DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY PASADENA. CALIFORNIA 91125 SOME CONVENTIONAL ORTHODOXIES IN THE STUDY OF AGRARIAN CHANGE Robert H. Bates ,\'\c,1\lUTfOf: �� ,.�c. � � 0 � t".'. _, 0 < Cl l..J . -<. � t:; � � � ,.....;;;, �): ,..., It SlfALL �pi.\1-.� This is an early version of a paper which will appear in an overly edited form in World Politics in early 1984. I wish to thank Eleanor Searle and Philip Hoffman for their contributions to this manuscript. SOCIAL SCIENCE WORKING PAPER 458 December J 982 Revised December 1983 SOME CONVENTIONAL ORTHOOOXIES IN THE STUDY OF AGRAR IAN CHANGE ABSTRACT Robert H. Bates The purpose of this paper is critically to review two -ujor California Institute of Technology approaches to the analysis of agrarian societies and to do so in light of evidence taken from Africa. Sweet sm il ing village, loveliest of the lawn, Thy sport s are tled, and all thy charms withdrawn; The first app roach posits the existence of "natural" societies ; Am idst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen, And desolation saddens all thy green : the second, "p easant" societies. Both approaches attribute One only master grabs the whole domain, And half a village st ints thy smiling plain. psychological and institutional characteristics to these societies. * * * Far, far away thy children leav e the land. When subject to the exogenous shock s of intrusive political and Ill fares the land, to hastening ill a prey , Where wealth accumulate s, and men decay : econom ic forces, these attributes then generate characteristic patterns Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made : of change. The existence of such "p re-cap it alist" societies is thus But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once de stroyed, can never be supp lied. often invoked to account for patterns of change in contemporary rural * * * But now the sounds of population fail. societies. No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, No busy steps the grass-grown foot-way tread, On the basis of African materials, the paper argues that these For all the bloomy flush of life is fled. All but yon widowed, solitary thing, approaches are ov erly cultural. They are ov erly economist, under- * That feebly bends beside the plashy spring. valuing the importance of the state. Many of the so-called pre- * Oliver Goldsmith, ,.l'he Deserted Vil lage" in Selected Work s of Oliver Goldsmith (London : Ma cMillan and Co. , 1920) , pp . 358-360 capitalist features of these societies are them selves arguably products Permit me to inscribe this Poem to you. of their encounter with agents of capitalism. Moreover, many result How far you may be pleased with the versification and mere mechanical parts of this attempt , I do not pretend to from the effort s of states to secure domination and control ov er rural inquire; but I know you will object (and indeed several of our best and wisest friends concur in this op inion) that the populations. depop ulation it deplore s is no where to be seen, and the disorders it laments are only to be found in the poet's own imagination. To this I can scarcely mak e any ther answer than that I sincerely * i believe what I hav e writt en. ** Oliver Goldsmith, "To Sir Joshua Reynolds, " letter transmitting "The Deserted Village" to Sir Joshua Reynolds , in Selected Work s of Oliver Goldsmith, p. 355 . 3 2 subjectivi st, value-based account s of these institution s are therefore INTRODUCTION false. The purpose of thi s paper is criti cally to review two major 3. A third criti ci sm is that the prevailing theories are approaches to the analysi s of agrarian societies and to do so in light ov erly economist. In parti cular, they ten d to un der-value the of evidence taken from Africa. The African data provoke considerable importance of the state. Many of the di stinctive institutions of skeptici sm con cerning the validity of these cont emp orary orthodoxies agrarian societies, I argue, result from the efforts of the state to and support three major counter argument s: secure dominati on an d control over rural populations; and many of the 1. The reigning orthodoxies posit the existence of two forms of behaviors attributed to the preferences of rural dw ellers result from agrarian societi es. In some cases, these societies are classified as strategi c interactions with public agencies which seek to extract goods "natural" societies; in others, they are classified as "p easant". In an d services from them. In sofar as the in stitution s and behaviors both cases, they are held to be pre-capitalist. A major thesis of this exhibited by agrarian societies define a peasantry, in short, states essay is that this last contention is false. For the very traits that create peasants. lead these societies to be classified as pre-capitalist - e.g. the exi stence of common land rights; the avoidan ce of market exchanges; the INTRODUCING THE DOMINANT ORTHODOX IES turning to subsistence production, reciprocity and such social Amon g the most prominent of the current approa ches, two stan d institution s as the family system for economi c support - are them selves out : the "n atural" and "p easant" economy models of rural society. arguably product s of the encounter of agrarian societies with agents of These models contain both stati c and dynami c elements. The first capitalism. 1 provide the initial condition s and the defining instit utional and 2. A second argument is that the current orthodoxies are behavi oral characteristics; when linked, these static elements generate ov erly cultural. The orthodox position s tend to account for agrarian characteri sti c pattern s of change and signi ficant implications for institutions in terms of the values of rural dwellers, e.g. their public policy. desire to secure subsi sten ce or to gain social stan din g. This essay in stead argue s that key agrarian in stituti ons represent compromises and adaptations; equally as often, they represent impo sition s from above by more powerful external agent s. In either case, agrarian in stitution s cannot represent institutionalized expression s of agrarian value s and 4 5 The Myt h of the Natural Economy TABLE 1 The critical elem ents of the model of the natural economy are Schematic Presentation of the Model of a Natural Economy present ed in table 1. In this section, I elaborate upon this schematic suDDllari zation . Initial Conditions: The origins of this model lie widely scatter ed. The model i. Agrarian economy. derives as much from Polanyi as from Marx and Engels ; 2 its roots stem ii. Production for use rather than exchange. as well from Tonnies notion of societies based upon the principles of iii . Insignificance of markets . gem einschaft, and from Maine's notion of societies based upon status . 3 Institutional Characteristics: In more recent times, the model has been advanced by Dalton, Wolf, i. "Connnunal" land rights; Migdal, and Scott, writers whose works have been grouped by their a. Use rights accorded to producers if and only if principal critic, Samuel Popkin, into the "moral economy" school of producer a member of the coDD11unity . 4 social analysis . b. Rights to land revert to community when use rights no longer exercised . Initial Conditions: Accor ding to the model of the natural ii . Importance of the primary community and, in particular, economy, "primitive" agrarian societies produce not for exchange but the village . for use; as a consequence Behavioral Characteristics: i. The desire for sel f-su fficiency. market exchanges are usually peripheral, in the sense that most ii . The importance of status . sellers do not acquire the bulk of their livelihood, and buyers iii . The importance of equality. the bulk of their daily used goods and services, via Patterns of Change: market-place sales and purchases •• • labor and land do not i. Initial opposition to "commoditization." enter the market and basic livelihood is acquir ed in non-market ii . Social disintegration in the face of markets . spheres • • • all important output and factor flows are carried on iii . Radicalization un der the impact of capitalism . via reciprocity and redistribution . 5 Corollaries: The preference of agrarian societies for communal forms of economic organization . 6 7 In the absence of market s, resources are not allocated in accord with in his discussion of the Germanic form of pre-capitalist society - a their value in exchange; rather, the patterns of allocation are discussion which is far more app licable to the analysis of African determined by social relationships. As Dalton states, societies than is his more widely cited discussion of the Asiatic form - "property therefore means belonging to a tribe.... 11 9 Specifically, these primitive social econom ies are so organized Critical too is the imp ortance of face-to-face communities, that the allocation of labour and land, work organization within and, in particular, the village. Along with kin-based organizations, productive processes, and the disposition of goods and services - villages are viewed as the central social institution of agrarian in short, production and distribution - are expressions of societies. The importance of the village is perhap s best suggested by underlying kinship obligation, tribal affiliation, and religious Scott : and moral duty. There is no separate economic system to be 6 analyzed independent ly of social organization. In almost every case [in Sout heast Asia] the village has constituted something more than merely a physical aggregation of Institut ional Characteristics : Nowhere is the determining households.