University of Toronto
Department of Political Science
POL 410H1S
Topics in Comparative Politics III: Peasants in the Global Political Economy
Instructor: Jordan A. Guthrie
Email: [email protected]
Office Hours: TBA
OVERVIEW
This course introduces upper level students to the main currents of agrarian studies and agrarian
change within the broader subfield of comparative politics. Transformations from agrarian
society have been central to the genesis of every major industrial power, and issues of agrarian
change are crucial to understanding dynamics of political economy and development in the
contemporary Global South. What is the “agrarian question”? What is the role of rural society in
the course of development? How do changes in global political-economic dynamics affect rural
actors and production? How do local social structures shape the impact of global forces?
Answers to these questions are explored in three parts. The first surveys theoretical approaches
to agrarian transformation and change, including liberal and Marxian understandings of progress
and the role and fate of the peasantry in development, as well as contemporary neoliberal
approaches to rural poverty-reduction and market-led development. The second part turns
attention to specific issues in the political economy of agrarian societies, exploring the dynamics
and impacts of changes in rural land, capital, and labour relations. The third part explores arenas
of contestation and resistance, theoretical responses to contemporary neoliberal orthodoxy, and
the future of agrarian societies and production. Throughout, debates about state formation,
historiography, gender relations, and agricultural production are substantiated by case studies
from Africa, Latin America, and South Asia.
ORGANIZATION AND REQUIREMENTS
Sessions will involve guided discussions centred on required readings and spurred by 30 minute
student presentations. Each student will jointly lead one presentation introducing the session’s
topic, with time equally divided among presenters in each class. Please note that the instructor
will terminate presentations at the end of the allotted time, so be careful in gauging presentation
length. Presentation guidelines will be discussed and dates/topics assigned in the first session.
Course requirements are as follows:
 Oral presentation (20%)
Available topics are sessions 2 through 11. Presentations should not be based on
the topic of your research paper. They should be based on, but not a summary of,
the required readings for that week, as well as some additional research. The time
limit for presenters in pairs is 15 minutes each, and 10 minutes each where a
group of three is necessary. In total, each weekly presentation will be 30 minutes.

Short paper/Critical reflection (20%)
These papers should be no longer than 10 double-spaced pages, with one-inch
margins on all sides and written in 12 point Times New Roman font, and should
critically assess the major theoretical approaches to agrarian change discussed in
sessions 1 through 5. While guidelines will be discussed in class, emphasis is on
concise and focused thought, identification of key theoretical currents, and the
articulation of strong theoretical argumentation. This paper is to be handed in at
the beginning of the session on the due date.
DUE DATE: 18 July

Research paper (40%)
Research papers should be no longer than 25 pages, also with one-inch margins
on all sides and in 12 point Times News Roman font. These papers are to be
based loosely on a weekly discussion topic from sessions 6 through 9, but must
include significant independent research and draw on theoretical material from the
entire course. Topics must be officially approved by the instructor by 1 August at
the latest. Papers must be submitted to the Porter’s Lodge at Massey College by
5:00pm on the due date.
DUE DATE: 15 August

Contribution to seminar discussions (20%)
Steady but quiet attendance will yield only 40% of the total grade for this
element. Consistent, active, and informed participation will yield higher grades.
As a senior seminar, emphasis is on critical thinking and discussion within a
collegial environment
LATE PENALTY FOR WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS: 2.5% per day, including weekends,
the only exception being an extension granted by the instructor as a result of documented
illness preventing the timely completion of the assignment in question.
ADDITIONAL NOTES
Plagiarism is a serious academic offence and will be dealt with accordingly. For further
clarification and information on plagiarism, please see Writing at the University of Toronto
at http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/using-services.
Students are also strongly advised to keep rough and draft work as well as hard copies of their
written assignments and relevant research. These should be kept until the graded assignments
have been returned and the grades posted on ROSI.
COURSE READINGS
This syllabus identifies the required readings for each session. Familiarity with required readings
prior to each session is absolutely essential to a stimulating seminar (and an high participation
grade). Readings that are not available on Blackboard, are to be accessed in the Course Reserves
section of Robarts Library.
A supplementary bibliography will also be made available at the beginning of the course. This
will be particularly useful in preparing presentations and written assignments as well as
following up on topics of general interest.
SECTION I: AGRARIAN TRANSFORMATIONS AND CHANGE: THEORIES AND
PRACTICE
Session 1: 4 July
Introduction: Mapping the study of Agrarian Change
Bardhan, Pranab, “Alternative Approaches to the Theory of Institutions in Economic
Development” in P. Bardhan (ed.) The Economic Theory of Agrarian Institutions, Clarendon,
1991. Pp. 3-17.
Borras, Saturnino M., “Agrarian Change and Peasant Studies: Changes, Continuities and
Challenges – an Introduction,” Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1, 2009. Pp. 5-31.
Haroon Akram-Lodhi and Cristobal Kay, “The Agrarian Question: Peasants and Rural Change,”
in Akram-Lodhi and Kay (eds.) Peasants and Globalization: Political Economy, Rural
Transformation and the Agrarian Question, Routledge, 2009. Pp. 3-29.
Session 2: 9 July
Liberal traditions and historiography: The making of Modernization Theory
Constant, Benjamin, “The Liberty of Ancients Compared to that of Moderns,” in Constant:
Political Writings, Biancamaria trans. and ed., 1988. Pp. 1-14.
Rostow, W.W., The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, Cambridge
University Press, 1960. Pages TBA.
Mehta, Uday Singh, “Progress, Civilization, and Consent,” in Liberalism and Empire: A Study in
Nineteenth Century British Liberal Thought, University of Chicago, 1999. Pp. 77-115.
Session 3: 11 July
Class analysis and Marxian historiography
Bernstein, Howard R., “Marxist Historiography and the Methodology of Research Programs,”
History and Theory, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1981. Pp. 424-449.
Moore, Barrington, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the
Making of the Modern World, Beacon Press, 1966. Pp. 415-483.
Bernstein, Henry, “The Political Economy of Agrarian Change,” and “Class Formation in the
Countryside,” Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change: Agrarian Change and Peasant Studies,
Fernwood, 2010. Pp. 1-24, 101-112.
Byres, Terence J., “The Landlord Class, Peasant Differentiation, Class Struggle and the
Transition to Capitalism: England, France and Prussia Compared,” in Akram-Lodhi and Kay
(eds.) Peasants and Globalization, Routledge, 2009. Pp. 57-79.
Session 4: 16 July
The contemporary global context: neoliberal globalization and the agrarian question
Bates, Robert, Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural
Policies, University of California, 1981. Pp. 1-61
Sen, Amartya, “Markets, States, and Social Opportunity,” Development as Freedom, Oxford
University Press, 1999. Pp. 111-145.
Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira and Yoshiaki Nakano, “The Missing Social Contract: Governability
and Reform in Latin America,” in Oxhorn and Ducatenzeiler (eds.) What Kind of Democracy?
What Kind of Market: Latin America in the Age of Neoliberalism, Pennsylvania State University,
1998. Pp. 21-41.
Araghi, Farshad, “The Invisible Hand and the Visible Foot: Peasants, Dispossession and
Globalization,” in Akram-Lodhi and Kay (eds.) Peasants and Globalization, Routledge, 2009.
Pp. 111-138.
Session 5: 18 July
SHORT PAPER/CRITICAL REFLECTIONS DUE (20%)
From global to local: local politics and decentralization
Boone, Catherine, “Introduction,” and “Mapping Political Topography in Africa,” Political
Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice, Cambridge
University Press, 2003. Pp. 1-42.
Herring, Ronald J., “Contesting the ‘Great Transformation’: Local Struggles with the Market in
South India,” in J.C. Scott and N. Bhatt (eds.) Agrarian Studies: Synthetic Work at the Cutting
Edge, Yale University, 2001. Pp. 235-257.
Crook, Richard C., “Decentralization and Poverty Reduction in Africa: The Politics of LocalCentral Relations,” Public Administration and Development, Vol. 23, 2003. Pp. 77-88.
Snyder, Katherine A., “Building Democracy from Below: A Case from Rural Tanzania,” Journal
of Modern African Studies, Vol. 46, No. 2, 2008. Pp. 287-304.
SECTION II: POLITICAL ECONOMIES OF AGRARIAN CHANGE
Session 6: 23 July
Land: Tenurial reform in contemporary rural societies
De Soto, Hernando, “The Mystery of Legal Failure,” The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism
Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, Basic Books, 2000. Pp. 153-206.
Manji, Ambreena, “Introduction,” and “Contemporary Land Reform in Africa,” The Politics of
Land Reform in Africa: From Communal Tenure to Free Markets, Zed Books, 2006. Pp. 1-47.
Akram-Lodhi, A. Haroon, Cristobal Kay, and Saturnino Borras Jr. (2009), “The Political
Economy of Land and the Agrarian Question in an Era of Neoliberal Globalization” in
Akram-Lodhi and Kay (eds.) Peasants and Globalization, Routledge.
Tripp, Aili Mari, “Women’s Movements, Customary Law, and Land Rights in Africa: The Case
of Uganda, African Studies Quarterly, 2003. Pp. 1-16.
Session 7: 25 July
Capital, rural credit markets, and agrarian production
Basu, Kaushik, “Rural Credit Markets: The Structure of Interest Rates, Exploitation, and
Efficiency” in P. Bardhan (ed.) The Economic Theory of Agrarian Institutions, Clarendon, 1991.
Pp. 147-165.
De Soto, Hernando, “The Mystery of Capital,” The Mystery of Capital, Basic Books, 2000. Pp.
39-67.
Islam, Tazul, “Microcredit and Poverty Alleviation: Pluses and Minuses,” Microcredit and
Poverty Alleviation, Ashgate, 2007. Pp. 1-17.
Rankin, Katherine N., “Governing Development: Neoliberalism, Microcredit, and Rational
Economic Woman,” Economy and Society, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2001. Pp. 18-37.
Session 8: 30 July
Labour and agrarian livelihoods
Sarra Berry, “Exploitation without Dispossession: Markets, Networks, and Farmers’ Access to
Labor,” No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan
Africa, University of Wisconsin, 1993. Pp. 135-158.
Bryceson, Deborah Fahy, “African Peasants’ Centrality and Marginality: Rural Labour
Transformations” in Bryceson, Kay and Mooij (eds.) Disappearing Peasantries? Rural Labour
in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Intermediate Technology, 2000. Pp. 37-60.
Bernstein, Henry, “Production and Productivity,” Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change,
Fernwood, 2010. Pp. 13-24.
Watts, Michael J., “The Southern Question: Agrarian Questions of Labour and Capital,” in
Akram-Lodhi and Kay (eds.) Peasants and Globalization, Routledge, 2009. Pp. 262-288.
SECTION III: ONGOING STRUGGLES AND THE FUTURE OF AGRARIAN
SOCIETIES
Session 9: 1 August
Contestation and resistance
Scott, James C., “Normal Exploitation, Normal Resistance,” Weapons of the Weak: Everyday
Forms of Peasant Resistance, Yale University, 1985. Pp. 28-47.
Kerkvleit, Benedict J. Tria, “Everyday Politics in Peasant Societies (and Ours),” Journal of
Peasant Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1, 2009. Pp. 227-243.
Turner, Sarah and Dominique Caouette, “Agrarian Angst: Rural Resistance in Southeast Asia,”
Geography Compass, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2009. Pp. 950-975.
Borras, Saturnino M., Philip McMichael and Ian Scoones, “The Politics of Biofuels, Land and
Agrarian Change,” Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 37, No. 4, 2010. Pp. 575-592.
Session 10: 8 August
Modernity and its discontents
Escobar, Arturo, “Development and the Anthropology of Modernity,” and “Power and Visibility:
Tales of Peasants, Women, and the Environment,” Encountering Development: The Making and
Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton University, 1995. Pp. 3-20, 154-211.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History,” Provincializing Europe:
Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton University, 2000. Pp. 27-46.
Session 11: 13 August
“History in the Gear of Social Change”: Agrarian Societies and the Future
Pieterse, Jan Nederveen, “Futures of Development,” Development Theory:
Deconstructions/Reconstructions, Sage, 2001. Pp. 150-168.
Escobar, Arturo, “Economics and the Space of Modernity: Tales of Market, Production and
Labour,” Cultural Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2, 2005. Pp. 139-175.
Akram-Lodhi, Haroon and Cristobal Kay, “Neoliberal Globalization, the Traits of Rural
Accumulation and Rural Politics: The Agrarian Question in the Twenty-first Century,” in
Akram-Lodhi and Kay (eds.) Peasants and Globalization, Routledge, 2009. Pp. 315-336.
RESEARCH PAPER (40%) DUE: 15 AUGUST