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Article
Publication date: 7 April 2022

Alistair Mutch

It has been argued that scholars in management and organization studies (MOS) need to take the peasantry into account in their work. This study aims to address the complexity…

Abstract

Purpose

It has been argued that scholars in management and organization studies (MOS) need to take the peasantry into account in their work. This study aims to address the complexity revealed by these arguments, suggesting that one needs clearer definitions and an appreciation of the complexities of historical development if one is to gain appreciation of the impaction of agriculture more generally on MOS.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses historical material to develop a conceptual argument that challenges the homogenous nature of the peasantry. It uses a detailed contrast between two peasant groups in 19th and early 20th century Scotland to suggest divergent patterns of development.

Findings

Paying closer attention to definitions and historical development indicates that, as well as the survival of so-called archaic practices alongside highly developed agriculture, the main impact of agriculture on MOS might be the legitimacy it accords, as a cultural resource, to particular forms of organizing. While the issues outlined by previous authors are significant, they need to be discussed with more care to avoid a scattergun approach to analysis.

Originality/value

This study points to the neglect of agriculture more broadly and not just the peasantry, in MOS. It suggests the need to look at not only the economic impact but also the cultural resonance of agriculture in ideas about legitimate forms of organization. It also demonstrates the value and necessity of paying close attention to history in the analyses.

Details

International Journal of Organizational Analysis, vol. 31 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1934-8835

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 11 December 2023

Ayyaz Mallick

This chapter explores the writings of Pakistani sociologist Hamza Alavi, especially on the post-colonial state, ethnicity, peasantry and kinship relations. In contradistinction to…

Abstract

This chapter explores the writings of Pakistani sociologist Hamza Alavi, especially on the post-colonial state, ethnicity, peasantry and kinship relations. In contradistinction to most (partial) uptakes of Alavi, I evaluate his work as a whole in order to shed light on its continuities and discontinuities. I demonstrate both the strengths and pitfalls of Alavi's theorisation of the post-colonial state, mode of production and ethnicity by placing him in context of wider Marxist debates at the time. I then suggest that Alavi's other work (e.g. on the peasantry and kinship relations) may serve to complement the weaknesses of the former. Thus, by reading Alavi contra Alavi, I advocate for an ‘integral’ perspective on the relations between civil and political society, arguing for a conjunctural awareness of mediations between the same, and their imbrications with differentiated relations of class, ethnicity and kinship.

Details

Marxist Thought in South Asia
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83797-183-1

Keywords

Abstract

Details

A Socio-Legal History of the Laws of War
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-858-1

Article
Publication date: 20 December 2021

Miguel Pina e Cunha, Stewart Clegg, Arménio Rego and Marco Berti

Burrell (2020) challenged management and organization studies (MOS) scholars to pay attention to a topic they have mostly ignored: the peasantry, those 2 billion people that work…

Abstract

Purpose

Burrell (2020) challenged management and organization studies (MOS) scholars to pay attention to a topic they have mostly ignored: the peasantry, those 2 billion people that work in the rural primary sector. This paper aims to address the topic to expand Burrell’s challenge by indicating that the peasantry offers a unique context to study a paradoxical condition: the coexistence of persistent poverty and vanguardist innovation.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors advance conceptual arguments that complement the reasons why researchers should pay more attention to the peasantry. They argue that continuation of past research into field laborers, transitioning from feudalism to industrial capitalism, still has currency, not just because of the good reasons listed by Burrell (enduring relevance of the phenomenon in developing countries; sustainability concerns; acknowledgment of common heritage) but also because some seemingly archaic practices are evident in the economically developed countries where most management and organizations scholars live.

Findings

The authors show that in advanced economies, the peasantry has not disappeared, and it is manifested in contradictory forms, as positive force contributing to sustainable productivity (in the case of digitized agriculture) and as a negative legacy of social inequality and exploitation (as a form of modern slavery).

Originality/value

The authors discuss contrasting themes confronting management of the peasantry, namely, modern slavery and digital farming, and propose that a paradox view may help overcome unnecessary dualisms, which may promote social exclusion rather than integrated development.

Details

International Journal of Organizational Analysis, vol. 31 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1934-8835

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 11 December 2023

Kristin Plys

This essay examines how two Marxist anti-colonial intellectuals from Portuguese India and French India – Aquino de Bragança and V Subbiah – differentially theorized movements for…

Abstract

This essay examines how two Marxist anti-colonial intellectuals from Portuguese India and French India – Aquino de Bragança and V Subbiah – differentially theorized movements for independence from colonial rule. Through the analysis of primary source documents in French, Portuguese, Italian and English, I compare V Subbiah's Dalit, anti-fascist anti-colonial Marxism to Aquino de Bragança's internationalist anti-colonial Marxism. Both theorists' approaches have similarities in (1) theorizing the relationship between fascism and colonialism given that the Portuguese Empire was administered by Salazar's Estado Novo and the French Empire was under Vichy rule, (2) rethinking Marxism to better fit the Global South context and (3) intellectual and political connections to Algeria were critically important for theory and praxis. Despite the distinct geographic and social spaces in which they lived and worked, both produced remarkably similar theories of anti-imperialism.

Book part
Publication date: 11 December 2023

Kristin Plys, Priyansh and Kanishka Goonewardena

In this introduction to the special issue, ‘Marxist Thought in South Asia’, we detail the long history of Marxist politics and theorizing in South Asia and highlight the unique…

Abstract

In this introduction to the special issue, ‘Marxist Thought in South Asia’, we detail the long history of Marxist politics and theorizing in South Asia and highlight the unique contributions and perspectives of South Asian Marxists to global Marxism. Three contributions we find particularly significant are (1) South Asian Marxists' approach to thinking about questions of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, (2) the treatment of agrarian and feudal continuities in Marxist theories from South Asia and (3) unique South Asian contributions to theorizing caste from a Marxist perspective.

Details

Marxist Thought in South Asia
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83797-183-1

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Problems in Paradise?
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-509-5

Article
Publication date: 6 February 2024

Yitian Xiao, Jiawu Dai and J. Alexander Nuetah

The purpose of this paper is to test the overshooting effects of monetary expansion on prices of agricultural products at farm production, processing and circulation stages in…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to test the overshooting effects of monetary expansion on prices of agricultural products at farm production, processing and circulation stages in China, and to investigate the heterogeneity of the overshooting mechanisms in these three links.

Design/methodology/approach

Empirical results are obtained through the vector error correction model and the overshooting framework proposed by Saghaian et al. (2002b). Specifically, we first apply the Dickey–Fuller generalized least squares (DF-GLS) method to test the stationarity of the key variables, and then use the Johansen’s (1991) method to conduct the cointegration test. Finally, the vector error correction model is employed to examine the overshooting hypotheses in the three stages of China’s agricultural sector.

Findings

Empirical results indicate that overshooting of prices relative to monetary expansion in China’s agricultural sector is a common phenomenon, but with significant heterogeneity. Firstly, at the stage of agricultural production, the overshooting degree and restoration rate of material price are greater than those of agricultural products price. Secondly, at the processing stage of agricultural products, both the purchase price of agricultural products and industrial producer price have an overshooting effect, but the overshooting effect of the former is more significant than the latter. Thirdly, at the circulation stage of agricultural products, the overshooting coefficient of the wholesale price index of agricultural products is the most significant, while that of the retail and purchase price of agricultural products is not significant.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to proposing a comprehensive framework on testing the overshooting effects for three main stages of agricultural sector in China and empirically investigating the heterogeneity of the overshooting mechanisms in different stages with time series methods.

Details

China Agricultural Economic Review, vol. 16 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1756-137X

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 11 December 2023

Muhammad Azeem

Pakistan had never been a place of serious and nuanced debate and contestation of politics of postcolonial critique, that is, the continuity of economic, political, and cultural…

Abstract

Pakistan had never been a place of serious and nuanced debate and contestation of politics of postcolonial critique, that is, the continuity of economic, political, and cultural dependency of newly independent countries (NICs) on ex-colonizers as pointed out by neocolonialism, dependency theory, and postcolonial theory, respectively. Instead, Pakistan is presented by extant liberal academic literature as a “failed nation” and a state dominated by the military and plagued by religious extremism. As opposed to this, through the literary and activists writings of Aziz-ul-Haq, this chapter will try to illustrate how cultural contestation of the nation-building project postindependence from British rule was a lot more complex and interesting in Pakistan. This was so because the nation-building project of Pakistan was, on the one hand, an amalgamation of Indo-Persian, Arab, Indian, and Western colonial and civilizational influences and, on the other hand, entailed suppression of resilient local and national cultures of its constituent nationalities developed over centuries. This was later expressed in ethno-nationalist politics. However, when it came to the politics of the marginalized in the late 1960s, there were important political, theoretical, and literary insights which caused a change in the direction of political practice in Pakistan, which paralleled the politics expressed by writers like Fanon and early Subaltern Studies influenced by the Naxal Movement in India. The contestation and confusion arising from this dialectic also entered Pakistan's literary and cultural sphere. This chapter not only tries to give a different postcolonial critique of the failure of nation-building project in Pakistan but, though at a preliminary level, is an attempt to separate the original postcolonial theory in its radical tradition from contemporary postmodern/poststructuralist postcolonial theory marked with pessimism and resignation.

Book part
Publication date: 11 December 2023

Umaima Miraj

In this chapter, I uncover the jail diaries of a revolutionary woman of the 20th century Pakistan, Akhtar Baloch. Although feminism in Pakistan has oscillated between liberal and…

Abstract

In this chapter, I uncover the jail diaries of a revolutionary woman of the 20th century Pakistan, Akhtar Baloch. Although feminism in Pakistan has oscillated between liberal and postcolonial camps, through reading Akhtar's diaries, compiled as Prison Narratives (2017), I center Akhtar's own struggles for Sindh, along with the resistance of the women she met in the prison convicted for the murders of their husbands, to better theorize Marxist Feminism in Pakistan that overturns the structures that commodify women through love and revolution. My article will show the commodification of women's bodies; the “sale” of women through marriage as the goal of this commodification; the lovelessness and alienation women experience in commodified marriages; the unexpected fall in love with someone whom it is subversive for the commodified wife to love; the subversion of this unexpected event that leads to the attempted resolution of this tension through murder; the separation of the lovers through the incarceration of the woman by the capitalist-patriarchal state; and finally, the unexpected outcome (albeit the most common one) that the male lover abandons his female lover once she's jailed, but the defiantly brave female lover finds platonic love in jail through close female friendships with other women who are similarly brave in both love and in revolution. Through this exposition, I show that Akhtar's diaries provide a way for us to build on Marxist Feminist theory through a theory of love and revolution from a Sindhi feminist perspective.

Details

Marxist Thought in South Asia
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83797-183-1

Keywords

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