1st Edition

Sharecropping and Sharecroppers

By T. J. Byres Copyright 1983
    288 Pages
    by Routledge

    288 Pages
    by Routledge

    First Published in 1983. Of all the social relationships that exist in the countryside in contemporary poor countries, and which have existed in the past in ‘developed’ countries, that of share tenancy is among the most significant and the most fascinating. It is, and has been, geographically widespread, varied in its manifestations, and historically tenacious. Sharecropping has been singled out frequently in land reform programmes as a candidate for elimination. Yet it persists, often in disguised form. It raises difficult theoretical issues, which have attracted the attention of some of the outstanding economists—from Adam Smith, through John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, and Alfred Marshall—and which remain contentious. Sharecroppers, moreover, have sometimes been involved in important political movements in the countryside. This, too, has given rise to considerable debate. In this double special number of the Journal of Peasant Studies, these varied issues are given extensive and rigorous treatment within a predominantly political economy framework. Sharecropping and sharecroppers are examined both in general terms, in a number of theoretical contributions, and in a rich variety of regional contexts, in which their specific manifestations emerge.

    A. SHARECROPPING IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: A GENERAL TREATMENT; Historical Perspectives on Sharecropping; B. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SHARECROPPING Sharecropping: Towards a Marxist View; Classical Theory of Rent and Its Application to India: Some Preliminary Thoughts on Sharecropping; Cropsharing as a Labour Process; Sharecropping: Some Illustrations; Sharecropping as an Efficient System: Further Answers to an Old Puzzle; C. CONCRETE ANALYSIS OF SHARECROPPING: INDIVIDUAL COUNTRY STUDIES Sharecropping and the Plantation Economy in the United States South; The Cycle of Sharecropping and the Consolidation of Small Peasant Ownership in Turkey; Tuscan Sharecropping in United Italy: The Myth of Class Collaboration Destroyed; The Introduction of Free Labour on Sao Paulo Coffee Plantations; The Sharecropping Economy on the South African Highveld in the Early Twentieth Century; Sharecroppers and Landlords in Bengal, 1930–50: The Dependency Web and its Implications; The Major Mode of Surplus Labour Appropriation in the West Malaysian Countryside: The Sharecropping System

    Biography

    T.J. Byres