Rearticulating Caste: The Global Cottonseed Commodity Chain and the Paradox of Smallholder Capitalism in South India
Rearticulating Caste: The Global Cottonseed Commodity Chain and the Paradox of Smallholder Capitalism in South India
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重新阐明种姓：全球棉籽商品链与印度南部小农资本主义的悖论
DOI：
10.1068/a43215
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发表时间：
2011
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Priti Ramamurthy
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Priti Ramamurthy
棉籽是印度南部新纳入全球棉籽商品链的小农作为自营种植者的理想作物。棉花种子是一种杂交品种，在田间生产棉花种子的劳动是过度的。跨国公司和印度公司依靠杂交技术来保护其品牌种子的知识产权。由于工资率上升而种子价格不变，将棉籽生产外包给小农对资本具有吸引力。现在产生交换价值的主要是小农的无偿家庭劳动。虽然小农户梦想着获得可观的收益，一些成功的故事似乎也支持这一点，但种植棉籽是一项风险很大的业务，有时，小农户的回报如此之低，以至于再生产家庭劳动力的成本无法得到满足;许多人陷入债务。然而，来自以前贱民种姓或达利特社区的小农户，不久前还为富裕农民工作的“棉籽儿童”，第一次自豪地在“自己的土地上”种植棉籽并“为自己劳动”。为了解释这一悖论，我提出了一个经济学的本土演算，一个非经济学的网格，以理解为什么达利特小农继续这种形式的生产，即使他们可以从工资劳动中赚取更多。我认为，种姓的尊严和自主的看法方面的重新表达塑造这种演算。我进一步认为，达利特小农经验资本主义的内在矛盾，通过一个“结构的感觉”的困惑为标志。在世界银行将小农代耕作为一种新的发展战略提出并受到其批评者质疑的时候，以困惑为标志的经济和情感经验的本土计算可能作为小农资本主义的一般特征具有更广泛的相关性。
Cottonseed is an aspirational crop for smallholders newly incorporated in the global cottonseed commodity chain as own-account cultivators in South India. The labor to produce cottonseeds, which are hybrids, in the field is excessive. Multinational and Indian corporations depend on hybridization to protect their intellectual property rights in branded seeds. As wage rates rise and seed prices do not, the outsourcing of cottonseed production to smallholders is attractive to capital. It is mostly the unpaid, family labor of smallholders which now generates exchange value. While smallholders dream of spectacular gains and some success stories seem to support this, growing cottonseed is a risky business and, at times, the returns to smallholders are so low that the very costs of reproducing family labor are unmet; many go into debt. Yet, smallholders from a formerly untouchable caste, or Dalit, community, who just a short while ago worked as ‘cottonseed children’ for rich farmers are, for the first time, proudly growing cottonseed on ‘their own plots of land’ and ‘laboring for themselves’. To explain this paradox I propose a vernacular calculus of the economic, a noneconomistic grid, for understanding why Dalit smallholders continue this form of production even when they could earn more from wage labor. I argue that the rearticulation of caste in terms of dignity and perceptions of autonomy shape this calculus. I argue further that Dalit smallholders experience the inherent contradictions of capitalism through a ‘structure of feeling’ marked by perplexity. At a time when smallholder contract farming is being suggested as a new development strategy by the World Bank and questioned by its detractors, a vernacular calculus of the economic and affective experiences marked by perplexity may be more widely relevant as generalized characteristics of smallholder capitalism.