Petty Commodity Production Research Articles

Process and Social Formation: Petty Commodity Producers in Zinder, Niger

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeRÉSUMÉSur l'exemple des tanneurs et des potiers de Zinder(Niger) l'auteur analyse la place des petits producteurs marchands dans le développement économique de l'Afrique. Après une revue de la littérature théorique, il passe à l'analyse empirique qui place les données ethnographiques dans une perspective historique globale. La confrontation des tanneurs avec les potiers lui permet de tester l'impact du caractère urbain d'une occupation exercée par les hommes et du caractère rural d'une occupation exercée principalement par les femmes sur leur place face à l'économie du marché. Après une critique des principales théories de l'intégration de la petite production marchande à cette économie, l'auteur constate que les artisans conservent leur position économique grâce aux réponses créatives qu' ils apportent aux contraintes et aux opportunités du marché capitaliste.

Process and Social Formation: Petty Commodity Producers in Zinder, Niger

Process and Social Formation: Petty Commodity Producers in Zinder, Niger

Paths of rural transformation in Turkey

This article describes the transformation in Turkey of an independent peasantry under greater market integration. It is argued that in addition to capitalist farming, which only constitutes a geographically specific development path, petty commodity production in Turkish agriculture may be analysed through three distinct transformation trajectories. These trajectories are described by means of village case histories; then each development tendency is analysed within its articulation into the larger economic unit. The discussion aims at illustrating the potential variation in petty production under the domination of capitalism.

Urbanisation sans bidonvilles

Abstract The role of decentralized economic structures for the urban development of Cotonou/P.R. Bénin The problems of growth in industrial towns and the persistence of slums in some of them poses the question of decentralization. One has to analyze situations where decentralization is a prevalent sector like in Third World towns. To overstate our point we might say that somehow a bucolic picture of some Third World towns provide elements for the construction of an Utopia for industrial cities. The most important factors which explain the particular urban structure of Co tonou are seen as the following : Immigration : in the hinterland, an agrarian structure based on smallholders combining subsistence production with petty commodity production hinders the development of an «agrarian crisis», and thus of a «push factor» which might cause massive migration into the towns. Distribution : subsistence production (production for own use) of habitat and petty commodity production and trade for neighborhood markets reduce the need for transport and reduce the dependence from outside cyclical developments. Revenues : the long-term development depends on the revenues which secure an input of capital for the town. The foreign-oriented nature of the national economy — a heritage from colonial times — gives rise to high risks for investments and, simultaneously, a plethora of bureaucracy, which in the long-run will hinder the development of the town.

Peasants of the Nuba Mountains region

Since Sudan's independence three development plans have attempted to reorient the agricultural sector and stimulate the process of social and economic development. Believing that their inadequacies have been largely due to a misunderstanding of existing and evolving production relations, the author has attempted to focus on one region of the country where state sponsored capitalist agricultural schemes have been introduced and are leading to the modification of pre‐existing pre‐capitalist forms. He argues that production relations among the peasantry of the Nuba Mountains should best be described as consistent with simple commodity or petty commodity production. But this mode is itself undergoing a process of change as the peasants interact with the capitalist system through sale of their labour power on the nearby capitalist schemes and purchase of their agricultural implements.

Reviews: Britain's Inner Cities: Problems and Policies, Modern Western Society: A Geographical Perspective on Work, Home and Well-Being, the Conservation of European Cities, Progress in Planning, Volume 15, Part 2. Adjustment in the Urban System: The Tasman Bridge Collapse and its Effect on Metropolitan Hobart, Political Studies from Spatial Perspectives: Anglo-American Essays on Political Geography, Environmental Policy Analysis: Operational Methods

Reviews: Britain's Inner Cities: Problems and Policies, Modern Western Society: A Geographical Perspective on Work, Home and Well-Being, the Conservation of European Cities, Progress in Planning, Volume 15, Part 2. Adjustment in the Urban System: The Tasman Bridge Collapse and its Effect on Metropolitan Hobart, Political Studies from Spatial Perspectives: Anglo-American Essays on Political Geography, Environmental Policy Analysis: Operational Methods

Division and Cohesion in the Working Class: Artisans and Wage Labourers in Ecuador

It is through the organisation of labour that class interests and class antagonisms become manifest. A major problem with recent debates about the informal sector, petty commodity producers or the marginalised labour force is that their structural positions in the economy have not been translated into class analysis, whereby the social position of the sector of the labour force under discussion is clearly identified in relation to other groups in society. As a result, conflicting interests are not fully discussed and the capacity of the urban poor for organising and working towards the amelioration of their condition is ignored.

From peasants to petty commodity production in Southeast Asia

This paper represents a preliminary attempt to deal with transformations of the peasant economy in specific regions of Southeast Asia. I shall argue that the change is not simply the result of the incorporation of peasants within a world economy, but one that considerably predates the modern period. Nor can the change be viewed as part of a transition to capitalist forms of production. On the contrary the forms of production which have emerged differ in significant ways from those that developed in the capitalist core as merchant capital and feudal landed property gave way to industrial capital and capitalist relations of production. Accordingly, it would be unwise to assume that the existing situation represents some step in a necessary transition which will mirror changes that took place in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. As a consequence there is a need for forms of economic and political analysis not easily derivable from Marxist theories of the capitalist mode of production, or from theories of the “articulation” of modes of production in which the modes subordinated to capital are deduced directly from the functional prerequisites of capitalism conceived as an abstract, global structure.

The development of petty commodity production in Mughal India

The development of petty commodity production in Mughal India

Women and Small Farm Revival: The Division of Labor and Decision-Making on Maine's Organic Farms

Reacting to the intensified contradictions of the capitalist food system, many agrarian activists seek to revitalize family labor farms, to make agriculture ecologically sustainable, to renew the social and economic life of rural communities, and to create an unalienated labor process. While the agrarian movement is fragmented along lines of ideology, issue priorities and tactics, it is fundamentally in the populist tradition. This problematic of neo-populism, with its contradictory progressive and petty bourgeois tendencies, provides the context for an analysis of production relations on Maine's organic farms. The division of labor and decision-making authority on these farms is shown to conform closely to the age-old pattern of male dominance. Evidence from a survey of small commercial organic farms suggests that most women face a "double," and some a "triple burden" of farm, household and off-farm labor; that their work is more proletarian than that of males; and that their contributions to the family's means of subsistence and capital accumulation are not systematically correlated with participation in farm decisions. These preliminary findings are not sufficient to argue that small organic farms are patriarchal or that women (and children and wage workers) are exploited. But that thesis is consistent with the data, suggesting that farms in the new agrarian movement are not likely to be a force for transformation of the relations of dominance and subordination that characterize both capitalism and petty commodity production.

Peasant Production, Proletarianization, and the Sexual Division of Labor in the Andes

Previous articleNext article No AccessWomen, Production, and ReproductionPeasant Production, Proletarianization, and the Sexual Division of Labor in the AndesCarmen Diana Deere and Magdalena León de LealCarmen Diana Deere Search for more articles by this author and Magdalena León de Leal Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 7, Number 2Winter, 1981Development and the Sexual Division of Labor Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/493885 Views: 29Total views on this site Citations: 30Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1981 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Daniel Tobin, Paige Castellanos Gendered differences in decision-making and participation in value chains: lessons from the highlands of Peru, Development in Practice 32, no.44 (Sep 2021): 492–502.https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2021.1937555William F. Waters, Jessica Ehlers, Fernando Ortega, Anne Sebert Kuhlmann Physically Demanding Labor and Health Among Indigenous Women in the Ecuadorian Highlands, Journal of Community Health 43, no.22 (Jul 2017): 220–226.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-017-0407-7Jennifer Clapp, S. Ryan Isakson, Oane Visser The complex dynamics of agriculture as a financial asset: introduction to symposium, Agriculture and Human Values 34, no.11 (Jan 2016): 179–183.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-016-9682-7Susana Narotzky Where Have All the Peasants Gone?, Annual Review of Anthropology 45, no.11 (Oct 2016): 301–318.https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102215-100240Lourdes Arizpe, Josefina Aranda Women Workers in the Strawberry Agribusiness in Mexico, (Aug 2014): 74–95.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06572-4_7Anita Brumer Gender Relations in Family-Farm Agriculture and Rural-Urban Migration in Brazil, Latin American Perspectives 35, no.66 (Nov 2008): 11–28.https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X08326012Andrea Nightingale The Nature of Gender: Work, Gender, and Environment, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24, no.22 (Jul 2016): 165–185.https://doi.org/10.1068/d01kKirsten Johnson, Ben Wisner, Phil O'Keefe "Theses on Peasantry" Revisited, Antipode 37, no.55 (Nov 2005): 944–955.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0066-4812.2005.00543.xKiran Asher, Engendrando desenvolvimento e etnicidade nas terras baixas do Pacífico colombiano, Revista Estudos Feministas 12, no.11 (Apr 2004): 15–45.https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-026X2004000100003Robin O’Brian Economic Development and Gender, (Jan 2003): 146–149.https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-29907-6_15Alison C. Greene Working Girls, Cancun Style: Reconfiguring Private and Public Domains in Practice, Anthropology of Work Review 22, no.33 (Sep 2001): 7–13.https://doi.org/10.1525/awr.2001.22.3.7Saowalee Coyle, Julia Kwong Women's work and social reproduction in Thailand, Journal of Contemporary Asia 30, no.44 (Jan 2000): 492–506.https://doi.org/10.1080/00472330080000471Shaunna L. Scott Drudges, Helpers and Team Players: Oral Historical Accounts of Farm Work in Appalachian Kentucky1, Rural Sociology 61, no.22 (Jan 2010): 209–226.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1549-0831.1996.tb00617.xClaudia B. Isaac Class Stratification and Cooperative Production Among Rural Women in Central Mexico, Latin American Research Review 30, no.22 (Oct 2022): 123–150.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0023879100017404Suzan M. Ilcan Peasant Struggles and Social Change: Migration, Households and Gender in a Rural Turkish Society , International Migration Review 28, no.33 (Jun 2018): 554–579.https://doi.org/10.1177/019791839402800307Kathy Le Mons Walker Economic Growth, Peasant Marginalization, and the Sexual Division of Labor in Early Twentieth-Century China, Modern China 19, no.33 (Nov 2016): 354–386.https://doi.org/10.1177/009770049301900304Roger Clark Economic Dependency and Gender Differences in Labor Force Sectoral Change In Non-Core Nations, The Sociological Quarterly 33, no.11 (Dec 2016): 83–98.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.1992.tb00365.xSusie Jacobs GENDER AND LAND REFORM: ZIMBABWE AND SOME COMPARISONS, International Sociology 7, no.11 (Mar 1992): 5–34.https://doi.org/10.1177/026858092007001001Mary E. Norris The impact of development on women, Journal of Development Economics 38, no.11 (Jan 1992): 183–201.https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3878(92)90025-5Lynn Stephen Women in Mexico's Popular Movements, Latin American Perspectives 19, no.11 (Jun 2016): 73–96.https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X9201900104Sharon Stichter Women, Employment and the Family: Current Debates, (Jan 1990): 11–71.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20514-1_2M. Patricia Fern�ndez Kelly Broadening the scope: Gender and international economic development, Sociological Forum 4, no.44 (Dec 1989): 611–635.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01115066Jane H. Adams The Decoupling of Farm and Household: Differential Consequences of Capitalist Development on Southern Illinois and Third World Family Farms, Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, no.33 (Jun 2009): 453–482.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417500015334Jean H. Quataert The Politics of Rural Industrialization: Class, Gender, and Collective Protest in the Saxon Oberlausitz of the Late Nineteenth Century, Central European History 20, no.22 (Dec 2008): 91–124.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008938900012565María de los Angeles Crummett Class, household structure, and the peasantry: An empirical approach, The Journal of Peasant Studies 14, no.33 (Feb 2008): 363–379.https://doi.org/10.1080/03066158708438334Scott Cook, Leigh Binford Petty Commodity Production, Capital Accumulation, and Peasant Differentiation: Lenin vs. Chayanov in Rural Mexico, Review of Radical Political Economics 18, no.44 (Aug 2016): 1–31.https://doi.org/10.1177/048661348601800401Fiona Wilson Women and agricultural change in Latin America: Some concepts guiding research, World Development 13, no.99 (Sep 1985): 1017–1035.https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-750X(85)90099-3Elaine Draper Women’s work and development in Latin America, Studies In Comparative International Development 20, no.11 (Mar 1985): 3–30.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02718316Asoka Bandarage Women in Development: Liberalism, Marxism and Marxist-Feminism, Development and Change 15, no.44 (Oct 1984): 495–515.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.1984.tb00194.xFlorence E. Babb Women in the Marketplace: Petty Commerce in Peru, Review of Radical Political Economics 16, no.11 (Aug 2016): 44–59.https://doi.org/10.1177/048661348401600105

Petty craft production and the underdevelopment process in Zinder, Republic of Niger

Studies of the products of West African plastic arts, their aesthetic qualities and sym? bolism, abound. Analyses of marketing systems in West Africa, both pre-colonial and modern, have also received considerable attention [11. However, comparatively few in-depth studies of the social organization of nineteenth cen? tury craft production in West Africa exist [2]. Rarer still are analyses of the changing struc? tures of craft production brought about through the integration of regional economies into the world market economy [3]. This paper reports on preliminary research on the impact of the modern capitalist economy upon petty commodity production in Zinder, a regional capital in the Republic of Niger. Research was conducted in two phases. Archival materials, provided by the Planning Department in Zinder, and the Mayor's Office, enabled a ward-by-ward census of the artisanal population for the years 1971 and 1977. Sub? sequently I interviewed ten percent of these

Production, reproduction, and underdevelopment: petty commodity producers in Ujung Pandang, Indonesia.

This paper examines a group of petty commodity producers in the Indonesian city of Ujung Pandang. It is argued that in order to understand the reasons for the stagnation of petty production in the city, one must appreciate both the internal structure of petty production and also the relationship between petty production and the capitalist and peasant sectors of the economy. The transfer of economic surplus out of petty commodity production which characterises these relations is important to an understanding of the poverty of the petty producers in the city, whereas the class formation this fosters perpetuates the underdeveloped character of the economy. The same processes also mean that petty commodity production plays an important part in the reproduction of the dominant capitalist sector of production because of the support it unwittingly gives to the wage labour force.

What Happened to the Agrarian Bourgeoisie and Rural Proletariat under Monopoly Capitalism?

The classical conception of the development of capitalism in agriculture maintains that, as in industry, the agrarian class-structure will tend to polarize, the petty commodity producer will tend to disappear, and a capitalist relation of production will develop between an agrarian bourgeoisie and a rural proletanat. Farms will be big estates, managed by capitahst farmers, run with machinery and landless labourers. This con ception has proved to be unjustified. The classics of Marxism are discus sed in order to find out the assumptions underlying this conception of agricultural development. The findings are used in a discussion of the prospects of a development in accordance with the classical conception in contemporary peripheral agriculture.

Minangkabau Social Formations.

List of maps, figures and tables Preface 1. Introduction 2. The internal and the external in a Minangkabau village: an introduction to the world of the concrete 3. Adat, kinship and marriage: the constitution of the subsistence community 4. Agriculture and subsistence: the reproduction of the subsistence community 5. Commodity production in the village economy: the case of blacksmithing 6. Occupation, class and the peasant economy 7. The structure of petty commodity production 8. Mercantilism and the evolution of 'traditional' society 9. The emergence of petty commodity production 10. Conclusions: the concept of a neo-colonial social formation Bibliography Glossary of Minangkabau terms Index.

Capital accumulation and regional development in France

The paper examines the interlinked development of social process and spatial form in the analysis of the changing patterns of production and employment in France. A major hypothesis is that specific phases of capital accumulation are associated with the use and production of specific forms of spatial diferentiation, and that recent changes in the location of employment in France are connected with the transition from one stage of capitalist development to another. Thus the changing spatial pattern of agricultural employment is seen as part of the decay of petty commodity production and the intergration of family farming into a new capitalist agriculture. Similarly, spatial change in manufacturing employment is also a component of industrial restructuring, and the associated development of new infrastrucural and labour requirements. The French state is one element of these processes and the article concludes with a case study of the relationships between capital accumulation and regional policy.

Informal sector or petty commodity production: Dualism or dependence in urban development?

This paper provides a critical review of the informal sector debate in recent studies of Third World poverty and employment. The use of the informal sector concept in the ILO World Employment Programme studies at country, city and sector level is discussed and definitional confusions in different conceptualizations are identified. Recognition of the essentially dependent and involutionary nature of the informal sector has resulted in critical concern with the limitations of this dualist model, both as a theoretical concept and as a basis for policy recommendations. An alternative more satisfactory model is presented, based on petty commodity production and its subordinate relationship to the capitalist sector. In identifying a continuum of productive activities, with complex linkages and dependent relationships, the dynamics of production and constraints on expansion are distinguished. Clarification as to whether the linkages are benign or exploitative is essential in order to assess whether petty commodity production is tolerated by or functional to, the capitalist system.

Capitalist and petty commodity production in Nigeria: A note

Capitalist and petty commodity production in Nigeria: A note

Obstacles to the development of a capitalist agriculture

This paper examines some of the reasons for the maintenance and persistence of family labour farms within agricultural sectors of advanced capitalist countries: some obstacles to the development of a capitalist agriculture are highlighted. The survival of family farms has called into question Marx's theory of the transitional nature of petty commodity production; hence, Marxism is generally regarded as being unable to account for the viability of family farms. Two theories commonly advanced to explain this phenomenon are examined and found to be inadequate. This paper suggests that a closer examination of Marx's writings reveals how the peculiar nature of the productive process in certain spheres of agriculture is incompatible with the requirements of capitalist production and, therefore, makes these spheres unattractive for capitalist penetration. Here the implications of Marx's distinction between production time and labour time for the development of a capitalist agriculture are discussed. Specifically, the non‐identity of production time and labour time characteristic of certain agricultural commodities is shown to have an adverse effect on the rate of profit, the efficient use of constant and variable capital, and the smooth functioning of the circulation and realisation process. It is concluded that the reason for the persistence of family farms is not to be found in the capacity of family labour for self‐exploitation, nor in the application of technology per se; rather the secret of this ‘anomaly’ lies in the logic and nature of capitalism itself.

Petty producers and capitalism

This article offers a preliminary theoretical framework for an analysis of labour in urban Senegal. The writers' studies of petty commodity and commodity production in Dakar—arising from which they propose to analyse the process of class formation and the class position of various sections of the urban labour force—require at the outset an analysis of the dialectical relationship between the dominant capitalist mode of production and the subordinate formsof production in underdeveloped countries. The term formof production is deliberate. Modeof production seems to the writers inappropriate, since it refers essentially to a totality which is self‐sufficient at both the superstructural level and at the economic base. Forms of production exist at the margins of the capitalist mode of production, but are nevertheless integrated into and subordinate to it. This article sets out to examine the processes and relations of production which characterise certain subordinate forms of production.