Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:15:02.433Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Some Conventional Orthodoxies in the Study of Agrarian Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Robert H. Bates
Robert H. Bates
Affiliation:
California Institute of Technology
Get access

Abstract

The paper presents a critical review of two major approaches to the analysis of agrarian societies in light of evidence taken from the scholarly literature on Africa. The first approach posits the existence of “natural” societies; the second, of “peasant” societies. The existence of such “precapitalist” societies is often invoked to account for patterns of change in contemporary rural societies. The author argues that these approaches are overly culturally and economically determined, and that they undervalue the importance of the state. Many of the so-called precapitalist features of these societies are themselves found to be products of the societies' encounter with agents of capitalism. Moreover, many result from the efforts of states to secure domination and control over rural populations.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , January 1984 , pp. 234 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 By capitalism I mean an economic system in which there exists: (1) market exchange of both products and factors of production; (2) in particular, private markets for labor; and (3) economic accumulation, thus securing the reproduction and expansion of the means of production.

2 Dalton, George, “Traditional Production in Primitive African Economies” in Dalton, , ed., Tribal and Peasant Economies (Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1967), 75.Google Scholar

3 George Dalton, “Subsistence and Peasant Economies in Africa,” ibid., 157.

4 Marx, Karl, “Precapitalist Economic Formations,” in Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Pre-Capitalist Socio-Economic Formations: A Collection (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1979), 98.Google Scholar

5 See, for example, the discussion in Scott, James C., “Protest and Profanation: Agrarian Revolt and the Little Tradition,” Theory and Society 4 (Summer 1977), 213.Google Scholar

6 Wolf, , “Closed Corporate Peasant Communities in Mesoamerica and Central Java,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 13 (Spring 1957), 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 A prime illustration would be Migdal, Joel S., Peasants, Politics, and Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).Google Scholar

8 Karl Polanyi, quoted in Scott, James C., The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976), 5.Google Scholar

9 Redfield, , Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 46.Google Scholar

10 Wolf, , Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 279.Google Scholar

11 Scott (fn. 5), 231.

12 Hyden, , Efficiency versus Distribution in East African Co-operatives (Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1973), 4.Google Scholar

13 Redfield (fn. 9), 46.

14 Welch, Claude, “Peasants as a Focus in African Studies,” African Studies Review 20 (No. 3. 1977), 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Wolf, Eric R., “Types of Latin American Peasantry: A Preliminary Discussion,” American Anthropologist 57 (June 1955), 454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Chayanov, A. V., Thorner, Daniel, Kerblay, Basile, and Smith, R.E.F., eds., The Theory of Peasant Economy (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin for the American Economic Association, 1966).Google Scholar

17 Post, Ken, “‘Peasantization’ and Rural Political Movements in Western Africa,” Archives Européennes de Sociologie 13 (No. 2, 1972), 225–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Ibid., 233. See also Wolf (fn. 10).

19 Hyden, Goran, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980).Google Scholar

20 Williams, Gavin, “The World Bank and the Peasant Problem,” in Heyer, Judith, Roberts, Pepe, and Williams, Gavin, eds., Rural Development in Tropical Africa (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981).Google Scholar

21 Goody, Jack, “Economy and Feudalism in Africa,” The Economic History Review 23 (December 1969), 394–95.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., 395.

23 There is evidence that extensive trade existed in precolonial Africa for agricultural products as well. See Jones, William O., “Agricultural Trade Within Tropical Africa: Historical Background,” in Bates, Robert H. and Lofchie, Michael, eds., Agricultural Development in Tropical Africa: Issues of Public Policy (New York: Praeger, 1980), 10–45.Google Scholar

24 Hill, Polly, Studies in Rural Capitalism in West Africa (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Berry, Sara, Cocoa, Custom and Socio-Economic Change in Rural Western Nigeria (London: Oxford University Press, 1975).Google Scholar

25 Hogendorn, Jan S., “Economic Initiative and African Cash Farming,” in Duignan, Peter and Gann, Lewis H., eds., Colonialism in Africa, 1870–1960 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 283–328.Google Scholar

26 O'Brien, Donal Cruise, The Mourides of Senegal (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Helleiner, G. K., Peasant Agriculture, Government, and Economic Growth in Nigeria (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, 1966).Google Scholar

27 Arrighi, , “Labor Supplies in Historical Perspective: A Study of Proletarianization of the African Peasantry in Rhodesia,” in Arrighi, Giovanni and Saul, John S., Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1973), 185.Google Scholar

28 See also the cases described in Palmer, Robin and Parsons, Neil, eds., The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977).Google Scholar

29 Grier, Beverly, “Underdevelopment, Modes of Production, and the State in Colonial Ghana,” The African Studies Review 24 (March 1981), 35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For an excellent discussion of the issue of property rights, see also John Cohen, “Land Tenure and Rural Development in Africa,” in Bates and Lofchie (fn. 23).

30 Grier (fn. 29), 33.

31 Quoted in Sorrenson, M.P.K., Land Reform in Kikuyu Country (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1967), 56.Google Scholar

32 Ibid, 20–21.

33 Ibid., 58.

34 See, for example, Hailey, Lord, An African Survey: Revised, 1956 (London: Oxford University Press, 1957)Google Scholar; Lugard, Frederick D., The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (London: F. Cass, 1965)Google Scholar; and Perham, Margery Freda, Native Administration in Nigeria (London: Oxford University Press, 1937).Google Scholar

35 Meek, , Land Law and Custom in the Colonies (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), 10.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., 193.

37 Tignor, , “Colonial Chiefs in Chiefless Societies,” Journal of Modern African Studies 9 (1971), 350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Clough, Marshall, Chiefs and Politicians: Local Politics and Social Change in Kiambu, Kenya, 1918–1936, Ph.D. diss. (Stanford University, 1978).Google Scholar

38 Gluckman, Max, “Foreword” to Watson, W., Tribal Cohesion in a Money Economy (Manchester: Manchester University Press for the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, 1958), x–xi.Google Scholar

39 West, Henry W., Land Policy in Buganda (London: Cambridge University Press, 1972).Google Scholar

40 Gann, , A History of Northern Rhodesia (London: Chatto & Windus, 1964), 253.Google Scholar

41 Excellent discussions are included in Berger, Elena L., Labour, Race and Colonial Rule: The Copperbelt from 1924 to Independence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Perrings, Charles, Black Mineworkers in Central Africa (New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1979)Google Scholar; Epstein, A. L., Politics in an Urban African Community (Manchester: Manchester University Press for the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, 1958)Google Scholar; and Heisler, Helmuth, Urbanization and the Government of Migration (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1974).Google Scholar

42 For additional arguments, see Meillassoux, Claude, Maidens, Meal and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Community (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Wolpe, Harold, “Capitalism and Cheap Labour Power in South Africa,” Economy and Society 1 (No. 4, 1972), 425–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Palmer and Parsons (fn. 28). I differ from these approaches in my acknowledgement of the divergence of interests between the state and private enterprises, and in my conviction that the state was set upon solving its own fiscal problem by controlling the formation of land laws.

43 Kay, , Social Aspects of Village Regrouping in Zambia (Lusaka: Institute for Social Research, University of Zambia, 1967), 11.Google Scholar

44 Ibid., 10.

45 In the case of Kenya, Sorrenson notes: “The Kikuyu did not live in villages, but in dispersed households. … During the Mau Mau Emergency the Kikuyu, the Embu and some of the Meru population were concentrated in 732 villages. …” Sorrenson (fn. 31), 3.

46 The best studies are Freyhold, Michaela Von, Ujamaa Villages in Tanzania (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1979)Google Scholar; McHenry, Dean E. Jr, Tanzania's Ujamaa Villages (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1979)Google Scholar; and Hyden (fn. 19).

47 Ibid., 98.

48 See, for example, Mushi, Samuel S., “Modernization by Traditionalization: Ujamaa Principles Revisited,” Taamuli 1 (No. 2, March 1971).Google Scholar

49 For further evidence concerning “state origins” of village communities and a brilliant exposition of this argument, see Popkin, Samuel L., The Rational Peasant (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Unversity of California Press, 1979).Google Scholar

50 Hyden (fn. 19).

51 See Bates, Robert H., Markets and States in Tropical Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981).Google Scholar

52 See, for example, the data contained in Government of Uganda, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, “Pricing Policy and Agricultural Production,” (Entebbe: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, August 1978).

53 Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, in writing about precolonial African societies, defined the African mode of production as one in which states did not directly control producers (e.g., through enserfment or slavery), but controlled and manipulated trade in order to accumulate resources from them. Her analysis is at least as applicable, in my view, to contemporary Africa as it was to the precolonial period, and very likely more so. See Coquery-Vidrovitch, , “Recherches sur un mode de production Africain,” Le Peńsee 144 (1969), 61–78.Google Scholar