Peasant Studies Research Articles

Representing the peasantry? Struggles for/about land in Brazil

(2002). Representing the peasantry? Struggles for/about land in Brazil. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 29, No. 3-4, pp. 300-335.

Are Peasants Risk‐Averse Decision Makers?

Les AA. se proposent d'evaluer l'approche qui explique le conservatisme culturel de la petite agriculture de subsistance par la rationalite d'une analyse cout-benefice effectuee par les paysans, ou les individus prennent des decisions en fonction d'un comportement d'aversion au risque en raison de leur situation economique incertaine et precaire. A cet effet, ils combinent des recherches de terrain comparatives experimentales avec des recherches ethnographique economiques dans deux groupes de petites exploitations agricoles, les Mapuche du Chili et les Sangu de Tanzanie. Ces experimentations, malgre des lacunes methodologiques, mettent en doute les approches theoriques standards. Concues afin de mesurer les preferences pour le risque directement, elles montrent que les Mapuche et les Sangu expriment une preference pour le risque dans leurs prises de decisions - suggerant que de facon generale les agriculteurs de subsistance n'agissent pas en fonction d'une aversion envers le risque. D'autre part, la preference pour le risque semble s'expliquer essentiellement en fonction du groupe culturel. En conclusion, les AA. esquissent brievement une alternative theorique au modele standard.

Land Rights in Rural China: Facts, Fictions and Issues

China's rural economic reforms radically altered land tenure in rural China. With the granting of land use rights and residual income rights to farming households between 1979 and 1983, agriculture shifted from a collective-based to a familybased system. Land was not privatized, however. Ownership remained "collective", with local officials, typically at the village level, exercising a major influence over the allocation of land and the way households could use land. The initial land allocations to families were typically based on household size, household labour supply, or both. The central government's policy was that these allocations were supposed to be for 15 years. In some villages, land use contracts have been respected; in other villages, however, local leaders have periodically redistributed land among households and have intervened throughout the reform period to determine how farmers are able to use the land. The initial reforms triggered an unprecedented acceleration of agricultural growth in China. From 1979 to 1984, the gross value of agricultural output increased in real terms at an annual rate of 7.6 per cent, and grain production rose by 4.9 per cent annually.' Empirical studies attribute a significant part of this increase to enhanced incentives, as farmers were able to keep the output and

The Russian Peasantry 1600-1930: The World the Peasants Made by David s> Moon (review)

REVIEWS 531 Westor EastPrussiaand refusedto learn the language. It is significantthatthe historians involved in the foundation of the Herder Institute in 1950 were Hermann Aubin and Erich Keyser, two of the most vociferous Oslforscher before I945. The few voices who opposed these developments, such as Walter Schlesinger, who addressed the Herder Institute in I963 with an appeal to abandon the 'Germanocentric' approaches to the history of the former German borderlands,were silenced. Even during the early I980s when the exhibition on Prussianhistoryin Berlin sparkeda new popular interestin the subject, the Hohenzollern-focused, state-centred approach of the so-called 'Borussianists'prevailed. Poland and the Polish population in Prussia'spast did not feature. In Germany, Prussia's regional and territorial history remained in the serviceof the historyof the nation-state. Structuralistsocial historianswere late to discover Prussia,and the history of ruraland urban settlementsand of the political role of the Prussianestates was influenced by these approaches during the late I970S and I98os. Yet a social history of Prussiawhich takes account of the great variety of regional, religious,culturaland ethnic varietyhas stillto be written.The pre-eminence of Polish historians -particularly in Toruniand Poznafi- over German historiography in the field even today wvillnot diminish in the near future: there is no chair in the history of Prussiain Berlin, the last remnants of the Historical Commission for the Study of East and West Prussiahavejust been deprived of public funding, and the East European Institute at the Free Universityin Berlinis threatenedwith closure.It took the fundingbodies over two years to decide whether the vacant chair of Polish and NortheastEuropean history, formerlyoccupied by Klaus Zernack, should be filled. All of this is happening eighty kilometres from Germany's border with Poland. Hackmann's book is a highly political reminder of the blunders which still mar German behaviour towardsPoland, and the less than ingenious policies of German academic institutions. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies KARIN FRIEDRICH LTniversity CollegeLondon Moon, David. 7The RussianPeasantry I600-I930. TheWorld thePeasants Made. Longman, London and New York, I999. Xii + 396 pp. Notes. Tables. Figures. Bibliography. Glossary. Index. /48. oo; fI 7.99. THIS is an excellent book. Every serious student of Russian or peasant studies should read it and add it to his or her library. David Moon has succeeded in capturing the full scope of the historiography of the Russian peasantry while presenting his own interpretation of Imperial Russia's majority population. His writing is exceptionally lucid throughout the text. The book falls short in only two areas which may make it less accessible for undergraduate students: the graphics are minimal, as are descriptions of individual examples of peasants. I suspect that the financial constraints of academic publishing forced the decision to limit visual representation of information and the space available for descriptive passages. 532 SEER, 79, 3, 200I The limited appearance of named, individualpeasants is inconsistentwith Moon's central argumentthat the peasantswere 'rationaland creativeactors in their world and in their dealings with outsiders' (p. 354). As his subtitle signals, Moon foregroundsthe peasants' agency in every aspect of rurallife, from their interactions with the natural environment through their dealings with outsideroverlordsand economic structuresbeyond thevillage:'The most important factor affectingthe history of the Russian peasantry [. . .] was the actions of the peasants in making the world they lived in' (p. 8). He employs the term 'strategies'time and again to pressthis point (e.g. pp. 222, 226, 238, 282, 3I0, 3i2, 313, 327, 328, 330, to list a few such instances).Moon presents peasants as not only strategicactors, but also successfulactorswhose success was embodied in the enduranceand expansion of the peasantpopulationover the three centuries of his study. 'The Russian peasantry' he concludes, 'remained a distinct, and still largely separate part of the population at the turn of the century' (p. 346), a distinction that resulted as much from the peasants' own decisions as from the environment, state, and larger society pressingagainstthe boundariesof 'theworldthe peasantsmade'. Moon's depictionof peasantsasrationalactorsfollowsthe traditionofA. N. Engelgardt and A. V. Chayanov, while his emphasis on the endurance and expansion of the peasantry draws in part on Steven Hoch's recent work on population and prosperityin the post-Emancipation era. His mastery of the historiographyof the earlierperiod displayssimilarrange includingthe works of...

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 1972–1989: A Memoir

This is a memoir of the Peasants seminar of the University of London, which ran between January 1972 and February 1989, and to which 208 papers were presented. The following are considered: its origins, the influences which shaped it, and its agenda; the circumstances of its launching; how it gave rise, very directly, to the Journal of Peasant Studies in 1973; its synergy with JPS, especially in the 1970s, and something of its themes, ambience and development. It is concluded that there is no better way of starting and sustaining, in its early phases, a journal than first securing a strong intellectual base, in the shape of a seminar that meets regularly and has a cohesive, but critical, intellectual community.

From Peasant Studies to Agrarian Change

This inaugural essay surveys themes and approaches in agrarian political economy over the last three decades, especially with reference to contributions to, and debates in, the Journal of Peasant Studies of which T. J. Byres was editor from 1973 to 2000 and Henry Bernstein editor from 1985 to 2000. We indicate intellectual strengths and lacunae, new approaches to longstanding issues, and new concerns which emerged over that period, and which inform the project of this new Journal of Agrarian Change and the challenges it presents.

The landless rural workers movement (MST) in Brazil

(2001). The landless rural workers movement (MST) in Brazil. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 146-161.

Sotsial′nyie konflikty i krest′ianskaia mental′nost′ v Rossiiskoi imperii nachala XX veka: Novye materialy, metody, rezul′taty , and: Peasant Dreams and Market Politics: Labor Migration and the Russian Village, 1861–1905 (review)

Reviewed by: Sotsial′nyie konflikty i krest′ianskaia mental′nost′ v Rossiiskoi imperii nachala XX veka: Novye materialy, metody, rezul′taty, and: Peasant Dreams and Market Politics: Labor Migration and the Russian Village, 1861–1905 Aaron B. Retish O. G. Bukhovets, Sotsial′nyie konflikty i krest′ianskaia mental′nost′ v Rossiiskoi imperii nachala XX veka: Novye materialy, metody, rezul′taty. Moscow: Mosgorarkhiv. Desiat′ novykh uchebnikov po istoricheskim distsiplinam, 1996. 398 pp. ISBN 5-722-80038-4 (pb). Jeffrey Burds, Peasant Dreams and Market Politics: Labor Migration and the Russian Village, 1861–1905. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies, 1998. xiv + 314 pp. ISBN 0-822-94049-3 (cl); 0-822-95655-1 (pb). $50.00 (cl); $22.95 (pb). Peasants often participate in grand social transformations through actions noted in most elite records as resistance. Several generations of scholars have postulated how the peasantry actually understood social transformations and how peasant understanding in turn influenced popular reactions to such changes. Yet, as Oleg Grigor'evich Bukhovets and Jeffrey Burds note, until recently most scholars have shaped and molded the peasantry to fit their own political ideology or world outlook. Both authors therefore begin with a similar notion – that the Marxist class analysis of the countryside has provided an insufficient interpretation of peasant actions. They diverge in methodology. Bukhovets employs a statistical quantitative analysis to study peasant protest and petition writing from 1905–1914, while Burds embraces a socio-cultural approach in his study of peasant migration (otkhodnichestvo). Bukhovets, a senior fellow at the Institute of History of the Belarussian Academy of Sciencess, Minsk, has published substantially on the peasantry's political consciousness during the 1905 Revolution and is a well-known figure in Russian peasant studies. The book under review is part of a series of ten historical monographs partially financed by Volkswagen. It has a significant print run (in comparison to other Russian monographs) and has received considerable attention by scholars in the West. The work is divided into three parts. The first section is an extended historiographical essay on social conflict and mass consciousness. The author actually uses the historiography as a backdrop for a more general exposition on the current "crisis of historical understanding and research agendas… theories, approaches, and methods" (14). In Russia, the crisis revolves around the place of Marxism in the post-Soviet age. Russian historians have been liberated from the dogmatic restrictions of Soviet Marxist analysis, only to replace these limitations with new blinders, as seen in their negative perception of [End Page 208] studies dealing with class and revolution (31–32). The western version of the crisis involves the rise of postmodernism and the resulting rejection of deterministic conceptions of history in favor of "objective nihilism." Historians therefore defend their arguments using only examples and illustrations, rather than analyzing data. Bukhovets' essay is a fascinating polemic by a skilled, traditional quantitative social historian uneasy with the rapidly changing academic field around him. His analysis of Russian historiography on peasant mentality is much stronger than his analysis of Western historiography. Bukhovets outlines not only the main arguments of prominent Soviet historians (most notably B. G. Litvak ), but he also surveys current archival holdings, noting that the central archives, especially the Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA) are surprisingly weak in their collection of petitions and resolutions. Western readers may be troubled by Bukhovets' almost total dismissal of the advantages of postmodernism and poststructuralism. Bukhovets believes that "marginal" areas of historical study (e.g., gender, nationality, and ethnicity) have invaded historical interpretation and threaten true historical scholarship. The author offers his antidote to the crisis with a massive quantitative analysis of mass peasant protests and the "resolution and petition movement" (prigovernoe dvizhenie) in parts two and three. Part two, "Riot and 'Revolutionary Consciousness': Political Mentality and Activities of Participants in the Petition Movement, 1905–1907," is the heart of the monograph. Bukhovets divides the petition movement into four periods: January–October 1905, October–December 1905, the session of the First Duma, and the first half of 1907. The author argues that the peasantry became more politically developed in the last three months of 1905. Peasant petitions and resolutions...

A Coffee Frontier: Land, Society, and Politics in Duaca, Venezuela, 1830-1936

This study views the economic transformation of Duaca, Venezuela into a major coffee export center in the late nineteenth century. Yarrington examines the rise of the peasantry to prosperity, yet they later lost their stature as the local elite allied itself with the state to restructure society and coffee production on its own terms in the twentieth-century. The book is a pioneering study on peasant studies, export-led development, the relationship of state and society, and the consolidation of nation-states in Latin America.

Fighting Rural Poverty in Latin America: New Evidence of the Effects of Education, Demographics, and Access to Land

Fighting Rural Poverty in Latin America: New Evidence of the Effects of Education, Demographics, and Access to Land

Regional Development in Rural Malaysia and the ‘Tribal Question’

In the field of research and studies pertaining to Malaysian rural society, there has traditionally been a dominant emphasis, especially by local scholars, on the analysis of the indigenous Malay peasantry rather than on the equally indigenous ‘tribal’ minorities, i.e. the Orang Asli. This has also meant that the new theoretical directions and perspectives developed in the various interrelated fields (such as ‘the New Economic Anthropology’, ‘Peasant Studies’, and Political Economy, including the Neo-Marxist School of Development and Underdevelopment) have been applied with rigour only to those issues arising from ‘the peasant question’ in Malaysia. To date, no scholars have as yet seriously attempted to address ‘the agrarian question’ in the context of Malaysian society by also incorporating in their theoretical analysis the position of its ‘tribal’ minorities.

When Nomads Settle: The Effects of Commoditization, Nutritional Change, and Formal Education on Ariaal and Rendille Pastoralists

When Nomads Settle: The Effects of Commoditization, Nutritional Change, and Formal Education on Ariaal and Rendille Pastoralists

Rural labour in Uttar Pradesh: Emerging features of subsistence, contradiction and resistance

(1999). Rural labour in Uttar Pradesh: Emerging features of subsistence, contradiction and resistance. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 26, Rural Labour Relations in India, pp. 263-315.

Politics of the poor: Agricultural labourers and political transformations in Uttar Pradesh

(1999). Politics of the poor: Agricultural labourers and political transformations in Uttar Pradesh. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 26, Rural Labour Relations in India, pp. 182-241.

Liberalisation, rural labour markets and the mobilisation of farm workers: The Haryana story in an all‐India context

(1999). Liberalisation, rural labour markets and the mobilisation of farm workers: The Haryana story in an all‐India context. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 26, Rural Labour Relations in India, pp. 25-70.

Rural labour relations in India: Persistent themes, common processes and differential outcomes

(1999). Rural labour relations in India: Persistent themes, common processes and differential outcomes. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 26, Rural Labour Relations in India, pp. 10-24.

Agrarian power and unfree labour

(1999). Agrarian power and unfree labour. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 26, Rural Labour Relations in India, pp. 242-262.

SOUTH AFRICAN LAND REFORM: CASE-STUDIES IN 'DEMAND' AND 'PARTICIPATION' IN THE FREE STATE

This article offers an ethnographic cross-section in one province of South Africa's new land reform programme. 'Demand' and 'participation' are the rhetorical keywords of the programme. Demand for land redistribution, however, cannot be understood in abstraction from the political and economic conditions of its supply. Similarly, 'participation' is a managed process involving many institutional intermediaries. A series of illustrative case-studies is presented, relating to the allocation of stateowned land; state-facilitated 'market' access to privately-owned land; the reconstruction and partial privatization of a para-statal development agency, which have brought into question the viability of a 'community conservation' project and also exposed the agency to political cross-fire; and, finally, some intricacies of the possibility of land restitution to people dispossessed under apartheid, which raises the question of whether the concept of indirect racial discrimination may be applied in the South African context. Several contradictions of the process of land redistribution are analysed: for example, the massive financial costs, direct and indirect, of bringing projects to fruition in the short term, without resolution of the need for long-term support; the divergence between nominal and actual beneficiaries; political and institutional conflicts, both inside and outside the state; and routine incompatibility between the diverse aspirations of beneficiaries and the 'business plans' required by bureaucrats and suppliers of credit. THE SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT is committed to a strategy of land reform that is 'demand-led' and places an emphasis on the active 'participation' of individuals and communities in decision-making. There are three principal elements of the emerging programme: the restitution of land to those who were dispossessed under apartheid laws; the redistribution of land to those who need it; and tenure reform, intended to achieve security of tenure for people holding land under diverse forms of tenure.1 The literature on the topic, both from official and unofficial sources, is already large.2 In a recent review of the politics of land reform, Richard Levin and Dan Weiner distinguished between an 'elite-pacted' process of transition, Colin Murray is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. 1. Department of Land Affairs (DLA), Green Paper on South African Land Policy (Pretoria, 1996); C. Murray, 'Land reform in the eastern Free State: Policy dilemmas and political conflicts', 3fournal of Peasant Studies, 23, 2/3 January/April 1996), pp. 209-244. 2. For references see H. Bernstein (ed.), The Agrarian Question in South Africa, special issue of 3tournal of Peasant Studies, 23, 2/3 January/April 1996).

Nature, Culture, Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia

Environmental history is a fast developing field of critical enquiry. In both ecological and cultural terms, South Asia is characterized by its diversity. Ecological degradation, and the social conflicts that have come in its wake, have underlined the need for historical research in this field. This work should be of value to ecologists, environmentalists, historians, sociologists and those interested in peasant studies and India's environment.

Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization.

Drawing on newly-opened Soviet archives, especially the letters of complaint and petition with which peasants deluged the Soviet authorities in the 1930s, Stalin's Peasants analyses peasants' strategies of resistance and survival in the new world of the collectivized village. Stalin's Peasants is a story of struggle between transformationally-minded Communists and traditionally-minded peasants over the terms of collectivization: a struggle of opposing practices, not a struggle in which either side clearly articulated its position. But it is also a story about the impact of collectivization on the internal social relations and culture of the village, exploring questions of authority and leadership, feuds, denunciations, rumors, and changes in religious observance. For the first time, it is possible to see the real people behind the facade of the created by Soviet propagandists. In the Potemkin village, happy peasants clustered around a kolkhoz (collective farm) tractor, praising Stalin and promising to produce more grain as a patriotic duty. In the real Russian village of the 1930s, as we learn from Soviet political police reports, sullen and hungry peasants described collectivization as a second serfdom, cursed all Communists, and blamed Stalin personally for their plight. Sheila Fitzpatrick's work is truly a landmark in studies of the Stalinist period-a richly-documented social history told from the traumatic experiences of the long-suffering underclass of peasants. Anyone interested in Soviet and Russian history, peasant studies, or social history will appreciate this major contribution to our understanding of life in Stalin's Russia.