State Socialism and the Rural Household: How Women's Handloom Weaving (and Pig-Raising, Firewood-Gathering, Food-Scavenging) Subsidized Chinese Accumulation

Massive, rapid capital accumulation is usually associated with capitalist development, but historically, socialist states were among the most aggressive accumulators. Accumulation in Maoist China was faster than even in Stalin's Soviet Union, despite the fact that China was a much poorer country with fewer natural resources. China's accumulation rate, defined as the ratio of gross capital formation to gross national income, reached twenty-five to thirty per cent in 1957–1962, peaking at forty-four per cent in 1958. This level proved to be unsustainable, but after a slowdown in the early 1960s, the rate rose back to thirty-six percent.1 As is well known, the cost of China's rapid industrialization was borne mostly by its rural population.2 My aim in this chapter is to show that it was disproportionally borne by rural women, who contributed to socialist accumulation in direct and indirect ways: directly, as collective farmers, growers of the grain, cotton, soy, tea, sugarcane, etc. that fueled industrialization; and indirectly, by biologically, socially, and materially reproducing the country's labor force and by submitting to a regime of extreme austerity that allowed the government to extract scarce resources and direct them to the cities and the export trade. My argument proceeds in three steps. I will begin with an overview of socialist primitive accumulation under Mao, its preconditions and mechanisms, and the ways it replicated earlier Soviet policies or diverged from them. Next, I will discuss the various ways in which rural women's work underpinned capital accumulation and laid the foundation for China's rapid industrialization in the years since Mao's death. Finally, I will look in some detail at rural women's work at home, to show how their self-exploitation, overwork, and underconsumption in the domestic realm created the conditions for accumulation. My focus is on cotton work – both cotton cultivation and domestic cloth production – but I will also look at other ways in which domestic work supported accumulation

Moins pour plus : surtravail des femmes rurales et sous-consommation dans la Chine de Mao

Pour des raisons pratiques autant qu’idéologiques, les États socialistes ont souhaité la pleine participation des femmes au travail, qui supposait leur libération des tâches ménagères dévoreuses de temps. Ils ont, pour la plupart, passé un contrat social implicite avec leurs populations féminines : les femmes à l’usine et au champ, en échange d’une réduction des tâches domestiques, soit à travers leur socialisation, soit par la fourniture de produits finis allégeant le travail. L’article entend montrer que la Chine rurale fut une exception à ce modèle. Alors que la participation des femmes rurales au travail augmentait fortement, le rationnement de marchandises peu abondantes et une politique empêchant les paysans de disposer d’argent liquide faisaient que les textiles et autres produits industriels sont restés hors de portée de la majorité des ruraux. En conséquence, des millions de femmes rurales ont continué, au prix d’un travail manuel laborieux, à vêtir et nourrir leurs familles, à un moment où triplait leur participation aux travaux des champs. Cette double charge particulièrement intense a permis à l’État chinois une rapide accumulation.For ideological and practical reasons, socialist states desired the full participation of women in the workforce. This pre-supposed their liberation from time-consuming housework. Most socialist states entered an implicit social contract with the female population: women would work in the factories and fields; in exchange, the state would reduce their domestic burdens, either through the socialization of housework or through the provision of labour-saving finished products. Rural China, this article argues, was an exception to this pattern. While rural women’s labour participation rose dramatically, state rationing of scarce goods, and policies that kept cash out of rural people’s hands ensured that machine-made textiles and other industrial products remained out of reach for many rural people. In consequence, millions of rural women continued to clothe and feed their families through laborious manual work, at a time when participation in agricultural labour tripled. This particularly intense double burden was the basis for rapid accumulation by the Chinese state

Zum Einfluß von Situationsmodellen auf die Verarbeitung konsistenter versus inkonsistenter Textinformation

Die vorliegende Untersuchung beschäftigt sich mit der Rolle von Situationsmodellen beim Textverstehen. Unter Situationsmodellen werden allgemein analoge, bisweilen bildhaft-visuelle, Repräsentationen verstanden, die räumliche und funktionale Beziehungen homomorph zu natürlichen Situationen abbilden. Situationsmodellen wird eine entscheidende Rolle bei der Interpretation von Sätzen in Textzusammenhängen, insbesondere bei der Zuweisung von Referenzobjekten zu Ausdrücken (z.B. in der Anaphernresolution), zugesprochen. In Anlehnung an Glenberg, Meyer & Lindem (1987) soll diese Studie die Rolle von Situationsmodellen beim Textverstehen weiter klären. Dazu wurde in kurzen Geschichten, bestehend aus jeweils fünf Sätzen, ein Zielobjekt (Target) entweder mit anderen Objekten oder Agenten im aktuellen Situationsmodell räumlich verbunden ('assoziiert') oder von diesen getrennt ('dissoziiert'). Der letzte (kritische) Satz jeder Geschichte war dann jeweils konsistent oder inkonsistent mit der Lokation des Targets. Erhoben wurden Lesezeiten für den letzten Satz sowie Fehlerraten und Reaktionszeiten bei der Beantwortung eines Behauptungssatzes, der jeder Geschichte folgte. Unsere Hypothese ist, daß unter der Bedingung 'assoziiert' die Lesezeiten für konsistente Sätze kürzer ausfallen als für inkonsistente, daß sich diese Differenz unter der Bedingung 'dissoziiert' aber nicht findet, und begründen dies folgendermaßen: Hängt das Verstehen des kritischen Satzes vom jeweils aktuellen Situationsmodell ab, so führt eine inkonsistente Aussage über die Lokation des Targets nur dann zu Interpretationsschwierigkeiten, wenn dieses auch im Situationsmodell repräsentiert ist. Falls dies, wie für die dissoziierte Bedingung angenommen, nicht mehr der Fall ist, sollten auch inkonsistente Informationen keine Verständnisprobleme bereiten. Unsere Befunde stützen in der Tendenz die Hypothese, jedoch nur für einige der Geschichten. Für diese sind die Unterschiede in den Lesezeiten unter der assoziierten Bedingung größer als unter der dissoziierten. Wegen erheblicher Varianz zwischen den Geschichten wurde das Ergebnis nicht signifikant. Eine Analyse der Fehlerraten ließ einen Haupteffekt des Faktors Konsistenz erkennen: Nach inkonsistenten Schlußsätzen kommt es häufiger zur Fehllokalisierung assoziierter und dissoziierter Objekte. Weitere Untersuchungen, in denen die Konstruktion der Geschichten strengeren Kriterien folgt, damit eindeutigere Schlußfolgerungn möglich sind, sollen folgen

‘Classes of Labour’ at the Margins of Global Commodity Chains in India and China

This article deploys the concept of ‘classes of labour’ to map and compare non‐factory labour relations in the garment chain across Delhi and Shanghai metropolitan areas. It contributes to commodity studies by unpacking the great complexity of mechanisms of ‘adverse incorporation’ of informal work in global commodity chains and production circuits. Field findings reveal the great social differentiation at work in informalized settings in the two countries, and suggest that while the margins of garment work are characterized by high levels of vulnerability, they may also open up new possibilities for workers to resist or re‐appropriate some degree of control over their labour and reproductive time. While these possibilities depend on regional trajectories, informal labour arrangements do not only result from capital's quest for flexibility. Workers actively participate in shaping their own labour geography, even when exposed to high employment insecurity. The conclusions more broadly discuss the merits of comparative analysis to study labour in global production circuits

Capitalist Expansion and the Decline of Common Property Ecosystems: Lessons from China, Vietnam and India

This article identifies some of the multiple processes of capitalist development through which access to common property resources and their utility for communities are undermined. Three sites in upland Asia demonstrate how patterns of exclusion are mediated by the unique and selective trajectories through which capital expands, resulting in a decline of common property ecosystems. The process is mediated by economic stress, ecological degradation and political processes such as state-sanctioned enclosure. The first case study from Shaoguan, South China, indicates how rapid capitalist industrialization has depleted the aquatic resource base, undermining the livelihoods of fishing households yet to be absorbed into the urban working class. At the second site, in Phu Yen, Vietnam, capitalist development is limited. However, indirect articulations between capitalism on the lowlands and the peasant economy of the uplands is driving the commercialization of agriculture and fishing and undermining the utility of communal river and lake ecosystems. In the third site, Buxa in West Bengal, India, there is only selective capitalist development, but patterns of resource extraction established during the colonial period and contemporary neoliberal ‘conservation’ agendas have directly excluded communities from forest resources. Restrictions on access oblige them to contribute subsidized labour to local enterprises. The article thus shows how communities which are differentially integrated into the global economy are excluded from natural resources through complex means