A H Akram-Lodhi
Biographic Data
| ID | 67873 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A H Akram-Lodhi |
| GIVEN NAMES | A H |
| FAMILY NAME | Akram-Lodhi |
| SIGNATURE | AKRAM-LODHI A H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Trent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1186-9401 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 54 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 664 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
The Agrarian Question in the Web of Life
What is the Value of Value for Agrarian Studies
Reflecting a longstanding intellectual heritage in Marxist political economy, contributions to agrarian studies have variously referred to the production, distribution and extraction of value. Despite this central role within the heritage of agrarian studies, the concept of value is often used inconsistently between authors and sometimes deployed without clear elucidation of the underlying theoretical tenets. As such, value often tends to be used…
Women stay behind and grow the food: Agricultural productivity and the interstices of petty commodity production and reproductive labour in Tanzania
Inspired by the work of Carmen Diana Deere, this paper examines how an analysis of the work of rural production, even when gendered, is compromised if it does not incorporate reproductive labour. The paper presents estimates of the gender yield gap in agricultural crop productivity in Tanzania, along with the statistical causes of the gender yield gap, in order to demonstrate what is and why it matters. The paper then shows that the gender yield …
I will follow? Authoritarian populism, past and present
Scoones et al. [2018. "Emancipatory Rural Politics: Confronting Authoritarian Populism." The Journal of Peasant Studies 45 (1): 1-20] suggests that the contemporary rural world can be characterized as having distinct forms of authoritarian populism. This article argues that key aspects of authoritarian populism are not seen across the breadth and depth of the contemporary rural world, and, as such, the use of authoritarian populism can be politic…
Handbook of Critical Agrarian Studies
Exploring the emerging and vibrant field of critical agrarian studies, this comprehensive Handbook offers interdisciplinary insights from both leading scholars and activists to understand agrarian life, livelihoods, formations and processes of change. It highlights the development of the field, which is characterized by theoretical and methodological pluralism and innovation.
Feminist political economy
This chapter reviews the Marxist-feminist strand within feminist political economy (FPE). As the largest and most influential body of work within FPE, this literature has two core characteristics. First, it explores the mutually constitutive relationship between gender and class, where class is defined as the relationship of a person/group to the production, appropriation, and distribution of surplus. Second, most contemporary feminist political …
The legacies of John Loxley
John Loxley, who was one of the most active people involved in the foundation and operation
Contemporary pathogens and the capitalist world food system
Zoonotic diseases like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that has caused the COVID-19 pandemic, are human bacterial and viral infections that originate in animals and which cross the species barrier. Over the course of the twenty-first century, the process of viruses transiting across the species barrier appears to have accelerated as a succession of new diseases has emerged. This paper argues that the forces accelerating the emergence of zoonotics lie in th…
The ties that bind? Agroecology and the agrarian question in the twenty-first century
This paper argues, firstly, that the notion that a resolution of the agrarian question requires the dissolution of small-scale farming is not what Marx thought. It argues, secondly, that extractivist capitalist agriculture is not developing the productive forces. It argues, thirdly, that contemporary agroecological farming is a knowledge-intensive form of production that can maximize the productivity of energy flows, which are central to the prod…
Kleinbäuerliche Landwirtschaft
Food Regime
Follow the yellow brick road”: Structural shortcomings in randomized control trials
Peasant class differentiation: A study in method with reference to Haryana, by Utsa Patnaik
In March of 1988, I was browsing in the myriad bookshops that used to inhabit Charing Cross Road in London. At one point, I wandered into a bookshop ran by Oxfam, which is still there, but which at
Alternatives: Fair trade in theory and practice
Fair trade has been presented by its advocates as a progressive rural development strategy. Fair trade is, however, a specific configuration of capitalist relations of exploitation in which exploitation takes two forms: the exploitation of labour and monopsonistic exploitation. Moreover, these processes are strongly gendered. As such, fair trade serves to deepen the character of the capitalist market imperatives subordinating peasant farmers and …
Economic efficiency and gender equity: A heuristic rationale
Focusing on the case of UNDP’s gender and economic policy training programme (2008–2015), this article examines efficiency arguments from a pedagogical perspective. It argues that efficiency, a concept with which policymakers are familiar, serves a useful heuristic purpose. Iterative, experience-based learning techniques (such as keeping time-use diaries) allow programme participants to examine the sources of gender inequalities in the labour mar…
Land's End: Review by A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi
As a distinct field of investigation, ‘peasant studies’ emerged during the 1960s and early 1970s rooted in a triptych of complementary but distinct epistemological approaches: theories of agrarian
Introducing a virtual special issue: The state of development studies / Lancement d'un numéro spécial virtuel : l’état des études du développement
That there is a pressing need for development studies remains self-evident. Officially, there are 795 million people in developing countries classified as food insecure, and with 896 million people
One Stone Is Enough to Drive Away a Hundred Birds: Peasants, Land and Resistance in Contemporary Afghanistan
Five books on the war in Afghanistan and contemporary Pakhtun life are reviewed from the perspective of the insights they provide into peasant resistance to the Afghan government and the United States. It is argued that while these books are important in improving our understanding of peasant resistance to the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, with the exception of the monograph by Ahmed they offer only a partial account of the dynamics of resistan…
The 2015 World Development Report: Three perspectives / Le Rapport sur le développement dans le monde 2015 : trois perspectives
The 2015 World Development Report: three perspectives / Le Rapport sur le développement dans le monde 2015 : trois perspectives." Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 36(4), pp. 573–574
L'avenir de la Revue: Présence et pertinence / Relevance and visibility: the CJDS moving forward
Accelerating towards food sovereignty
Rural social movements and urban food activists have sought to build food sovereignty because it has the potential to be the foundation of an alternative food system, transcending the deep-seated social, economic and ecological contradictions of the global food economy. However, continuing to build food sovereignty requires changes to global and local food systems that have to be undertaken in the messy reality of the present. This article theref…
The antinomies of food financialization
Poor economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
Randomized control trials (RCTs) have become hegemonic in the practice of impact assessment, through which the effectiveness of development interventions are evaluated, by both state and non-state
Food
Contextualising land grabbing: Contemporary land deals, the global subsistence crisis and the world food system
This article analytically contextualises the spate of contemporary land deals popularly known as ‘land grabbing’ by locating such deals within the processes that simultaneously underpin the capitalist restructuring of global agriculture and deepen the global subsistence crisis. The article situates contemporary land deals within the context of recent rises in food prices, offers a precise definition of land grabbing and reviews the global public …
Surveying the agrarian question (part 2): Current Debates and Beyond
This two-part article surveys the origin, development and current meaning of the 'agrarian question'. Part One of the survey explored the history of the agrarian question, elaborating its origin in the work of Marx, Engels, Kautsky, and Lenin, and its development in the work of Preobrazhensky, Dobb, Brenner, and others. Part Two of the survey identifies seven current variants of the agrarian question and critically interrogates these variants in …
Surveying the agrarian question (part 1): Unearthing Foundations, Exploring Diversity
This two-part article surveys the origin, development, and current meaning of the 'agrarian question'. Part one of the survey explores the history of the agrarian question, elaborating its origin in the work of Marx, Engels, Kautsky, and Lenin, and its development in the work of Preobrazhensky, Dobb, Brenner, and others. Part two of the survey identifies seven current variants of the agrarian question and critically interrogates these variants in…
Land, markets and neoliberal enclosure: An Agrarian Political Economy Perspective
Market-led agrarian reform is a part of neoliberal agrarian restructuring. It is premised on assumptions that fail to recognise the socially embedded character of land transfers. Agrarian political economy offers an understanding of the processes surrounding land transfers that emphasises social embeddedness. As a consequence of the specific characteristics of neoliberal enclosure market imperatives are now used to deepen capitalist social proper…
Contextualising land grabbing: Contemporary land deals, the global subsistence crisis and the world food system
This article analytically contextualises the spate of contemporary land deals popularly known as ‘land grabbing’ by locating such deals within the processes that simultaneously underpin the capitalist restructuring of global agriculture and deepen the global subsistence crisis. The article situates contemporary land deals within the context of recent rises in food prices, offers a precise definition of land grabbing and reviews the global public …
The ties that bind? Agroecology and the agrarian question in the twenty-first century
This paper argues, firstly, that the notion that a resolution of the agrarian question requires the dissolution of small-scale farming is not what Marx thought. It argues, secondly, that extractivist capitalist agriculture is not developing the productive forces. It argues, thirdly, that contemporary agroecological farming is a knowledge-intensive form of production that can maximize the productivity of energy flows, which are central to the prod…
Vietnam's Agriculture: Processes of Rich Peasant Accumulation and Mechanisms of Social Differentiation
Vietnam's agrarian transition is reviewed and, against the World Bank view that land markets in Vietnam have been pro-poor, it is suggested that access to land has become stratified within specific provinces, districts and communes. Aggregate data and field research both demonstrate that the technical coefficients of production differ between farms when grouped according to a proxy for wealth, and that this is correlated with productivity per uni…
(Re)imagining Agrarian Relations? TheWorld Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development
You are not excused from cooking”: Peasants and the gender division of labor in Pakistan
This paper provides quantitative evidence of a gender division of labor within the households of four peasant classes living in two villages in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. The gender division of labor results in a disproportionate share of total household work being performed by women. Further, the paper demonstrates that an improvement in the economic status of households leads to increased work demands being placed upon women.…
Are ‘Landlords Taking Back the Land’? An Essay on the Agrarian Transition in Vietnam
Confronting Fiji Futures
Fiji, post-independence, has seen several governments, two military coups and amidst sweeping social, economic and political changes, the presence of divisive identity politics in its journey towards a united, collective Fiji community. Confronting Fiji Futures takes in these landmark events and eventualities, and aims at a forward-looking assessment of the realities facing Fiji in the present and the future. It focuses on the period of the coups…
Accelerating towards food sovereignty
Rural social movements and urban food activists have sought to build food sovereignty because it has the potential to be the foundation of an alternative food system, transcending the deep-seated social, economic and ecological contradictions of the global food economy. However, continuing to build food sovereignty requires changes to global and local food systems that have to be undertaken in the messy reality of the present. This article theref…
Modernising subordination? A South Asian perspective on theWorld Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development
The World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development argues that the solution to rural poverty in South Asia is through commercial smallholder farming, rural waged labour in farm and non-farm activities, or outmigration. Critically evaluating the Report from a South Asian perspective on the basis of agrarian structure, market-led agrarian transformation, the power of monopoly capital, and the option of off-farm livelihoods, it is argued…
I will follow? Authoritarian populism, past and present
Scoones et al. [2018. "Emancipatory Rural Politics: Confronting Authoritarian Populism." The Journal of Peasant Studies 45 (1): 1-20] suggests that the contemporary rural world can be characterized as having distinct forms of authoritarian populism. This article argues that key aspects of authoritarian populism are not seen across the breadth and depth of the contemporary rural world, and, as such, the use of authoritarian populism can be politic…
Agrarian classes in Pakistan: An empirical test of Patnaik's labour-exploitation criterion
The Marxist analysis of agrarian change has as its basis peasant class differentiation. This article presents a method of evaluating the economic characteristics of peasant classes. After applying the evaluating method to a sample of households in Pakistan, tabulating the results and running statistical tests it is found that there are four peasant classes. However, evidence indicates fetters on polarization and accumulation from the spatial coex…
Penalizing patients and rewarding providers: User charges and health care utilization in Vietnam
The introduction of a comprehensive system of user charges in 1995 provided public health facilities in Vietnam, especially hospitals, with a growing source of revenue. By 1998 revenues from user charges accounted for 30% of public hospital revenues. Increasingly, provider incomes have relied on fee revenues and provision-based bonuses, the effect of which is that a poorly regulated fee-for-service system has replaced a salary system based upon a…
Poor economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
Randomized control trials (RCTs) have become hegemonic in the practice of impact assessment, through which the effectiveness of development interventions are evaluated, by both state and non-state
Land Reform, Rural Social Relations and the Peasantry
A new book, Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform, edited by Peter Rosset, Raj Patel and Michael Courville is considered. This book, via both general analytical treatment and a series of case studies set in Latin America, Asia and Africa, offers a powerful critique of the World Bank's market-led agrarian reform (MLAR) and provides an alternative model of agrarian reform, the 'food sovereignty movement', that has been articulated by …
The agrarian question, past and present
Capitalism from Above and Capitalism from Below: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy, by Terence J. Byres. London: Macmillan Press, 1996. Pp.xxiv + 490. £60 (hardback). ISBN 0 333 66657 7 In his Capitalism from Above and Capitalism from Below: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy, T.J. Byres has as his concern an examination of the contemporary relevance of critical issues surrounding the development of agriculture in capitalist societ…
Contemporary pathogens and the capitalist world food system
Zoonotic diseases like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that has caused the COVID-19 pandemic, are human bacterial and viral infections that originate in animals and which cross the species barrier. Over the course of the twenty-first century, the process of viruses transiting across the species barrier appears to have accelerated as a succession of new diseases has emerged. This paper argues that the forces accelerating the emergence of zoonotics lie in th…
Tax-free manufacturing in Fiji: An evaluation
Additional informationNotes on contributorsA. Haroon Akram-LodhiMy thanks to officials at the Ministry of Trade and Commerce, the Ministry of Finance, and the Reserve Bank. My thanks also to Susan Johnson for constructive comments. The usual disclaimers apply
Peasant class differentiation: A study in method with reference to Haryana, by Utsa Patnaik
In March of 1988, I was browsing in the myriad bookshops that used to inhabit Charing Cross Road in London. At one point, I wandered into a bookshop ran by Oxfam, which is still there, but which at
Women stay behind and grow the food: Agricultural productivity and the interstices of petty commodity production and reproductive labour in Tanzania
Inspired by the work of Carmen Diana Deere, this paper examines how an analysis of the work of rural production, even when gendered, is compromised if it does not incorporate reproductive labour. The paper presents estimates of the gender yield gap in agricultural crop productivity in Tanzania, along with the statistical causes of the gender yield gap, in order to demonstrate what is and why it matters. The paper then shows that the gender yield …
Follow the yellow brick road”: Structural shortcomings in randomized control trials
One Stone Is Enough to Drive Away a Hundred Birds: Peasants, Land and Resistance in Contemporary Afghanistan
Five books on the war in Afghanistan and contemporary Pakhtun life are reviewed from the perspective of the insights they provide into peasant resistance to the Afghan government and the United States. It is argued that while these books are important in improving our understanding of peasant resistance to the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, with the exception of the monograph by Ahmed they offer only a partial account of the dynamics of resistan…
The antinomies of food financialization
Class and chauvinism in Sri Lanka
Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthe…
The political economy of trade liberalization in India
Tax-free manufacturing in Fiji: An evaluation
Additional informationNotes on contributorsA. Haroon Akram-LodhiMy thanks to officials at the Ministry of Trade and Commerce, the Ministry of Finance, and the Reserve Bank. My thanks also to Susan Johnson for constructive comments. The usual disclaimers apply
Agrarian classes in Pakistan: An empirical test of Patnaik's labour-exploitation criterion
The Marxist analysis of agrarian change has as its basis peasant class differentiation. This article presents a method of evaluating the economic characteristics of peasant classes. After applying the evaluating method to a sample of households in Pakistan, tabulating the results and running statistical tests it is found that there are four peasant classes. However, evidence indicates fetters on polarization and accumulation from the spatial coex…
M.H. Khan, A.V. Chayanov and the family farms of the North‐West Frontier Province
Mahmood Hasan Khan has argued that the agrarian structure of Pakistan's North‐West Frontier Province resembles that described in Russia in the early twentieth century by Alexander Vasil'evich Chayanov. The purpose of this article is to examine the validity of such an argument. After identifying changes in the agrarian structure of the Frontier since 1947, Chayanov's theory of peasant economy is empirically tested. Despite an absence of wage labou…
You are not excused from cooking”: Peasants and the gender division of labor in Pakistan
This paper provides quantitative evidence of a gender division of labor within the households of four peasant classes living in two villages in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. The gender division of labor results in a disproportionate share of total household work being performed by women. Further, the paper demonstrates that an improvement in the economic status of households leads to increased work demands being placed upon women.…
Structural adjustment and the agrarian question in Fiji
Additional informationNotes on contributorsA. Haroon Akram-LodhiInstitute of Social Studies, An earlier version of this article was presented to the Rural Development Seminar, Institute of Social Studies, the Hague in December 1995. My thanks to M. Wuyts, B. O'Laughlin, and all other participants. My thanks also to J. Cameron. Any errors and omissions are the responsibility of the author
The agrarian question, past and present
Capitalism from Above and Capitalism from Below: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy, by Terence J. Byres. London: Macmillan Press, 1996. Pp.xxiv + 490. £60 (hardback). ISBN 0 333 66657 7 In his Capitalism from Above and Capitalism from Below: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy, T.J. Byres has as his concern an examination of the contemporary relevance of critical issues surrounding the development of agriculture in capitalist societ…
A Bitter Pill? Peasants and Sugarcane Markets in Northern Pakistan
Trouble in Paradise? Savings and Growth in Fiji, 1970-2001
This article reviews Fiji's macroeconomic performance and assesses the relative significance of foreign exchange, domestic savings and public sector resources on Fiji's economic growth by formulating and estimating a three-gap model. The foreign exchange gap equation indicates a sharp tradeoff between investment and capacity utilization. The government savings constraint also appears to be binding. The model is then simulated for the period betwe…
Like an act of God’: Land, water and social power in northern Pakistan 1
This article uses a case study of the Salinity Control and Reclamation Project of Mardan, northern Pakistan, to critically examine how the impact of a rural infrastructure project designed to improve water delivery can be compromised by the distribution of land ownership. The article demonstrates that the positive impact of infrastructural investment on farm yields can be translated into much more limited gains in income when farmers must rent la…
We Earn Only for You: Peasants and 'Real' Markets in Northern Pakistan
This article analyses the realisation of the exchange-value of wheat in 'real' markets in northern Pakistan. Three 'real' markets are investigated: land, fertilizer and output. It is found that members of the dominant classes-landlords, industrial capital and merchant capital-are able to 'regulate' wheat production and processing markets. However, the members of the peasant classes require access to such markets in order to acquire necessary use-…
Confronting Fiji Futures
Fiji, post-independence, has seen several governments, two military coups and amidst sweeping social, economic and political changes, the presence of divisive identity politics in its journey towards a united, collective Fiji community. Confronting Fiji Futures takes in these landmark events and eventualities, and aims at a forward-looking assessment of the realities facing Fiji in the present and the future. It focuses on the period of the coups…
All Decisions Are Top-Down: Engendering Public Expenditure in Vietnam
Between October 1999 and June 2000 a joint government-donor working group undertook a public expenditure review in Vietnam that was supposed to use "gender issues" as a cross-cutting theme. The article discusses ways in which a gender analysis could have been incorporated into a review of public expenditure, and examines why this did not happen in the end. Flaws in the process reduced the scope of gender analysis. Institutional constraints on the…
Are ‘Landlords Taking Back the Land’? An Essay on the Agrarian Transition in Vietnam
Penalizing patients and rewarding providers: User charges and health care utilization in Vietnam
The introduction of a comprehensive system of user charges in 1995 provided public health facilities in Vietnam, especially hospitals, with a growing source of revenue. By 1998 revenues from user charges accounted for 30% of public hospital revenues. Increasingly, provider incomes have relied on fee revenues and provision-based bonuses, the effect of which is that a poorly regulated fee-for-service system has replaced a salary system based upon a…
Vietnam's Agriculture: Processes of Rich Peasant Accumulation and Mechanisms of Social Differentiation
Vietnam's agrarian transition is reviewed and, against the World Bank view that land markets in Vietnam have been pro-poor, it is suggested that access to land has become stratified within specific provinces, districts and communes. Aggregate data and field research both demonstrate that the technical coefficients of production differ between farms when grouped according to a proxy for wealth, and that this is correlated with productivity per uni…
Land, markets and neoliberal enclosure: An Agrarian Political Economy Perspective
Market-led agrarian reform is a part of neoliberal agrarian restructuring. It is premised on assumptions that fail to recognise the socially embedded character of land transfers. Agrarian political economy offers an understanding of the processes surrounding land transfers that emphasises social embeddedness. As a consequence of the specific characteristics of neoliberal enclosure market imperatives are now used to deepen capitalist social proper…
The Power of Everyday Politics: How Vietnamese Peasants Transformed National Policy by Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet
Land Reform, Rural Social Relations and the Peasantry
A new book, Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform, edited by Peter Rosset, Raj Patel and Michael Courville is considered. This book, via both general analytical treatment and a series of case studies set in Latin America, Asia and Africa, offers a powerful critique of the World Bank's market-led agrarian reform (MLAR) and provides an alternative model of agrarian reform, the 'food sovereignty movement', that has been articulated by …
State, civil society and Sardar Sarovar
The Sardar Sarovar Project is highly contentious, within and between state governments, international multilateral institutions, non-governmental organizations, and civil society. Ranjit Dwivedi offers an ambitious, multidimensional and critical exploration of this project in Conflict and Collective Action. The development context within which it is embedded is described and assessed, and the intentions and meanings that structure state and non-s…
The World Food Economy by Douglas Southgate, Douglas H. Graham and Luther Tweeten
(Re)imagining Agrarian Relations? TheWorld Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development
World Food Security: A History since 1945
(2009). World Food Security: A History since 1945. Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'etudes du developpement: Vol. 28, No. 3-4, pp. 605-608
Fair Trade Coffee: The Prospects and Pitfalls of Market-Driven Social Justice by Gavin Fridell
Political science (43 works) · Economics (32 works) · Geography (26 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (25 works) · Law (24 works) · Agriculture (23 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (19 works) · Agrarian society (17 works)