Into their land and labours : a comparative and global analysis of trajectories of peasant transformation

The fate of rural societies in the past and today cannot be understood in a singular manner. Peasantries across the world have followed different trajectories of change and have developed divergent repertoires of accommodation, adaptation and resistance. Understanding these multiple trajectories requires new historical knowledge about the role of peasantries within long-term and worldwide economic and social transformations. This paper aims to make sense of this diversity from a comparative, integrated, and systemic approach. The paper is structured around the notions of peasant work, peasant frontiers, peasant communities and peasant regimes. These concepts figure as key analytical tools in an innovative research framework to analyze the paths of peasant transformation in modern world history beyond idealization and teleologization

Compensatory and Risk Factors for Substance Use in African American Youth

Substance use among all youth is a substantial public health concern and must be understood from specific cultural and developmental perspectives for different populations. The current study examined this issue from an African American cultural and developmental lens. This study sought to investigate how developmental, social, and cultural factors influence attitudes about and the use of alcohol and other drugs among a high risk African American sample. The participants of this study were 100 African American adolescents, ages 8 -16. For the purposes of this study, participants were divided into 2 age groups: 8-11 and 12-16. Multiple regressions were conducted for each age group and indicated that while there were several factors that contributed to attitudes about and involvement with substances for youth 12 -16, there were no predictors that were salient for younger youth. Findings have implications for the epidemiology and prevention of substance use among African American adolescents

Crossing the Bridge from Eighth to Tenth Grade: Can Ninth Grade Schools Make It Better?

Ninth grade is a complicated time period in the school years of young adolescents, They face many social, emotional, physical, and academic issues during the transition from eighth grade to the freshman year. In some cases, these problems in ninth grade lead to increased dropout rate. This matter is addressed in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). School districts across the country are establishing programs to deal with this dilemma of students transitioning from the middle grades to high school. One such program is the ninth grade school or academy. The general purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of ninth grade schools. The study focused on student achievement in ninth grade schools or academies compared to ninth grade students enrolled in traditional high schools housing grades nine through 12. Student achievement, for this study, was assessed by the students’ scores on the Mississippi Subject Area Testing Program (SAPT) in Algebra I and Biology I for the 2005-2006 school year. Other variables tested were gender and ethnicity of the students used in this study. All students used in this study were enrolled in the ninth grade during the 2005-2006 school year at one of the six schools selected for this research. Three of the schools were ninth grade schools or academies and the other three were traditional high schools. The students were enrolled in Algebra I and/or Biology I course(s) and therefore took the Subject Area Test for the respective course(s). Students at the ninth grade schools were compared to students at the traditional high schools based on SAPT scores, gender, and ethnicity. In this study, there was a significant difference in Algebra I scores on the SAPT between students attending ninth grade schools or academies when compared to students attending traditional high schools. Students in the ninth grade schools scored significantly higher on the Algebra I test. There was also a significant difference in Biology I scores on the SAPT between students attending ninth grade schools or academies when compared to students attending traditional high schools. Students in the ninth grade schools scored significantly higher on the Biology I test. Further analyzed data revealed significant differences, based on ethnicity, in achievement of Biology I students in the ninth grade academies when compared to the Biology I students in the traditional high schools. The African American students in the ninth grade academies had a higher mean score on the Biology I SAPT than Caucasian and African American students enrolled in the traditional high schools. Additionally, the Caucasian students in the ninth grade academies scored only .03 higher than the mean score of African American students in the ninth grade academies

Improving Student Achievement: Can Ninth Grade Academies Make A Difference?

This study focused on student achievement in ninth grade schools or academies compared to ninth grade students enrolled in traditional high schools. Student achievement was measured by standardized test scores. Other variables tested were gender and ethnicity. All students used in this study were enrolled in the ninth grade during the 2005-2006 school year at one of six schools selected for this research. Participants were enrolled in Algebra I and/or Biology I course(s) and therefore took the standardized Subject Area Test in these disciplines. Data indicated students enrolled in ninth grade academies scored significantly higher then ninth graders enrolled in traditional high schools on both the Algebra I and Biology test. Further analysis of data revealed significant differences based on ethnicity in achievement of Biology I students in the ninth grade academies when compared to the Biology I students in the traditional high schools. The African American students in the ninth grade academies had a higher mean score on the Biology I SAPT than Caucasian and African American students enrolled in the traditional high schools. Additionally, the Caucasian students in the ninth grade academies scored only .03 higher than the mean score of African American students in the ninth grade academies

Machismo Syndrome: A Residential Correlate of Its Expression in a Mexican Peasant Community

The Michaelson Goldschmidt hypothesis states that in peasant societies wherein male dominance is an ideal, matrilocal residence tends to encourage the expression of the machismo syndrome of behaviors. Recent ethnographic research in a Mexican peasant community supports the hypothesis by the finding that interpersonal violence (one measure of machismo) during a fiesta was perpetrated in every extreme instance by men who were residing matrilocally. The hypothesis thus effectively predicts, in this case, matrilocality as the variable most closely associated with the violent dimension of machismo

Industrial Upgrade, Employment Shock and Land Centralization in China

This paper investigates the relationships among industrial upgrading, mid-aged peasants’ non-farm employment, and land conversion systems. We prove that China’s efforts to upgrade its industries generate a negative employment shock on mid-aged peasant workers, forcing some of them to return to their home villages. The current lump-sum land acquisition system, however, will neither help peasant workers deal with the adverse employment shock nor promote land centralization for industrial and urban uses. On contrary, land cooperation, an emerging land centralization system, will help peasant workers mitigate the adverse employment shock and centralize rural land for nonagricultural purposes.Peasant workers; Industrial upgrade; Employment; Land centralization

The agrarian question in Tanzania: the case of tobacco

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 32Since independence in 1961, Tanzania has pursued a policy of institutionalizing a middle peasantry, while stymieing the development of capitalism's principal classes. The policy has taken an extreme form following a 1973 decision to forcibly reorganize the majority of Tanzania's peasants on individual block farms within nucleated villages and to bring the sphere of production more directly under the control of the state and international finance capital. This attempt to subordinate peasant labor to capital by perpetuating middle peasant households increasingly confines capital to its most primitive state. The pursuit of this policy in an export-oriented agricultural economy has particular contradictions and limitations. As long as labor and capital are not separated, they cannot be combined in their technically most advanced form. Hence the contradiction of the state's attempts to extract greater surplus value while simultaneously acting to expand and preserve middle peasant households. This paper explores the implications of such a course of action within the framework of Marxist writings on the agrarian question. Using tobacco production as, an example, it discusses the ways in which middle peasant households are being squeezed and pauperized by this backward capitalist system. It argues that the system inhibits the formal and real subordination of labor to capital and tends to perpetuate the extraction of absolute as opposed to relative surplus value. Household production fetters the concentration of capital and prevents the socialization of labor, while perpetuating the hoe as the main instrument of production

Behavioral Decision of Employment for Rural Labors: Evidence from Peasant Households in Central China

Based on the facts of the peasant household and its labors, this paper analyses rational behavior strategy of the peasants and studies the microeconomic impact factors on the peasant behavior of employment with a discrete choice model. According to Econometric analysis, conclusions has been derived as follows: Firstly, the peasants behavior of employment is consistent with their wills to raise their income; Secondly, the peasants allocate labor resource in their peasant household on comparative advantages; Thirdly, non-agricultural job opportunity is a vital channel to release recessive unemployment and achieve sufficient employment of rural labors; Finally, peasants in different areas show slightly different tendency on obtaining non-agricultural jobs.rural labors, impact factors, employment choice,

A century of growth? A history of tobacco production and marketing in Malawi 1890-2005

During the past century tobacco production and marketing in Nyasaland/Malawi has undergone periods of dynamism similar to changes since the early 1990s. This article highlights four recurrent patterns. First, estate owners have either fostered or constrained peasant/smallholder production dependent on complementarities or competition with their estates. Second, rapid expansion of peasant/smallholder production has led to three recurrent outcomes: a large multiplier effect in tobacco-rich districts; re-regulation of the marketing of peasant/smallholder tobacco by the (colonial) state; and, lastly, concerns over the supply of food crops. The article concludes by arguing that whilst the reform of burley tobacco production and marketing in the 1990s engaged with the first two issues, it may have benefitted from paying greater attention to the latter two issues as well.

Jesus: a revolutionary biography

Reviewed Book: Crossan, John Dominic. Jesus: a revolutionary biography. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994. Reviewed Book: Crossan, John Dominic. The historical Jesus: the life of a Mediterranean Jewish peasant. [S.l.]: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991