Recent debates over the persistence of family farms have focused on the importance of “naturalistic” obstacles to the capitalist development of agriculture. According to these arguments, the existence of these barriers in some realms of agricultural production precludes the development of wage labor. I argue, however, that in many instances these obstacles are based primarily on political factors. To demonstrate this thesis I illustrate how the tobacco program until recently has proved to be an obstacle to consolidation and structural change (...) in tobacco production. The tobacco program has conditioned the extent of technological development and structural change in tobacco production. From the 1940s to the 1970s, the tobacco program maintained a system of small-scale producers and discouraged technological change in the industry. Changes in the program in the 1970s and 1980s, however, have contributed to the rapid mechanization and structural change among tobacco producers. Many of the “obstacles” to consolidation were overcome not by technological change, but by weakened political support for the tobacco program. These results suggest that in addition to economic and technological considerations, we need to assess more carefully the political foundations of the capitalist development of agriculture. (shrink)

The ontological and analytical status of Marxian social theory has been a matter of fierce controversy since Marx’s death, both within and without Marxist circles. A particular source of contention has been over whether Marxism should be construed as an objective science of the capitalist mode of production or as an ethico-philosophical critique of bourgeois society. This is paralleled by the dispute over whether Marxism ought to be considered a humanism or a structuralism. This article addresses both sides of this (...) debate. The argument is that, rather than Marx’s own social thought being split into incompatible poles, giving rise to ‘two Marxisms’, it forms a coherent unity. Marx’s social theory is neither humanist philosophy, nor structural science, but is in fact realist science, which synthesizes these apparent antinomies, and thereby transcends both. (shrink)

A complex conjuncture of ideological constructions obscured and rationalized the systematic exploitation of farm women. First, farming and homemaking, to which people cling in an attempt to avert the alienation of wage labor, provide a basis for evaluating one's labor in terms that, ironically, makes them vulnerable to super-exploitation. Second, agrarian ideologies, with their strongly patriarchal bias, did not allow women to understand themselves as public actors. Modernizing elite ideologies, specifically the equation of entrepreneurial individualism and efficiency with “progress” and (...) affluence, and the “cult of domesticity” with its redefinition of men's and women's roles, promised women greater equality within the family; however, these normative codes simultaneously opened the farm and home to greater dependence on capitalist markets. The ideology of entrepreneurial individualism also provided templates through which farm men and women (mis)understood their relative poverty as being the result of private, individual choices. In addition, virtually all media assumed a sector differentiated only by commodity, rendering size, class, or other distinctions invisible. Finally, the ideology of separate spheres, as it developed in the nineteenth century, created a segmented and discriminatory labor market for women. The period focused on, the late 1940s and the 1950s, was crucial in establishing the terms of the post-War order. (shrink)

In 2011, two Chinese municipalities, Chongqing and Shanghai, enacted a property tax on rich homeowners. However, the two municipal governments sharply diverged in their designs of the tax and the justifying frames used. Whereas Chongqing explicitly framed the tax as a redistributive measure targeting the economic elite, Shanghai framed it as an ad hoc technical intervention in the housing market that would antagonize no one. This article explains how the only two Chinese cities that introduced this unconventional tax ended up (...) enacting the tax in such different ways. In doing so, this article proposes a theoretical framework synthesizing two main pillars of Bourdieu’s state theory – a conceptualization of the state as a field of competition, and a careful consideration of the symbolic dimension of state power. The political competition in which the top leaders of the two municipalities were engaged drove them to enact the tax. The positions these leaders occupied in the field of competition shaped their specific strategies of accumulating competition-specific capital, getting their capital noted and recognized by other players in the field, and theatricalizing their capital-seeking acts as serving some universal interest. These dynamics gave rise to divergent styles of enacting the tax. (shrink)

This study was undertaken to assess farmers’ attitudes toward sustainable agriculture and the environment. The majority of Ontario farmers in this 1991 survey supported the need for government policies which promote sustainable agriculture but there were major differences in the government policies which farmers thought would be sustainable or desirable. Most farmers felt the Government should promote diversified rural economic development, sponsor appropriate research and provide conservation grants to farmers willing to change to more sensitive environmental methods. Those least interested (...) in forms of government intervention designed to enhance agricultural sustainability operated the largest farms. Conversely, those most likely to be receptive to government regulations and interventions designed to enhance rural equity, stability, productivity and sustainability were the smaller operation farmers who most often had off-farm employment. (shrink)

In this interview, Daniel Little provides an overview of his life and work in academia. Among other things, he discusses an actor-centred approach to theory of social ontology. For Little, this approach complements the assumptions of critical realism, in that it accords full ontological importance to social structures, causal mechanisms, and enduring and influential normative systems. The approach casts doubt, however, on the idea of ‘strong emergence' of social structures, the idea that social structures have properties and causal powers that (...) cannot, in principle be explained by their constituents (social actors) and their relationships. Little’s approach to social ontology endorses instead the idea of relative explanatory autonomy. During the interview, many points of convergence become evident between this actor-centred approach to social ontology and the fundamental insights of critical realism. According to Little, analysis of social ontology also turns out to be especially relevant to philosophy of history. (shrink)

(1990). Perfecting the machine: Instrumental rationality and the bureaucratic ideologies of the state. World Futures: Vol. 28, Cross-Cultural Dialogue, pp. 141-161.

This paper provides an analytical panorama of agriculture in the European context to be employed as a background for reading the articles contained in this issue of Agriculture and Human Values. Brief summaries of their contents constitute the concluding part of the present contribution.

In this article, gender-differentiated employment practices are examined with a focus on different mechanisms of labor control in the South Korean textile industry, a prototypical Third World industry based on export-oriented industrialization. The analysis focuses on how labor control mechanisms, such as gender segregation in jobs and authority relations in the factory, the nature of worker dependency, and subcontracting interact with gender and produce different outcomes for men and women workers in spinning and weaving and clothing industries. These practices are (...) used to maintain the competitiveness of the South Korean product in the international market as well as for the maximization of profit in the textile industry. (shrink)

In what directions is the Australian `new' middle class developing as we move towards the `Asia-Pacific century'? This paper reviews the basic structural features of the group during most of the 20th century, and suggests that a number of the arrangements which had delivered high status, material privileges and security to the group are becoming increasingly problematic. It examines evidence of the growing importance of Asian opportunities to the Australian middle class, and indications of responses to these. Interpreted in the (...) context of contemporary accounts of transformations in identity formation processes, this evidence may signal the emergence of a significant new stratum within the Australian middle class. The paper concludes with some speculations about the significance of such a development. (shrink)