Socio-Economic Factors Affecting Marriage Distance in Two Sikh Villages of Punjab

The spatial aspects of marriage in two Sikh villages in the Indian state of Punjab are investigated with the findings compared to earlier sudies in other parts of India. One village had experienced the Green Revolution, hut the second had not. A radius of roughly 25 miles demarcates the limit of over 80% of marriage interaction in both villages, and a “crater effect” was observed in the distance decay of marriages. An expansion of the marriage field had taken place in the village influenced by Green Revolution changes, whereas no similar change occurred in the village practicing traditional agriculture. Both the extent of the marriage field and the variations in the intensity of marriage links within the field were affected by socio-economic factors including level of education, caste and extent of land ownership.     

Capitalist Expansion and the Decline of Common Property Ecosystems in China,Vietnam and India

This article identifies some of the multiple processes of capitalist development through which access to common property resources and their utility for communities are undermined. Three sites in upland Asia demonstrate how patterns of exclusion are mediated by the unique and selective trajectories through which capital expands, resulting in a decline of common property ecosystems. The process is mediated by economic stress, ecological degradation and political processes such as state‐sanctioned enclosure. The first case study from Shaoguan, South China, indicates how rapid capitalist industrialization has depleted the aquatic resource base, undermining the livelihoods of fishing households yet to be absorbed into the urban working class. At the second site, in Phu Yen, Vietnam, capitalist development is limited. However, indirect articulations between capitalism on the lowlands and the peasant economy of the uplands is driving the commercialization of agriculture and fishing and undermining the utility of communal river and lake ecosystems. In the third site, Buxa in West Bengal, India, there is only selective capitalist development, but patterns of resource extraction established during the colonial period and contemporary neoliberal ‘conservation’ agendas have directly excluded communities from forest resources. Restrictions on access oblige them to contribute subsidized labour to local enterprises. The article thus shows how communities which are differentially integrated into the global economy are excluded from natural resources through complex means.     

‘The Claims of Asia and the Far East’: India and the FAO in the Age of Ambivalent Internationalism

If any nation were poised to actualize the developmental promises that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) extended to the international community, it was India. India's independence came in the wake of devastating famine in Bengal and the fears of its recurrence, and the nationalists who had midwifed India's freedom staked their legitimacy to the promise of food for all. Yet from independence, the FAO played only a marginal role in India's agricultural development, its projects reflecting a winnowing scale of ambition. From early investigations into the improved cultivation of basic food grains, the FAO's projects grew increasingly modest by the time of the Green Revolution, revolving around modest improvements to capitalist agriculture, from wool shearing to timber and fishery development. Instead, India drew more substantively upon resources made available by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, the United States Technical Cooperation Mission and occasional Soviet largesse. Meanwhile, the Indian most associated with the FAO, B.R. Sen (Director-General, 1956–1967), struggled to align the Organization's capacities with India's scarcity crises, even as his own understanding of famine drew upon his experience as India's Director of Food during the Bengal Famine.     

The moral ecology of colonial infrastructure and the vicissitudes of land rights in rural Pakistan

For the last 10 years, the Pakistan army has not been able to collect rent from tenant farmers on its military farms in central Punjab. In this article, I analyse the historical and cultural significance of this contested land by using insights from recent literature on the politics of infrastructure to examine the contingency of rule in Pakistan, a postcolonial state, which is dominated by its army. I illustrate these dynamics by exploring the challenge brought up by a peasant movement to tacit cultural understandings about land and political subjectivity in central Punjab, the folkloric heartland of Pakistani nationalism. I argue that place-based movements, like the Punjab Tenants Association, can radically challenge our sense of place by giving a relational account of land as both a material substance and a crucial link in the set of relations that define moral, economic and political life. This approach broadens the emerging study of infrastructures by engaging insights from science/technology studies and subaltern studies to examine how cultural legacies of colonial infrastructure projects shape state–society relations in Pakistan.     

Transnational geographies: Indian immigration to Canada

Immigration from the Asia and Pacific area now accounts for over 50 percent of all Canadian immigration. Therefore, any consideration of Canada's linkages with Asia must address this issue. While much work has debated the impact of immigration in Canada's urban centres, less has been directed to understanding the transnational nature of such population movements, or their specific transnational geographies. In this paper, I consider the geography of immigration from India to Canada. Immigration from India has traditionally been tightly regionalised, with the majority of immigrants originating from the Doaba area of Punjab. Settlement in Canada is also highly concentrated at the provincial, metropolitan and suburban scales. Drawing upon a range of qualitative and quantitative data collected in both India and Canada, I illustrate the geography of immigration from India and highlight some of the processes that contribute to creating transnational networks between these sites .     

Materialist State Theory and the Transnationalization of the Capitalist State

Abstract: In contrast to assertions that the capitalist state is either losing control or that it has returned, this article argues that during the last two decades the state itself has been reshaped. To understand the processes that the capitalist state is exposed to it is necessary to conceive of it as a series of form‐specific practices. Which practices form “the state” is not a result of pre‐given institutions but of conflicts and struggles. The capitalist state, separated as it is from the relations of production, must not be made synonymous with the national state. Only as a result of certain relations of force does bourgeois rule acquire the form of the national state. These relations between classes are currently being dissolved by the ruling classes. The capitalist state is being reorganized and is constructing new elements of a transnational network state, whilst the state itself is governed through new techniques—that is, those of governance.     

印度绿色革命国外研究:路径、观点和问题

在国际学术界,印度的绿色革命成了多门社会科学研究的对象。国际学术界对印度绿色革命的研究通常采取反思的方式,即在与经济、社会和政治发展的联系当中去考察印度的绿色革命问题。本文详细介绍了他们的研究路径、问题和观点,指出农业转型研究构成了国外学术界相关研究中的一个重要面向。但是,他们没有把农业转型当作农业现代化的方式来看待。笔者认为,这是他们在考察印度农业转型时存在的根本问题,而从这样一种新的观点出发去考察印度的农业转型还是一件尚待完成的工作。     

Poppies for medicine in Afghanistan: lessons from India and Turkey

This study examines India and Turkey as case studies relevant to the Senlis Council’s ‘poppies for medicine’ proposal. The proposal is that Afghan farmers are licensed to produce opium for medical and scientific purposes. Here it is posited that the Senlis proposal neglects at least three key lessons from the Turkish and Indian experiences. First, not enough weight has been given to diversion from licit markets, as experienced in India. Second, both India and Turkey had significantly more efficient state institutions with authority over the licensed growing areas. Third, the proposal appears to overlook the fact that Turkey’s successful transition was largely due to the use of the poppy straw method of opium production. It is concluded that, while innovative and creative policy proposals such as that of the Senlis proposal are required if Afghanistan is to move beyond its present problems, ‘poppies for medicine’ does not withstand evidence-based scrutiny.     

中印建交与新中国外交抉择

新中国成立后,印度是第一个同中国进行建交谈判的国家,也是资本主义国家中第一个同我国建交的国家。同印度建交是新中国外交的一次重要实践,它不仅确立了中国同其他国家先谈判后建交的外交原则,还赋予了"一边倒"更丰富的内涵,开创了中国周边外交的新局面。     

WINNING THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF FARMERS: INSTITUTIONALIZED INNOVATION DIFFUSION IN SRI LANKA

Classical diffusion research, both in geography and sociology, received considerable criticism in the 1970s and 1980s, but after that the diffusion debate has faded away. At the same time, one of the earliest contributors to diffusion research, Gabriel Tarde, is now attracting the attention of both geographers and sociologists. Drawing on earlier experiences with agricultural extension and the Green Revolution, this Tarde‐inspired article aims to revitalize the diffusion debate through an ethnographic case study of extension practices in Hambantota District, Sri Lanka. The study is based on field material collected between 2009 and 2011, which includes semi‐structured interviews with representatives from various spread agencies – government agricultural instructors, NGOs, social enterprises, and the inorganic industry – as well as with farmers and other key informants. Following the recent work of Nigel Thrift, it is argued that such an approach to the study of innovation diffusion can be a way of uncovering “the political economy of propensity”. The article suggests that a return to Tarde should not lead researchers back into naïve diffusionism, or towards a position that blames traditionalist farmers for non‐diffusion. Non‐human actors can also exhibit resistance and sociality: innovations travel through a landscape which is both human and non‐human, and the spread of organic farming practices is configured by both bonds of trust among farmers and bonds of chemicals in the soil. Furthermore, it contends that future research may interrogate the ways in which the very medium of diffusion is being reconfigured, following actors' institutionalization of innovation diffusion methods.     

The politics of self-help: The Rockefeller Foundation,philanthropy and the ‘long’ Green Revolution

While scholars of contemporary philanthropy have observed a concerted interest in the promotion of ‘self-help,’ little has been said about the political history of this investment and its significance in determining both domestic and international development priorities. We locate this modern conceptualisation of self-help in early twentieth-century philanthropic practice that sought to ‘gift’ to individuals and communities the precious habit of self-reliance and social autonomy. The Rockefeller Foundation promoted rural development projects that deliberately sought to ‘emancipate’ the tradition-bound peasant, transforming him or her into a productive, enterprising subject. We begin by documenting their early agricultural extension work, which attempted to spark agrarian change in the US South through the inculcation of modern habits and aspirations among farmers and their families. These agrarian schemes illustrate the newfound faith that ‘rural up-lift’ could only be sustained if farming communities were trained to ‘help themselves’ by investing physically and psychologically in the process of modernisation. We then locate subsequent attempts to incentivise and accelerate international agricultural development within the broader geopolitical imperatives of the Green Revolution and the Cold War. While US technical assistance undoubtedly sought to prevent political upheaval in the Third World, we argue that Rockefeller-led modernisation projects, based on insights gleaned from behavioural economics, championed a model of human capital – and the idea of ‘revolution within’ – in order to contain the threat of ‘revolution without’. Approaching agricultural development through this problematisation of the farmer reveals the ‘long history’ of the Green Revolution – unfolding from the domestic to the international and from the late nineteenth century to the present – as well as the continuing role of philanthropy in forging a new global order.     

Elusive Empowerment: Price Information and Disintermediation in Soybean Markets in Malwa,India

Price information provision and disintermediation have often been considered means to empower farmers, since lack of information and multiple intermediaries are seen as major obstacles preventing farmers from obtaining a higher price for their produce. Using the example of soybean in Malwa, central India, which is a cash crop that links farmers to global consumers, this article argues that the very expectation of disintermediation in the soybean supply chain is misleading. India's position in these global networks puts farmers and intermediaries in Malwa in the position of price receivers: they are unable to influence the global price of soybean or manipulate its local price in any way. In this context, providing price information has negligible impact on the final price obtained by farmers. The potential for empowerment has to be understood more broadly, by mapping out the ways in which power is exercised by various actors in the marketplace — one of which is the determination of the quality of a farmer's crop. This article maps such possibilities by examining how norms regarding quality in soybean are created and enforced, and how they are influenced by broader logics that go beyond the soybean marketplace itself.     

“Manure Manufactories”: Materializing the Metabolic Rift in Nineteenth-Century Deerfield,Massachusetts

The modern world has seen a variety of agricultural crises deriving from a problem known as the “metabolic rift,” in which capitalist agriculture depletes soil nutrients through intensive monocropping and fertilizing. This problem is fundamentally historical and material, and visible in the archaeological record. A manuring platform found in Deerfield, Massachusetts, offers a material vantage point through which to explore the contradictions of early capitalist agriculture. Increasing market penetration into the New England backcountry in the early nineteenth century spurred farmers to increase productivity, at the cost of sustainability. Wealthier farmers were able to capitalize on this transition, while poorer farmers were forced into wage labor or out-migration.     

Welfare Consequences of Green Revolution Technology: Changes in Bangladeshi Food Production and Diet

The Poirier kinked exponential method as used by Boyce (1986) is adopted to examine changes in the Bangladeshi crop sector in the 1947–84 period using aggregate time series data. This is claimed to be a superior approach to earlier ones and it is the first time that non-cereal food crops have been given extensive consideration. Growth rates in output of major crops as well as commodity groups are estimated for various sub-periods with special emphasis on the changes in the period following the Green Revolution. The paper identifies a comparative ‘crowding out’ of non-cereal crop production as well as other food sources, e.g. fisheries, following the Green Revolution. On the whole, increased cereal production has been absorbed by rising population with per capita availability remaining roughly constant. The availability per capita of pulses, fruits and spices has fallen markedly in the post-Green Revolution period and on average per capita availability of vegetables has fallen. Furthermore, per capita protein content (both vegetable and animal) of the Bangladeshi diet has declined. The average Bangladeshi diet now appears to be less varied and balanced and a priori less nutritious with adverse welfare implications. Expansion of rice and wheat production has been at the expense of other sources of food such as pulses, fruit, vegetables and fish.     

The Brazilian Green Revolution

This article analyzes the critical geopolitics of knowledge production in Brazil during the 20th century. It offers a critical appraisal of recent calls to decolonize political geography by locating the role played by actors and institutions in the Global South within the broader narrative of the Green Revolution. Historical accounts of the Green Revolution have only recently started to incorporate perspectives of and attribute agency to actors in the Global South. However, Brazil has largely been left out of the geographical scope of the Green Revolution. This article focuses on U.S.-Brazilian geopolitical relations behind an effort to reproduce the U.S. model of higher education, rural extension and agricultural research in Brazil. I argue that the confluence of Brazil's geopolitical importance with opportunities for foreign investment in its agricultural sector brought together U.S. and Brazilian experts and expertise to modernize Brazilian agriculture. The case of transnational soybean research illustrates the importance of this relationship in transforming Brazil's agricultural sector and limiting alternatives. This article offers an account of how the geopolitics of knowledge production shape the long-term institutional legacies of national research institutions.     

Models of urban change: Sydney 1820–1870

Established models of urban change do not adequately allow for the complex interactions between the forces and relations of production and the effects of changes in these factors on urban settlements. A proposed, extended model includes a transition stage which can best be described as the mercantile or early capitalist city which hadnot yet adopted the modern technology developed in the Industrial Revolution. Sydney and its growth and development between 1820 and 1870, a crucial period, is viewed against this suggested framework. During this period, Sydney was clearly going through such a transitional phase.     

资本主义还是后封建主义——论近代英国租佃农场制的性质

把英国19世纪的租地农场视为资本主义农场,认为租地农场主和工厂主一样是资本家,进而认为19世纪英国的农业是典型的资本主义农业,这一观点是马克思在《资本论》中提出的。它成为迄今我国史学界对英国农业史的一个基本认识。这种认识有违学界对经济制度的分析。从农业史来看,租佃农场不仅在英国近代存在过,在英国封建社会也长期存在。租佃制是各国封建社会常见的农业经济组织形式。英国19世纪的大土地经营不是直接雇佣劳动者耕作,而是分级出租。相当一部分租地农场面积不大,属于家庭农场,不使用或只是部分使用雇佣劳动力生产。一些地区庄园制仍然残存,通过租佃制持有土地的公簿持有农还受到封建领有制残余的束缚。因此,19世纪英国的租佃农场制夹杂着封建残余。19世纪英国农业的性质是资本主义与后封建主义的混合。     

Land as a Transactional Asset: Moral Economy and Market Logic in Contested Land Acquisition in India

The state seizure of land from farmers for development projects has triggered numerous protests in India. How far can these protests be characterized as a Polanyian countermovement to reclaim rights on land, resisting the encroachment of neoliberal market forces on society? Based on field research conducted in 2013–17 in two villages in prosperous western Uttar Pradesh that were host to a series of dramatic and violent protests in 2011, this article argues that rather than reclaiming land from commodification, the farmers were using the land as a market instrument, a transactional asset, in negotiating for a better deal within a dominant market-driven template. The author suggests that valuing land as a transactional asset to be deployed in the market symbolizes a new moral economy in this region, prompted by increasing risk in farming, improved economic standing and aspirations, and a lack of faith in the neoliberalizing state and political institutions.     

Class,Power, and Patronage: Landowners and Politics in Punjab

In the century following their conquest of the province, the British in Punjab erected an administrative apparatus that, like those of precolonial regimes, relied heavily upon the support of the province's landed class. The relationship between the landed class and the colonial state was one of mutual benefit, with the latter using the former to ensure the maintenance of order and collection of revenue in exchange for state patronage. In this paper, it is argued that this administrative framework gave rise to a path-dependent process of institutional development in Punjab, allowing for the different fractions of the province's landowning class to increasingly entrench themselves within the political order in the postcolonial epoch. This paper outlines the mechanisms underlying this process of institutional development, focusing, in particular, on the strategies adopted by the landowning class to reproduce its power. This paper also considers the potentialities for institutional change in Punjab, allowing for the creation of a more democratic and participatory politics in the province.     

China and India: The Institutional Roots of Differential Performance

At the start of the so‐called development race sixty years ago, China, showcasing revolutionary socialism, and India, boasting parliamentary democracy, had close similarities in economic structures and levels of development, but striking differences in terms of cultural cohesion, institutional flexibility and political orientation. The outcome of the race is unambiguous: the question is not who won, but why and how? It is argued here that a wide margin had already opened up in China's favour by the time of the systemic or policy‐regime switch‐points, 1978 in China, and shortly thereafter in India. The author seeks explanations for this differential performance in the divergent institutional configurations of the two societies and economies, especially in the rural sector in the pre‐reform period, and highlights the contrast between the power of the Chinese mass mobilization mode of transformation and the persistent institutional rigidities and obstacles in the Indian case. Post‐reforms, processes of ‘pervergence’— an emerging congruence in negative social features — appear to dominate over tendencies towards conventional convergence. The author reflects on the historical significance of the two development paths: did Nehruvian state‐led planned development and Maoist socialism serve essentially as pioneers of capitalism, leveraging the re‐launching of the two once‐powerful Asian giants back into the global capitalist game on dramatically revised terms of engagement?