From Analysing 'Filières Vivrieres' to Understanding Capital and Petty Production in Rural South India

Agricultural markets are a prime object of what the anthropologist Clifford Geertz called ‘theoretical diffusion’ (Geertz 1973). In this diffused context, Henry Bernstein used an approach developed by French scholars, ‘filières vivrieres’, to analyse the ethnicized concentration of capital in South...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of agrarian change 2016-07, Vol.16 (3), p.478-500
Main Author:	Harriss-White, Barbara
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Accumulation Agrarian society Agricultural commodities Agricultural development Agricultural economics Agricultural production Agricultural research Agriculture Capitalism commercial capital commodity studies Corn Differentiation filières Geertz, Clifford (1926-2006) India Intellectuals Marketing Markets Modes of production petty production Production Regulation Rice Rice fields Rural areas Social classes Studies Trade Zea mays
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Summary:	Agricultural markets are a prime object of what the anthropologist Clifford Geertz called ‘theoretical diffusion’ (Geertz 1973). In this diffused context, Henry Bernstein used an approach developed by French scholars, ‘filières vivrieres’, to analyse the ethnicized concentration of capital in South African maize markets (Bernstein 1996). The first part of this essay critically introduces the background to this approach, and Bernstein's development of it, to examine capital accumulation and public and private regulation. The second part merges insights from filières with a systems approach to post‐harvest activity. It revisits four decades of research on South Indian agriculture and its paddy‐rice markets to show how petty production and trade can coexist with capitalist accumulation, showing how, to what extent and why the relations of agricultural commodity marketing ‘fail to complete’ the process of polar class differentiation and consolidate petty commodity production in the post‐harvest sphere of circulation – the filière – as well as in production.
ISSN:	1471-0358 1471-0366