Women's Struggle to Escape Rural Poverty in South Africa

Results of a purposive sample of the poorest are contrasted with the methods and conclusions of other research into 'income poverty'. The deprivation suffered by an important class of rural women in South Africa is documented. Escape routes from poverty are described that have a more realistic prospect of success than those promoted in the international and South African policy literature, including the literature on land reform. The distinguishing demographic characteristics of women who have taken the first steps on these routes are analysed, together with the political context of their relative success. Escaping the worst forms of deprivation depends on women's wages in rural labour markets, rather than their incomes from self-employment, but conventional microeconomic theory cannot explain the distribution of wages in these markets. The South African government has been unduly influenced by such conventional theories and the rhetoric of the development aid bureaucracy. It is failing to consider policies that are relevant to the poorest people.     

Experiments in farmers' collectives in Eastern India and Nepal: Process,benefits, and challenges

Do farmers' collectives, which pool land, labour, capital, and skills to create medium‐sized production units, offer a more viable model of farming for resource‐constrained smallholders than individual family farms? A participatory action research project in Eastern India and Nepal provides notable answers. Groups of marginal and tenant farmers, catalysed by the project, evolved into four different collective models with varying levels of cooperation, gender composition, and land ownership/tenancy status. Based on 3 years of action research, this paper examines how the models evolved and their differential outcomes. All groups have gained from cultivating contiguous plots in their efficiency of labour and machine use for land preparation and irrigation, and from economies in input purchase. Several collectives of tenant farmers have also enhanced their bargaining power vis‐a‐vis an entrenched landlord class and thus been able to negotiate lower rents and refuse long‐standing feudal obligations. However, the models differ in their extent of economic gain and their ability to handle gender inequalities and conflicts over labour sharing. The paper explores the historical, regional, and cultural factors that could explain such differences across the models. It thus offers unique insights into the processes, benefits, and challenges of farmers' collectives and provides pointers for replication and further research.     

家庭禀赋、人力资本与城乡女性就业流动研究——来自湖北省的城乡调查数据

本文通过在湖北省调查的4442个城乡女性劳动力样本,分析城市和农村女性劳动力就业流动性的差异,并构建计量经济模型进一步研究女性人力资本变量和家庭禀赋变量对她们是否外出、外出就业流动次数以及回流选择的影响。研究发现,家庭禀赋和人力资本对于城乡女性就业流动性的影响具有较大差异。家庭禀赋变量在农村女性劳动力是否外出就业的选择上发挥着重要作用,而人力资本对城市女性就业流动次数和回流选择的影响更为明显。总体来看,女性是否选择外出就业主要受家庭禀赋变量影响,而一旦女性选择外出就业后,人力资本变量将对其就业流动次数起主要作用。在当前城市劳动力市场中依然存有对女性劳动力的就业歧视,这种歧视削弱了女性的人力资本在就业市场上的竞争力。     

Hollow Lives: Women Left Behind in Rural China

This paper explores the situation of women left behind in villages when men out‐migrate for work and what it implies for gender relations in rural China. It is based on questionnaire survey data that covers 400 left‐behind women and extensive interviews in 10 rural communities. It reveals how the women take on multiple family responsibilities including mainly family care and agricultural production, and how they maintain their marital relationships in the context of a long separation. The discussion argues that even though the women's unpaid work becomes visible due to the absence of men in family life, there is a reaffirmation and reinforcement of gender traditions; women are more solidified in the unpaid and low‐paid field of work in this new era of rural social transition in China. Moreover, separated married life has made women more vulnerable. In the end, it points to the fact that rural women are experiencing a new and deeper form of exploitation of their labour. Thus they are among those paying a heavy price for the development in China.     

Gender,Generation and the Experiences of Farm Dwellers Resettled in the Ciskei Bantustan,South Africa,ca 1960–1976

This paper examines the experiences of farm dwellers resettled in rural townships in the Ciskei Bantustan during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on the oral testimonies of elderly residents of Sada and Ilinge townships, the paper shows how gendered and generational inequalities within households were crucial factors shaping individuals' experiences of resettlement from the farms. The paper engages with an older literature that regarded the abolition of labour tenancy and linked resettlement programmes as the final stage of farm tenants' proletarianization. It highlights the problems of this linear narrative, and argues that men and women experienced and understood this process in radically different ways. Male labour migration and the remnants of farm paternalism meant that while resettlement cemented the status of migrant men, for women and non‐migrant men this process was characterized by contradiction: on the one hand, escape from the spatial hegemonies of farm paternalism and, on the other, heightened economic exposure.     

基于分形理论的江苏沿海农村经济发展差异研究

随着江苏沿海地区发展规划上升为国家战略,新一轮沿海开发的号角已经奏响.农村现代化是沿海地区现代化的重要组成部分,如何实现江苏沿海农村经济的快速发展及区域内协调发展是提高江苏沿海经济水平的重要内容,直接关系到沿海地区发展的成败.论文在对沿海地区认识的基础上,首先选取11 个指标构建了沿海农村经济发展差异的评价体系,运用分...     

Women's Land Rights and Rural Social Movements in the Brazilian Agrarian Reform

This article examines the evolution of the demand for women's land rights in the Brazilian agrarian reform through the prism of the three main rural social movements: the landless movement, the rural unions and the autonomous rural women's movement. Most of the credit for raising the issue of women's land rights rests with women within the rural unions. That women's formal land rights were attained in the constitutional reform of 1988 was largely a by–product of the effort to end discrimination against women in all it dimensions. The achievement of formal equality in land rights, nonetheless, did not lead to increases in the share of female beneficiaries of the reform, which remained low in the mid–1990s. This was largely because securing women's land rights in practice was not a top priority of any of the rural social movements. Moreover, the main social movement determining the pace of the agrarian reform, the landless movement, considered class and gender issues to be incompatible. By the late 1990s, nonetheless, there was growing awareness that failure to recognize women's land rights was prejudicial to the development and consolidation of the agrarian reform settlements and thus the movement. The growing consensus among all the rural social movements of the importance of securing women's land rights, coupled with effective lobbying, encouraged the State in 2001 to adopt specific mechanisms for the inclusion of women in the agrarian reform.     

农村劳动力流转的效应分析

农业在耕地资源约束下,劳动生产率提高却造成了劳动力的大量富余。这些劳动力滞留于农村,不仅是一种资源浪费,不利于农业劳动生产率和农业劳动力报酬的提高,影响城乡经济系统的协调发展,而且会导致许多社会问题。通过分析农村劳动力向城市转移的积极和负面效应,指出农村劳动力向城市转移不仅是生产要素支配者追求报酬收益最大化的必然要求,同时也是实现城乡共同利益的需要。     

后新冠疫情下我国农业农村数字经济发展问题、趋势与对策

目的 随着互联网与大数据的发展,我国数字经济融合技术、经济和产业于一体,有力助推供给侧结构性改革,同时也为防控疫情、保障经济社会各方面的有效运转提供有力支撑,但在非网民规模巨大的农村地区,数字经济发展相对滞后。在此次新冠疫情冲击之后,数字经济在促进农村劳动者就业、推动农业农村产业转型升级等方面将发挥重要作用。为了进一步优化农业生产结构和农村区域布局,文章主要围绕我国农业农村如何更好地应对疫情对农产品供应链体系带来的挑战,以及疫情后农业农村数字经济的加快发展等一系列问题展开探讨。方法 运用文献研究法,通过调查与农村农业数字经济相关的文献和数据获得研究资料,从而全面地、正确地了解新冠疫情对农业农村的影响。结果 该文在分析农业农村数字经济发展机遇及存在问题的基础上,探讨疫情后农业农村数字经济的发展趋势：（1）农业农村数字经济由增量向增质转变;（2）农业农村数字经济由供给端向需求端转变;（3）农业农村数字经济由单一向多元发展转变;（4）农业农村数字经济由自由分散经营向规范化与规模化转变。结论 在此基础上,提出促进我国农业农村数字经济平稳快速发展的主要建议：（1）保证农业农村数字经济基础设施高水平供给;（2）重视物流配送、商流组织等“软”性要素;（3）大力推进数字技术与农业农村的深度融合;（4）加强农业农村数字经济领域的人才培养;（5）加强农业农村数字经济法律法规建设。农业农村可以通过数字化技术克服空间障碍,为更多的消费者提供服务,使数字经济成为农村农业升级的强大动力。     

Short-term employment transitions of the Canadian labour force: rural-urban differences in underemployment

Using data from the Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) for the period 1993–1996, we examine patterns and determinants of labour‐force transitions of adequately employed and underemployed workers in an attempt to explore whether employment dynamics significantly differ between rural and urban workers so as to disadvantage rural economic performance. The results indicate that rural adequately employed workers are significantly more likely to enter underemployment but once they are underemployed, they also have a higher probability of re‐entering adequate employment. Further, we also found weak evidence that the education level of workers has a lower impact on the probability of moving out of underemployment in rural than in urban areas. In addition, rural women are significantly less likely than their male counterparts and urban workers to enter adequate employment, although the presence of young children does not seem to especially constrain the employment of rural women. The results suggest that labour‐force transition in and out of adequate employment, and particularly underemployment, significantly differ between rural and urban workers and should be taken into account when evaluating employment hardship in rural Canada.     

全球视角下的乡村振兴思考

放眼全球,在逆全球化、气候变化、粮食不安全和营养不良等挑战下,城市和乡村都难以独善其身,而乡村及其人口在各国发展政策中普遍且长期被忽视、发展相对滞后,在冲击中将更加脆弱。乡村振兴将日益成为全球性的重要议题。在不同的发展阶段,一些国家将单一的农业发展政策转变为促进乡村发展的综合性方案,对冲农业份额急剧下降、乡村衰退和城乡不平等,并借此提振经济。本文分析了全球乡村发展的关键挑战,总结和反思了代表性国家的乡村发展举措,提出了现阶段进行乡村振兴、将其转化为经济可持续增长的动力,需要强调全球视角并采取将乡村经济构建为城市经济平等伙伴的"城乡融合经济"(Rurbanomics)发展模式,进而明确了对中国乡村振兴战略的启示。     

Farms,farmworkers and new forms of livelihoods in southern Africa

This review essay looks at three recent books on farms, farm labour, and rural livelihoods in southern Africa. The books—Farm labor struggles in Zimbabwe: The ground of politics, by Blair Rutherford; Ordered estates: Welfare, power and maternalism on Zimbabwe's (once white) Highveld, by Andrew M. C. Hartnack; and Zimbabwe's migrants and South Africa's border farms: The roots of impermanence, by Maxim Bolt—offer a range of insights into labour politics and management, new forms of livelihoods on farms and former farms, and how those living on farms interact with informal economies. Usefully, the books cover events over the past two decades, as well as providing regional insights into important contemporary issues. While the books converge in a number of ways, this essay will focus on two key themes: (i) how they address issues of farm management and labour control; and (ii) they ways in which they explore farmworker agency in times of change and in areas of informality and precarity.     

Strike When the Force Is with You: Optimal Stopping with Application to Resource Equilibria

Optimal investment in a nonrenewable resource project occurs when the rate of increase of the project's forward value falls to the force of interest. This stopping rule yields a financial interpretation of resource quality as being a property of the project rather than of individual units of reserves. It also leads to re-interpretations of ( a ) rent as the present value of the project rather than of units of reserves and ( b ) Hotelling's insight as, not a rule for the path of rents, but an equilibrium algorithm for price. The analysis is extended to sequential development of pesticides, antibiotics, and forests.     

MGNREGA in Tamil Nadu: A Story of Success and Transformation?

Social protection has emerged as a key driver of development policy at the beginning of the twenty‐first century. It is widely considered a ‘good thing’ that has the potential not only to alleviate poverty and vulnerability, but also to generate more transformative outcomes in terms of empowerment and social justice. Based on an ethnographic study of the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), India's flagship social protection policy, this paper takes a critical look at what this policy's ‘success’ consists of. The study was carried out in Tamil Nadu, a state widely presented as a ‘success’ in terms of MGNREGA's implementation, and describes who participates in the scheme and how success is understood and expressed at different social and bureaucratic levels. In terms of MGNREGA's outcomes, we conclude that the scheme is benefitting the poorest households – and Dalits and women in particular – especially in terms of providing a safety net and as a tool for poverty alleviation. But the scheme does more than that. It has also produced significant transformative outcomes for rural labourers, such as pushing up rural wage levels, enhancing low‐caste workers' bargaining power in the labour market and reducing their dependency on high‐caste employers. These benefits are not only substantial but also transformative in that they affect rural relations of production and contribute to the empowerment of the rural labouring poor. However, in terms of creating durable assets and promoting grassroots democracy, the scheme's outcomes are much less encouraging.     

Agricultural Land, Gender and Kinship in Rural China and Vietnam: A Comparison of Two Villages

This study examines the impact of current land policies in China and Vietnam on women's entitlement to land, women's wellbeing and gender power relations. The ethnographic study of one village in each of the two countries contextualizes women's lives in the kinship and marriage system in which power and gender relations are embedded. Current land policies, when implemented in the existing kinship and marriage system, make women's entitlement to land more vulnerable than men's, limit women's choices and weaken their power position. Variations in kinship rules in the two countries lead to different outcomes. In the Chinese village the dominance of patrilocal marriage and exogamous marriages limits women's access to land, whereas in the Vietnamese village the rigid concentration of inheritance to males puts women in a difficult position. The comparison between communities of rural China and Vietnam reveals the importance of considering gender and kinship when studying the implementation and impact of land policies.     

The Struggle for Alternatives: NGOs' Responses to the World Development Report 2008

This paper analyzes the response by NGOs to the 2008 World Development Report (WDR08). It does so at two levels of analysis, which in turn reflect two possible ways of reading the WDR08. The first is to read the WDR08 as a document for policy guidance on 'agriculture for development'. In this respect the paper shows how NGOs expose and challenge the WDR08's optimism for the benign impact of unregulated agribusiness investment on poverty reduction, and put forward a convincing alternative. The second, and politically more fertile, way of reading the WDR08 is to make sense of its numerous internal contradictions. These contradictions are functional to the World Bank's hegemonic effort of establishing a common, and broader, agenda for rural development. Having highlighted the WDR08's incoherent messages on (i) rural labour markets and their role in poverty reduction and (ii) what constitutes the most promising driver of poverty reduction in agriculture (returns from wage labour vs from own account farming), the paper documents NGOs' failure to detect and politically exploit these contradictions.     

In Defence of Neo-Classical Neo-Populism

This paper is a response to the discussion in the special issue of this Journal on Redistributive Land Reform Today (Vol. 4, Nos. 1 and 2). We begin by attempting to clarify the methodological debate, differentiating our approach, which our critics call neo-classical neo-populism, from mainstream neo-classical economics and historical materialism. We then distinguish between land tenure reforms and redistributive land reforms, and argue that it is the latter that really matter. Next, we address the issue of the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity. Fourth, we discuss cases in which systems of labour control are used to transform the peasantry into a landless rural proletariat and challenge the view that systems of labour control can usefully be reduced to a problem of transaction costs. We end with discussions of reform in the transition economies, China and Bangladesh, where we defend the view that it is the distribution of landownership rather than operational holdings that largely determines the extent of poverty.     

Between construction yard and village: Changing relations of caste and hierarchy among Madhya Pradesh's labouring classes

In Madhya Pradesh, India, rural migrant workers hired in flyover's construction yards experiment a space of work where the social practices relating to caste separation and hierarchy are temporally softened. This paper shows that these processes of conviviality, through mixing between castes and trans-communitarian work identities based on the hierarchies of labour, are taking part in the lower classes' long quest for less oppressive labour relations. Starting from the construction yard, and then going to the village, this paper shows that the labour relations involved in the circulation of rural migrants to the flyover construction yards are contributing to shaping their complex and flexible social consciousness in a context of slow reconfiguration of oppressive rural labour relations.     

Agribusiness,Peasant Agriculture and Labour Markets: Ecuador in Comparative Perspective

The consolidation of capitalist agriculture in countries such as Ecuador has led to a recent revaluation of territories (central highlands) where cheap labour has facilitated agribusiness development linked to the world market. This process generates growth in the numbers of rural wage workers and the creation of a labour market that, in relation to others in several Latin American countries, has certain particularities: permanent jobs, gender balance, an absence of intermediaries and low levels of precariousness. Small‐scale peasant producers are marginalized in this context and play functional roles within the current dynamics of agribusiness firms. The organizational weakness of rural wage earners and the pursuit of clientelist relationships by firms do not allow rural workers and local communities to devise economic and social strategies that might improve their position in this ‘field of forces’ in the territory.