AGRARIAN POWER AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY #5 Unit Price :$ 3.00 Author :OUP India oup No. Of Pages :42
AGRARIAN POWER AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY IN SOUTH ASIA: Local Power and Farm-Level Decision-Making   The late ASHOK RUDRA Introduction by Susanne Hoeber Rudolph   Series edited by Meghnad Desai, Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and the late Ashok Rudra   **** eARTICLES FOR DOWNLOAD TO PRINTER ONLY **** [FOR THIS eARTICLE YOU WILL NEED FLASHPLAYER INSTALLED WHICH CAN BE DOWNLOADED FREE VIA OUR HOME PAGE AND ONCE PAYMENT HAS BEEN MADE USE THE PRINT BUTTON ON THE FLASHPAPER TOOLBAR (AND NOT ON THE WEB BROWSER) TO PRINT]   eARTICLE Size: 220 KB;   42 pages; US$ 3   © Oxford University Press, India 1984       Do differences in power structures play an important causal role in advancing or retarding agricultural productivity? In discussing the relationship between power and productivity, the nine contributors to this series anthropologists, economists, political scientists, historians - raise questions about the widely accepted generalization that structures of local power are a major constraint on technically progressive agriculture. By contrast, they argue that there is no necessary relationship between asymmetrical power structures and high or low productivity. Rather, the relationship between power and productivity varies with historical time and region and is determined in part by legal arrangements and their implementation, market opportunities, and how surpluses are allocated. This series is the first product of a unique attempt by the Social Science Research Council (New York) with the support of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (New Delhi) to ask cross-national and multidisciplinary working groups to engage in social science conceptualization and explanation by deploying several national and disciplinary lenses. In their trans-disciplinary and transnational analyses and findings, the contributors display an uncommon capacity to bridge analytical differences and to integrate several theoretical perspectives.   We shall at the very outset define what we mean by the terms 'local' and 'power'. By a locality we mean the smallest social unit (above that of the family) in which power in the sense we shall define it may be observed and therefore postulated to operate. We shall be con­cerned with rural localities and we shall postulate (once again on the basis of empirical observations) that the locality in rural areas coincides with the village. By power we mean a social phenomenon given rise to by such institutional factors as class divisions, caste hierarchy, distribution of wealth and income, occupational patterns, etc., and such ideo­logical forces as customs, traditions, taboos, etc., affecting the pro­cess of decision-making by economic agents. This concept of power excludes the concept of economic power. It includes political power in so far as it is born out of the local social structure and applied by local agents but excludes state power as applied by the representa­tives of the state to the local community. The reason for excluding economic power is that it is already taken care of in some fashion or other in the received theories of economics. By 'economic power' of an individual we mea~ the command over and the access to re­sources which an agent can acquire by virtue of his possession of wealth or his entitlement to income, the power being proportionate in some way to the importance of his wealth or income. From a theoretical point of view differences in such power from agent to agent does not pose any problems in economics; as is well known, in the latter discipline analysis always starts by according different quantities of what are called 'endowments' to different agents. Ex­clusion of state power from our consideration is motivated by the following reasons. In so far as state power is concerned with the implementation of policies of the government it is once again taken care of in received theories. Farm-level responses in principle belong to the two domains of economic theory which go by the names of Public Finance and Welfare Economics.     The late ASHOK RUDRA Formerly of the Department of Economics, University of Visva Bharati, Santiniketan     SUSANNE HOEBER RUDOLPH Emeritus Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago     Other titles in the series:     Capital and the Transformation of Agrarian Class Systems: Sugar Production in India DONALD W. ATTWOOD   Productive Power in Agriculture: A Survey of Work on the Local History of British India DAVID LUDDEN   Rural Power Structure and Agricultural Productivity in Eastern India, 1757-1947 B. B. CHAUDHURI   Power and Agrarian Relations: Some Concepts and Measurements MEGHNAD DESAI   Economic Consequences of Local Power Configurations in Rural South Asia RONALD J. HERRING   Determinants and Varieties of Agrarian Mobilization LLOYD I. RUDOLPH SUSANNE HOEBER RUDOLPH   Power Structure and Agricultural Productivity The late SUKHAMOY CHAKRAVARTY
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