User:Adrià Ardèvol

I'm a student at Columbia University (New York, USA) and Sciences Po (Paris, FR) studying political science.

Main Research Interest: Peasants, Agrarian Societies, and the State
Research question: how do agrarian communities interact with the state?

Main sources:
These two sources exemplify two main schools of thought that structure the academic discussion on the behavior of peasants and agrarian communities. James C. Scott highlights the importance of ethics, particularly community values based on on agrarian "subsistence ethic". For Scott, the problem is not really whether agrarian communities are oppressed, but whether the oppression violates the ethos of the community, built on years of subsistence in the face of adversity ("what is left" vs "how much is taken"). His approach is that of the moral economy. Popkin, on the other hand, stresses the political economy of the peasants. He believes that the individual rationality of self-interested individuals is more determinant than the diffuse norms and values advocated by Scott. He writes: "norms are malleable, renegotiated, and shifting in accord with considerations of power and strategic interactions among individuals. There are always tradeoffs between conflicting and inconsistent norms."

My principal weakness so far is that my sources are a little outdated, and I would welcome guidance on new work in this subject.

In my research, I expect to be delving with the broader themes of collective action problems, impact of colonial regimes, transformation from pre-capitalist to market-based societies. Below is a proposed outline, a more ambitious (unfeasible?) option would be to do a spatio-temporal survey of peasant revolts.

Agrarian Communities: A Basic Framework --> Who are peasants and how do they live, work, interact with each other ?
Peasant and Peasant Societies: Selected Readings (Theodor Shanin)

Peasantry as a Political Factor (Theodor Shanin)

Interpersonal Relations in Peasant Society (George Foster)

The little community, and Peasant society and culture (Robert Redfield)

The Theory of Peasant Economy (AV Chayanov)

Making the Commons Work: Theory, Practice, and Policy (Ed. Daniel W. Bromley)

Moral Economy School --> What are the ethics and informal norms that govern peasant society?
Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (James C. Scott)

Domination and the Art of Resistance : Hidden Transcripts (James C. Scott)

Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century (E. P. Thompson)

Political Economy School --> How do individual peasants maximize their utility?
Allocation Efficiency in Traditional Indian Agriculture (David Hopper)

Theory of the Optimizing Peasant (Michael Lipton)

Capitalism and Agrarian Communities --> What is the impact of imposed market-based structures on peasant societies?
Transforming Traditional Agriculture (Theodore W. Schultz)

The Great Transformation : The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Karl Polyani)

Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural Policies (Robert H. Bates)

State-Building and Agrarian Communities --> What is the role of peasant societies in creating and/or legitimizing a coercive "stationary bandit"?
Democracy, Development, and the Countryside (Ashutoh Varshney)

Peasants into Frenchmen (Eugen Weber)

Art of Not Being Governed : An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (James C. Scott)

Peasant Revolts --> What happens if peasants are not happy with the stationary bandit?
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: The Making of the Modern World (Barrington Moore, Jr)

Primitive Rebels (Eric Hobswam)

Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (Eric Wolf)

Nighrwatch: The Politics of Protest in the Andes (Orin Starn)

Impact on Development Politics --> How should we view peasant societies in poor countries today?
The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (James Ferguson)

Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Timothy Mitchell)

Engineering Nature: Water, Development, & the Global Spread of American Environmental Expertise (Jessica B. Teisch)

World Development Report: Agriculture for Development (World Bank)

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (James C. Scott)