunset Song Craig's dismissal of the utility of Thomas Hardy's work for the analysis of rural class relations is argued to be distinctly premature.