B Harriss-White
Biographic Data
| ID | 5749 |
|---|---|
| NAME | B Harriss-White |
| GIVEN NAMES | B |
| FAMILY NAME | Harriss-White |
| SIGNATURE | HARRISS-WHITE B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7614-1681 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 295 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Michael Burawoy’s Legacy Outside Sociology
Gold, Its Quiddity, and India’s Social Development
Awkward Classes and India’s Rural Development
Marx’s model of capital and labour, dynamised by contradictions and the compulsion to accumulate, leaves deviations from the polar classes of capital and labour ignored, regarded as precapitalist outliers, or as headed for extinction. But the two considered here, petty commodity production (and trade and services) and merchant’s or commercial capital, persist widely. Here in tribute to the major contributions to political economy of Utsa Patnaik …
Women and Waste
One of the fastest-growing sectors of the Indian economy is waste. Its labour illustrates Deliege’s paradox of material essentiality combined with social stigma and marginalisation. Between 2015 and 2019 the production and disposal of waste in a small South Indian town was traced through its circuits of industrial production (agro-processing), distribution (of people and of food), consumption, the production of labour (human wastes) and the repro…
Translating transactions
In this Modern Asian Studies book symposium, scholars of South Asia analyse the political, ethical, and epistemic aspects of market life. They build on the 2020 Cambridge volume, Rethinking Markets in Modern India: Embedded Exchange and Contested Jurisdiction, edited by Ajay Gandhi, Barbara Harriss-White, Douglas Haynes, and Sebastian Schwecke. This interdisciplinary conversation approaches transactional realms from the disciplines of history, an…
Petty commodity production
Petty commodity production (PCP) is a key reality of contemporary capitalism. Deceptively simple, it is shrouded in synonyms, debates and neglect. This essay covers its definitions and roles in agrarian change. Four aspects relevant to critical agrarian studies are introduced: its gendering, persistence, 'unviability' and roles in the wider economy. Three debates are summarised: PCP versus peasants, exploitation versus conflict over appropriated …
Capitalist trajectories in agrarian mountain societies of east and south‐east Arunachal, India
While the mountainous frontier regions of Arunachal have generated a literature celebrating their exceptional social diversity, less is known about Arunachal's rural political economy. Following village fieldwork in 2007 in northern districts, research in 2015 in East and South‐east Arunachal enables two aspects of agrarian transformation to be explored. First a comparison of the institutional transformation of land‐based resources between region…
India’s Non-metropolitan Agrarian Urbanisation and Urban Agrarianisation
Agrarian Crisis and Agricultural Market Reforms in South Asia
Rethinking Markets in Modern India
Waste, Social Order, and Physical Disorder in Small-Town India
India’s waste is growing fast; so is its research, and so is the informal economy in which it is embedded. Here research on a small-town waste economy (WE) is situated in the literature on urban informal waste, making three contributions. First, an analytical grid is placed over this small-town formal-informal waste economy in terms of its circuits of capital in the generation of waste. These comprise factory production, physical and economic dis…
Awkward Classes and India's Development
Marx's model of capital and labour, dynamised by contradictions and the compulsion to accumulate, leaves deviations from the polar classes of capital and labour ignored, regarded as outliers or as headed for extinction. But the two considered here, petty commodity production (and trade and services) and merchant's or commercial capital, persist widely. Here, their structure and dynamics are discussed in general and in the contemporary Indian case…
Formality and informality in an Indian urban waste economy
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute original evidence about the conditions for formal and informal contracts for commodities and labour in the waste economy of a South Indian town. Design/methodology/approach Field research was exploratory, based on snowball sampling and urban traversing. The analysis follows capital and labour in the sub-circuits of capital generating waste in production, distribution, consumption, the production …
Rethinking Institutions
India has the largest informal, unregistered economy in the world, infrastructurally backward, yet vital for both growth and livelihoods. In the first section of this article, five economic institutions that shape this economy are introduced: small firms, informality, non-metropolitan towns, innovation and innovation systems, and the state's regulative impact on the economy it does not directly regulate. In the second section, we trace the develo…
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 African maize markets (Bernstein 1996). The first part of this essay critically introduces the background to this approach, and Bernstein's developmen…
Middle India and Urban-Rural Development
Real Markets as Social and Political Institutions and their Implications for Human Development
Labour and Petty Production
One of many fracture zones in the right-less workforce is between wage labour, disguised wage labour (DWL) and petty commodity production (PCP) - between the formal and real subsumption of labour to capital. When the polar classes of capitalism leave much lying between them under conditions of generalized commodity production and circulation, where expansion is driven by multiplication of tiny units of production and trade rather than, or as well…
Introduction
This special issue is concerned with agrarian questions inIndia and their importance for, and impact on, political analyses and strategies of theIndian Left. In the 1970s, the development of Left politics generated the modes of production debate and many of the communist parties used their interpretations of agrarian change then to guide theirIndian path to socialism. More than 40 years on, ongoing changes in economic and social relations in the …
Capitalism and the Common Man
In 1976, the political sociologist of Africa, Gavin Williams, controversially 'took the part of peasants' in an essay, the critique of which had far-reaching impacts. Africa's common man was then a peasant. In this article, the method of his essay is used to structure a review of petty commodity production (PCP) in India four decades later. India's 'common man' is a petty producer. In neo-liberalizing India, PCP is numerically the commonest form …
The battle against hunger
Work and Wellbeing in Informal Economies
Institutional Diversity and Capitalist Transition
This paper contributes a preliminary analysis of the process of agrarian capitalist transition in Arunachal Pradesh, one of the least studied regions of India. Primarily based on information collected through a field survey in eleven villages, the paper seeks to explain the nature and implications of institutional unevenness in the development of capitalism. Institutional diversity is not simply mapped across space, it is also manifested in the s…
Preface
Introduction
Work and Wellbeing in Informal Economies
Capitalism and the Common Man
In 1976, the political sociologist of Africa, Gavin Williams, controversially 'took the part of peasants' in an essay, the critique of which had far-reaching impacts. Africa's common man was then a peasant. In this article, the method of his essay is used to structure a review of petty commodity production (PCP) in India four decades later. India's 'common man' is a petty producer. In neo-liberalizing India, PCP is numerically the commonest form …
Labour and Petty Production
One of many fracture zones in the right-less workforce is between wage labour, disguised wage labour (DWL) and petty commodity production (PCP) - between the formal and real subsumption of labour to capital. When the polar classes of capitalism leave much lying between them under conditions of generalized commodity production and circulation, where expansion is driven by multiplication of tiny units of production and trade rather than, or as well…
Petty commodity production
Petty commodity production (PCP) is a key reality of contemporary capitalism. Deceptively simple, it is shrouded in synonyms, debates and neglect. This essay covers its definitions and roles in agrarian change. Four aspects relevant to critical agrarian studies are introduced: its gendering, persistence, 'unviability' and roles in the wider economy. Three debates are summarised: PCP versus peasants, exploitation versus conflict over appropriated …
Awkward Classes and India's Development
Marx's model of capital and labour, dynamised by contradictions and the compulsion to accumulate, leaves deviations from the polar classes of capital and labour ignored, regarded as outliers or as headed for extinction. But the two considered here, petty commodity production (and trade and services) and merchant's or commercial capital, persist widely. Here, their structure and dynamics are discussed in general and in the contemporary Indian case…
Destitution and the Poverty of its Politics—With Special Reference to South Asia
Introduction
This special issue is concerned with agrarian questions inIndia and their importance for, and impact on, political analyses and strategies of theIndian Left. In the 1970s, the development of Left politics generated the modes of production debate and many of the communist parties used their interpretations of agrarian change then to guide theirIndian path to socialism. More than 40 years on, ongoing changes in economic and social relations in the …
Institutional Diversity and Capitalist Transition
This paper contributes a preliminary analysis of the process of agrarian capitalist transition in Arunachal Pradesh, one of the least studied regions of India. Primarily based on information collected through a field survey in eleven villages, the paper seeks to explain the nature and implications of institutional unevenness in the development of capitalism. Institutional diversity is not simply mapped across space, it is also manifested in the s…
Introduction
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 African maize markets (Bernstein 1996). The first part of this essay critically introduces the background to this approach, and Bernstein's developmen…
The Politics of Accumulation in Small-town India
Summaries Using the analytical framework of social structures of accumulation, the economic politics of local urban civil?social organisations and their impact on capital, class and the business economy is examined. Although such organisations are structured through many dimensions, notably occupation, commodity, party politics, religion, gender and locality, the most prominent single category comprises caste — and closely?related, finely?defined…
Formality and informality in an Indian urban waste economy
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute original evidence about the conditions for formal and informal contracts for commodities and labour in the waste economy of a South Indian town. Design/methodology/approach Field research was exploratory, based on snowball sampling and urban traversing. The analysis follows capital and labour in the sub-circuits of capital generating waste in production, distribution, consumption, the production …
Rethinking Institutions
India has the largest informal, unregistered economy in the world, infrastructurally backward, yet vital for both growth and livelihoods. In the first section of this article, five economic institutions that shape this economy are introduced: small firms, informality, non-metropolitan towns, innovation and innovation systems, and the state's regulative impact on the economy it does not directly regulate. In the second section, we trace the develo…
Collective Politics of Foodgrains Markets in South Asia
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices' (Adam Smith, 1776/1976, Wealth of Nations, p 144)
Nutrition and Its Politics in Tamil Nadu
This article offers important insights into the interrelationships between political change and nutrition policy in Tamil Nadu and their impact on nutrition levels among a range of rural households. Based on new primary sources (both documentary and interviews) and secondary data provided by other research, this article offers a substantive study of current nutrition problems in Tamil Nadu. The first part provides a framework for examining the po…
Women and Waste
One of the fastest-growing sectors of the Indian economy is waste. Its labour illustrates Deliege’s paradox of material essentiality combined with social stigma and marginalisation. Between 2015 and 2019 the production and disposal of waste in a small South Indian town was traced through its circuits of industrial production (agro-processing), distribution (of people and of food), consumption, the production of labour (human wastes) and the repro…
Economic Restructuring
The changing public role in services to food and agriculture
Development Research and Action
In this article the IDS history of leading ideas in development is reviewed. Following Burawoy's classification of the production of knowledge in sociology, the IDS40 Roundtables in South Asia are used as a basis to explore and critique four kinds of production of knowledge in development studies: professional, policy-related, critical and public knowledge. © Institute of Development Studies
A Note on Male Governance of South Indian Family Businesses and its Implications for Women
The Gender Sensitivity of Well-being Indicators
This article assesses the gender sensitivity of indicators of health, nutrition, education, and composite indices which are relevant to developing countries, using the analytical framework of 'functionings'. It finds that a disaggregated under-10 female-male ratio (0-4 years and 5-9 years) appears to be a suitable indicator for health. Difficulties with data collection and interpretation reduce the reliability of indicators of morbidity and nutri…
Liberalization and Corruption
Theoretical treatments of corruption in the new political economy place bureaucrats who control public sector goods centre stage. Corrupt behaviour then involves the creation of new private property rights over such goods, and deregulation and privatization will then destroy the preconditions for corruption. Here, empirical material from South India is used in a political economy framework to show how such theories represent an arbitrary and high…
Testing market integration
Given the inferential dangers of received methods, a new methodology is introduced to provide a sequence of tests, using weekly spot prices, to examine the dynamic relationship of market commodity prices in three locations in West Bengal. Tests suggest that the markets are integrated, but a lower degree of integration of paddy and rice prices is identified. The hypothesis of full market integration is rejected. Structural and institutional factor…
Collective Politics of Foodgrains Markets in South Asia
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices' (Adam Smith, 1776/1976, Wealth of Nations, p 144)
Economic Restructuring
The changing public role in services to food and agriculture
Liberalization and Corruption
Theoretical treatments of corruption in the new political economy place bureaucrats who control public sector goods centre stage. Corrupt behaviour then involves the creation of new private property rights over such goods, and deregulation and privatization will then destroy the preconditions for corruption. Here, empirical material from South India is used in a political economy framework to show how such theories represent an arbitrary and high…
People who count
Agricultural Markets from Theory to Practice
In an era of globalization, private markets are expected to dominate the distribution of goods worldwide. Yet surprisingly little empirical work is conducted on them. The sensitive and secret nature o
The Politics of Accumulation in Small-town India
Summaries Using the analytical framework of social structures of accumulation, the economic politics of local urban civil?social organisations and their impact on capital, class and the business economy is examined. Although such organisations are structured through many dimensions, notably occupation, commodity, party politics, religion, gender and locality, the most prominent single category comprises caste — and closely?related, finely?defined…
The Gender Sensitivity of Well-being Indicators
This article assesses the gender sensitivity of indicators of health, nutrition, education, and composite indices which are relevant to developing countries, using the analytical framework of 'functionings'. It finds that a disaggregated under-10 female-male ratio (0-4 years and 5-9 years) appears to be a suitable indicator for health. Difficulties with data collection and interpretation reduce the reliability of indicators of morbidity and nutri…
A Note on Male Governance of South Indian Family Businesses and its Implications for Women
Nutrition and Its Politics in Tamil Nadu
This article offers important insights into the interrelationships between political change and nutrition policy in Tamil Nadu and their impact on nutrition levels among a range of rural households. Based on new primary sources (both documentary and interviews) and secondary data provided by other research, this article offers a substantive study of current nutrition problems in Tamil Nadu. The first part provides a framework for examining the po…
Destitution and the Poverty of its Politics—With Special Reference to South Asia
The cultural politics of markets
Development Research and Action
In this article the IDS history of leading ideas in development is reviewed. Following Burawoy's classification of the production of knowledge in sociology, the IDS40 Roundtables in South Asia are used as a basis to explore and critique four kinds of production of knowledge in development studies: professional, policy-related, critical and public knowledge. © Institute of Development Studies
The everyday politics of labour
Preface
Introduction
Work and Wellbeing in Informal Economies
Institutional Diversity and Capitalist Transition
This paper contributes a preliminary analysis of the process of agrarian capitalist transition in Arunachal Pradesh, one of the least studied regions of India. Primarily based on information collected through a field survey in eleven villages, the paper seeks to explain the nature and implications of institutional unevenness in the development of capitalism. Institutional diversity is not simply mapped across space, it is also manifested in the s…
Capitalism and the Common Man
In 1976, the political sociologist of Africa, Gavin Williams, controversially 'took the part of peasants' in an essay, the critique of which had far-reaching impacts. Africa's common man was then a peasant. In this article, the method of his essay is used to structure a review of petty commodity production (PCP) in India four decades later. India's 'common man' is a petty producer. In neo-liberalizing India, PCP is numerically the commonest form …
The battle against hunger
Introduction
This special issue is concerned with agrarian questions inIndia and their importance for, and impact on, political analyses and strategies of theIndian Left. In the 1970s, the development of Left politics generated the modes of production debate and many of the communist parties used their interpretations of agrarian change then to guide theirIndian path to socialism. More than 40 years on, ongoing changes in economic and social relations in the …
Real Markets as Social and Political Institutions and their Implications for Human Development
Labour and Petty Production
One of many fracture zones in the right-less workforce is between wage labour, disguised wage labour (DWL) and petty commodity production (PCP) - between the formal and real subsumption of labour to capital. When the polar classes of capitalism leave much lying between them under conditions of generalized commodity production and circulation, where expansion is driven by multiplication of tiny units of production and trade rather than, or as well…
Middle India and Urban-Rural Development
Economics (29 works) · Political science (29 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (19 works) · Market economy (15 works) · Agriculture (13 works) · Economic growth (13 works) · Economic system (13 works) · Geography (13 works)