Understanding the class position of family owned small scale agricultural production units, which constitute a common feature of the rural context in the later capitalized countries, have been one of the major discussion points in the Marxist literature. The continual existence of such a form of production organization with significant non-capitalist features under the enlarging capitalist organization of production despite the initial assumptions of Marxist analysis that it was a transitory form which will soon differentiate between proletariat and bourgeoisie have prompted a number if attempts at explaining the survival of this category. These debates have strongly influenced the analyses in the field of rural sociology from 1960s onwards, providing the conceptual tools for sociological analysis of rural relations of production.
This thesis engages in an attempt of re-appraising the theoretical debates within Marxist analysis of petty agricultural production organization together with considering the recent transnational reorganization of agricultural production. The neo-liberal retraction of state as a regulating force and loosening the protectionist policies has lead to the rise of the power of Trans-National Corporations (TNCs) in the field of agriculture in the past couple of decades. Contractual farming is defined as a major form of direct relationship TNCs establish with petty agricultural producers to exercise their determining power over the organization of agricultural production.
Together with a case study of contractual farming, the thesis discusses how could we define the class positions of this segment and whether their relationship with TNCs have a significant affect over our definitions.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12609651/index.pdf |
Date | 01 June 2008 |
Creators | Basaran, Kaan Evren |
Contributors | Ecevit, Mehmet Cihan |
Publisher | METU |
Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | M.S. Thesis |
Format | text/pdf |
Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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