Inspired by Antonio Gramsci's writings on the history of subaltern classes, the authors in Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial sought to contest the elite histories of Indian nationalists by adopting the paradigm of 'history from below'. Later on, the project shifted from its social history origins by drawing upon an eclectic group of thinkers that included Edward Said, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida. This book provides a comprehensive balance shee...

The essays in this collection examine agrarian transformation in Latin America and the role in this of peasants, with particular reference to Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Brazil and Central America. Among the issues covered are the impact of globalization and neo-liberal economic policies.

The essays in this collection focus on the reasons for and background to the emergence during the 1980s of the new farmers' movements in India. In addition to a more general consideration of the economic, political and theoretical dimensions of this development, there are case studies which cover the farmer's movements in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Karnataka.

This collection celebrates T.J. Byres' seminal contributions to the political economy of the agrarian question. Uniting the various themes is the demonstration of the continuing relevance of a critical, historical and comparative materialist analysis of agrarian question.

Many works about agragarian change in the Third World assumes that unfree relations are to be eliminated in the course of capitalist development. This text argues that the incidence of bonded labour is greater than supposed, and that in certain situations rural employers prefer an unfree workforce.

Tracing the way in which the agrarian myth has emerged and re-emerged over the past century in ideology shared by populism, postmodernism and the political right, the argument in this book is that at the centre of this discourse about the cultural identity of 'otherness'/ 'difference' lies the concept of and innate 'peasant-ness'. In a variety of contextually-specific discursive forms, the 'old' populism of the 1890s and the nationalism and fascism in Europe, America and Asia during the 19...

In 2007, for the first time in human history, a majority of the world’s population lived in cities. However, on a global scale, poverty overwhelmingly retains a rural face. This book assembles an unparalleled group of internationally-eminent scholars in the field of rural development and social change in order to explore historical and contemporary processes of agrarian change and transformation and their consequent impact upon the livelihoods, poverty and well-being of those who live in t...

Twenty years ago India was still generally thought of as an archetypal developing country, home to the largest number of poor people of any country in the world, and beset by problems of low economic growth, casteism and violent religious conflict. Now India is being feted as an economic power-house which might well become the second largest economy in the world before the middle of this century. Its democratic traditions, moreover, remain broadly intact.How and why has this histor...

Rural movements have recently emerged to become some of the most important social forces in opposition to neoliberalism. From Brazil and Mexico to Zimbabwe and the Philippines, rural movements of diverse political character, but all sharing the same social basis of dispossessed peasants and unemployed workers, have used land occupations and other tactics to confront the neoliberal state. This volume brings together for the first time across three continents - Africa, Latin America and Asia...

Raj Chandavarkar was one of the finest Indian historians of the twentieth century. He died sadly young in 2006, leaving behind a very substantial collection of unpublished lectures, papers and articles. These have now been assembled and edited by Jennifer Davis, Gordon Johnson and David Washbrook, and their appearance will be widely welcomed by large numbers of scholars of Indian history, politics and society. The essays centre around three major themes: the city of Bombay, Indian politics...

State Formation and Radical Democracy in India analyzes one of the most important cases of developmental change in the twentieth century, namely, Kerala in southern India and begs the question of whether insurgency among the marginalized poor can use formal representative democracy to create better life chances. Going back to pre-independence, colonial India, Manali Desai takes a long historical view of Kerala and compares it with the state of West Bengal, which like Kerala has be...

This book evaluates the relevance of classical debates on agrarian transition and extends the horizon of contemporary debates in the Indian context, linking national trends with regional experiences. It identifies new dynamics in agrarian political economy and presents a comprehensive account of diverse aspects of capitalist transition both at theoretical and empirical levels. The essays discuss several neglected domains in agricultural economics such as discursive dimensions of agrarian r...