Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T18:04:12.167Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Embourgeoisement of the Kerala Farmer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Barrie M. Morrison
Barrie M. Morrison
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A new class is emerging in rural Kerala. Though it was christened a bourgeoisie by E. M. S. Namboodiripad, the chief minister of Kerala state during the two phases of land reform (1957–59 and 1967–69), it is not an extension of the modern industrial bourgeoisie into a rural society. Rather it is a distinctly new social formation emerging from among the farmers. The opportunities for farmers to adopt bourgeois aspirations have been created by the particular form of Keralaʼns capitalism interacting with recent changes in localized agrarian society.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , February 1997 , pp. 61 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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 Namboodiripad, E. M. S., ‘On “Intermediate Regimes”’, Economic and Political Weekly, 1 12 1973, pp. 2133–40.Google Scholar

2 To the best of my knowledge, the only parallel that is well discussed in the literature is the rice farmers of Japan. See, for example, Dore, Ronald P., Shinohata: A Portrait of a Japanese Village (New York: Pantheon, 1978),Google Scholar and Moore, Richard H., Japanese Agriculture: Patterns of Rural Development(Boulder: Westview Press, 1990).Google Scholar

3 Herring, Ronald J., Land to the Tiller: The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in South Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 168ff.Google Scholar

4 Government of Kerala, Land Reforms Survey in Kerala 1966–1967, Report, 1968, Chapter VII, Agricultural Classes.Google Scholar

5 Kannan, K. P., Of Rural Proletarian Struggles: Mobilization and Organization of Rural Workers in South-West India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

6 See introduction in Anderson, Robert S., Levy, Edwin and Morrison, Barrie M., Rice Science and Development Politics: IRRI's Strategies and Asian Diversity, 1950–1980 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).Google Scholar

7 Habermas, Jurgen, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. McCarthy, Thomas, vols 1 and 2 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984 and 1987)Google Scholar; Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, in In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Society, trans. Adamson, Matthew (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990);Google ScholarBehabib, Seyla and Cornell, Drucilla (eds), Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987);Google ScholarMacKinnon, Catherine A., Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989);Google ScholarGoodman, David and Redclift, Michel, From Peasant to Proletarian: Capitalist Development and Agrarian Transitions (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981);Google ScholarHarriss, John, Capitalism and Peasant Farming: Agrarian Structure and Ideology in Northern Tamil Nadu (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1982);Google ScholarMcNall, Scott G., Levine, Rhonda F. and Fantasia, Rick (eds), Bringing Class Back In (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991).Google Scholar

8 A good revisionist study is that of Strikwerda, Carl, ‘Three Cities, Three Socialisms: Class Relationships in Belgian Working-Class Communities, 1870–1914’, in McNall, et al. , Bringing Class Back In.Google Scholar

9 Thekkekara Panchayat, Basic Data Register, 09 1987.Google Scholar

10 Government of Kerala, Statistics for Planning, 1988 (Trivandrum: Department of Economics and Statistics, n.d.), Table 2.40(a).Google ScholarPubMed

11 Vembayam Panchayat, 1981–1982 Survey.Google Scholar

12 Government of Kerala, Survey on Housing and Employment 1980 (Trivandrum: Director of Economics and Statistics, n.d.), Table 12.Google ScholarPubMed

13 Statistics for Planning, 1988, Table 6.12.Google Scholar

14 Statistics for Planning, 1988, Tables 8.3 and 8.13.Google Scholar

15 Statistics for Planning, 1988, Table 6.12.Google Scholar