This paper explores changing production relations in agriculture in context of increasingly widespread and longer-duration male outmigration, as against previous, short-duration and seasonal migration. It investigates how de facto women-heads of households (WHHs) are changing a resilient crop-sharing system in absence of adequate access to productive assets, formal training or experience in farming, and while contributing labour to farming and coping with gendered demands on their time. Based on qualitative inquiry in one of the poorest parts of South Asia, the (...) Eastern Gangetic Plains, the paper shows that a section of WHHs are replacing sharecropping arrangements with fixed-value rental arrangements that resemble commercial contracts. The paper ends with a discussion on the implications of this emerging development. (shrink)

According to literature,insecure land tenure biases against soilconservation on farmland. However, there islittle evidence to test whether farmers need toown their land to conserve it, or if long-termleases are adequate. One way to infer whetheror not different land tenure arrangementspromote long-term management is throughanalyzing the types of crops planted on fieldswith different land tenure arrangements.Perennials, forage legumes, grasslands, andgrain are all important parts of sustainablecrop rotation in southwest British Columbia butprovide little cash return in the year they areplanted. Annual crops (...) provide a high cashreturn but create soil conservation problems ifthey are planted too often. A comparison offields with different land tenures showed thatfarmers who own their land plant moreperennials, grain, and forage legumes thanfarmers who rent fields. Few differences wereobserved on fields with different leaselengths. This study leads to three overallconclusions. First, although results confirmthe literature, and insecure land tenure is areal obstacle to long-term soil conservation,it is not possible to assume that long-termleases will substitute for land ownership.Second, it is possible to use relativelyeasy-to-gather data on crop history to assessthe impact of tenure on farming. Third,intervening variables, in this case a programthat pays farmers to plant grasslands,over-rides the effect of insecure land tenureand creates incentives for owner-operators andtenant farmers alike to use crop managementthat protects soil fertility in the longterm. (shrink)

Agribusiness corporations primarily involved in providing livestock feed—colloquially known as the “ABCD” (Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge, Cargill, and the Louis Dreyfus Company)—have begun to enter the fishing industry around the world. I argue that this recent entry of agribusiness multinationals in aquaculture, focusing particularly on Cargill, arises to take advantage of strategic opportunities to proliferate, or create links with respect to feed production and development within value chains. Concerning such opportunities, as I document, Cargill first leveraged its access to (...) cheap, overproduced grains in the 1990s, developing ways to insert corn and soy into what it calls “aquafeed.” Next, the multinational firm began proliferating links within fishing industry value chains in the form of introducing new technical assistance services, as well as creating feed supplements and additives. As I explain, these efforts to proliferate links in the supply chain exist as opportunities to charge rents, or surplus profits, which is possible because Cargill retains the right to control the new products and services. An additional link in the chain includes how the corporation has expanded its role in the global food system from its past as an intermediary, to engaging consumers in direct ways by attempting to create their preferences. I conduct my analysis of Cargill’s corporate strategy by focusing on reporting from the fishing industry publication, Aquafeed News, detailing developments from 2000 through 2023. (shrink)

Many public debates about the societal significance and impact of agriculture are usefully framed by Paul Thompson’s distinction between the “agrarian” and the “industrial vision.” The key argument of the present paper is that the ongoing debate between these visions goes beyond academic philosophy and has direct effects on the political economy of agriculture by influencing the scope of rent-seeking activities that are undertaken primarily in the name of the agrarian vision. The existence of rent-seeking activities is shown (...) to reflect the fact that the agrarian vision is not universally supported, which is certainly true of the industrial vision as well. The key argument of the present paper is that these two philosophical visions of agriculture are not radically incongruent. Rather, they share a common ground within which they are even mutually supportive. If agricultural policy making is oriented toward this common ground, it may reduce overall dissatisfaction with the resulting institutional regime of agricultural production. Such an agricultural policy may also stimulate the emergence of new business practices that not only enable efficient agricultural production but also minimize negative ecological impact and preserve cultural landscapes. (shrink)

In the Global North, Urban Agriculture is being considered as a way to overcome malnutrition and promote local, ethical production. UA can be understood through two phenomena integral to the capitalist mode of production: capital centralisation and rent. Centralisation explains why capitalist agriculture industrialises, while rent provides a theoretical framework for understanding how social and spatial relations structure urban land uses. Urban farming can occupy niches of the capitalist marketplace; however, its prospects for replacing large-scale agriculture and providing (...) similar use-values are limited. Its expansion is bounded by rising land values expressed in rent, as Detroit’s urban farm, Markham’s food belt, Los Angeles’s community garden, and initiatives in other cities demonstrate. The key tasks for political ecologists are two-fold: situating UA within capital’s drive to accumulate and proposing strategic perspectives that challenge these inherent tendencies. (shrink)

The manuscripts of Cicero's De oratore divide into two families: mutili and integri. The oldest representatives of the mutilated family are Avranches 238 , Erlangen 380 , and London, Harley 2736 . A and H are independent of each other, and the best witnesses to the text of the lost archetype . E too is considered to be an independent witness. Since the work of E. Ströbel, dating from the early eighties of the last century, the view has been generally (...) held that E, though closely related to A, is not a descendant of it but a copy of a ‘gemellus’ of A. The stemma devised by Ströbel has remained essentially the same to the present day. (shrink)

Henryk Kamieński (1813–1866), a philosopher, economist, and theorist of struggle for national independence, idealized petty ownership as the most appropriate form of ownership both in ethical and economic aspects. He analyzed the problem on three levels. In his proposals for a specific solution of the agrarian question, presented in the Warsaw periodicals, Kamieński supported the introduction of agricultural rent paid by peasants and the abolishment of serfdom. Calling serfdom a land usury had an ethical implication. In the protection (...) of the manor over peasants Kamieński sees the desire of manor owners to hold the victims of this usury in their hands. Replacement of serfdom with an agricultural rent was for him the first step in granting landownership to peasants. Kamieński emphasizes that petty ownership is conducive to production growth. He believes that the spread of it is an opportunity for peasants to heighten their national consciousness and a chance of civilized advancement of Polish territories. This line of thinking is clearly evident in his studies published abroad, devoted to the conception of combining a national uprising with granting freehold to peasants. Kamieński also discusses the values of petty ownership in agriculture in his theoretical work Filozofia ekonomii materialnej ludzkiego społeczeństwa [Philosophy of material economics of human society], in which he presents his vision of a system of social justice. For him, petty ownership is a guarantee of respect for human rights, the most effective safeguard of preserving the autonomy of human individual. In this reasoning we could see certain elements of personalism, which brings Kamieński’s standpoint closer to that of Pope John Paul II. (shrink)

Reducing health disparities and improving health outcomes are fundamental principles in global health. Environmental justice remains underrecognized and undervalued as a key driver of health dispar...

Thanks to the work on the second MEGA, we have now a clearer idea of what Marx actually did between 1867 and his death in 1883. He studied and wrote a lot, not only notes and extracts but also n a series of new manuscripts for what should become volume II and III of Capital. These manuscripts show us Marx becoming aware of the still unsettled problems of his critique of political economy – like the problems involved in his theory (...) of money and in his theory of agricultural rent. They also show us the very modern combination of a sophisticated theoretical mind and an empirical and historical researcher that Marx actually was. (shrink)

The 1840s brought a certain revival both in intellectual life and efforts to modernize agriculture in the Kingdom of Poland. Count Andrzej Zamoyski (1800–1874) played an inspiring role here. In all his properties replaced feudal service by rents. Moreover, even though the villein system was still in place, he was a spokesman for a transition to this more modern form of managing for the totality of the landed gentry. On his initiative, the periodical “Roczniki Gospodarstwa Krajowego” (“Polish Farming Annual”) came (...) out. “Roczniki” brought in representatives of the Kingdom’s landed gentry supporting actions aimed at economic development and the promotion of civilization, soon to be called organic work. Representatives of the landowning party supporting the idea of organic work were popularly called “klemensowczycy”, because of their participation in conventions held in Andrzej Zamoyski’s estate in the village of Klemensów. The leader of the “klemensowczycy” blazed a trail for Poland’s progress of civilization, where he was characterized by Occidentalism, understood as referring to historical experiences of the Western world. (shrink)

Alternative food movements work to create more environmentally and economically sustainable food systems, but vary widely in their advocacy for social, racial and environmental justice. However, even those food justice activists explicitly dedicated to equity must respond to the unintended consequences of their work. This paper analyzes the work of activists in Oakland, CA, who have increasingly realized that their gardens, health food stores and farm-to-table restaurants play a role in what scholars have called green gentrification, the upscaling of neighborhoods (...) through the creation of environmental amenities. Gentrification has had grave consequences for the low-income communities of color that food justice activists seek to serve. Activists are reflexive about this dynamic, and have developed strategies to push back against displacement. Most commonly, non-profit organizations and individual social entrepreneurs found businesses that seek to raise the profile of people of color in the trendy Oakland food scene while employing long-term residents in well-paying, green jobs. However, while these efforts are an essential component of a broader agenda to create both food justice and development without displacement, even these relatively high paying “good food jobs” cannot keep up with escalating rents. For this reason, we also highlight the direct action and policy-oriented strategies engaged by a smaller number of food justice activists, and argue that these are necessary compliments to a market-based approach. (shrink)

A largely qualitative body of literature has contributed to understanding the contradictory dimensions of community gardening as a social justice tool. Building on this literature through a city-wide, quantitative intervention, this paper focuses on community gardening as a facilitator of ecological gentrification in St. Louis, Missouri. Combining the analytical lenses of spatial justice, urban political ecology, and the rent gap theory of gentrification, I deploy spatial regression analysis to show that community gardening was positively associated with gentrification in St. (...) Louis between the years 2000 and 2010, as measured by the growth of high socioeconomic status residents in each neighborhood. This result suggests that a sociospatial dialectic exists in which the implementation of a community garden, a change in the use of urban space, leads to unintended social outcomes. Contextualizing this finding within the broader literature, I conclude that the potential of community gardening as an instrument for spatial justice is contingent on institutional support against larger-scale processes, like gentrification, that lead to spatially unjust outcomes. (shrink)

The importance of the collective management of immaterial resources is a key variable in the valorisation of products in a post-industrial economy. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how, in post-industrial economies, it is possible to devise alternative forms of mediation between producers and consumers, such as organic farmers' markets, to curb the appropriation of rent by transnational and/or local business elites from the value created by immaterial resources. More specifically, we analyse those aspects of the collective (...) management of ethical values that, in the case of organic farmers' markets, can be a strategic source of competitive advantage for local producers. In this paper, the Ecomercado de Granada is studied as an example of mediation between production and consumption in a post-industrial economy. (shrink)

The Umayyad State is widely criticized in the West as well as in its own region. Actually, this is normal situation. Because Hijaz Arabs who had no state experience, built a multinational state in short period of time. Yet, this caused serious matters. The fundamental point of the criticism is the payment of tax, also called jizya, which is taken from residents (mawālī) of Khorasan and Transoxania. However, in most studies on this subject, it is understood that the jizya taken (...) from mawālī is combined jizya and kharja, which is different type of tax. Although mawālī was tested for whether it passes religious criteria in critic periods or not, this situation did not last throughout the entire Umayyad history. It was continued for fifteen and twenty years. In this period, it was understood that the jizya tax taken from the mawālī, was caused by the unlawful practices of some regional governors, most of them were non-Muslim local tax officials and all their purpose was to collect the amount of combined jizya. It cannot be said that the Umayyad caliphs officially ordered written instructions in order to take the conceptual sense from the mawālī part. But some Khorasan governors, who detected that taxes were decreasing, blinked at the collection of the jizya from the mawālī.Summary: The tax policies of a state are of great importance for the political, social, and economic stability. A regular tax system minimizes the problems that the state mechanism might face. The establishment of a fair and just tax scheme is undoubtedly possible with a deep-rooted state experience. It is known that the Umayyad state which is the subject of this research has no state experience. Furthermore, ruling to the area which is on 13 million square kilometers and reaching to Kashgar in the East and to South France in the West and governing this multinational structure who are living on these regions, put the Umayyad government in a very difficult condition. With the vast borders and the stoppage of the conquests, some political, social and economic problems were experienced and these problems deeply affected the government. The groups which had argued with Shiites and Khārijites because of some various reasons led the country into collapsing. It is also known that many plague epidemics in the region of Damascus affected the society in a negative way, changing the capital and changing some of the border cities in favor of the Eastern Roman Empire.All these negativities certainly shaken the Umayyad state economically. It is understood from the data that the instability and political uncertainties in the country led to a decrease in the tax rates. For example, the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik İbn Marwān period, only half of the tax was collected at the time of Hazrat ‘Umar could be collected. It can be said that the public who avoided the general policies of the state avoided giving tax, in other words, the tax evasion. Also, the increasing migration from village to city and due to that, the vacancy of tribute tax collected land, failure to obtain expected yield because of rent fights on fertile lands, and conversion process in non-Muslim community are included in other reasons of reduction of taxes.In the Umayyad period, the issue of taking the jizya from the mawālī can be considered in this context. We do not have an independent work or research article on how this practice was initiated, how it was and how it was taken from mawālī, and how it was a state policy, and how long it was sustained. The studies that touch on this subject are far from being holistic. Even in the main sources it is seen that the concepts of kharāj and jizya are not fully understood and therefore used interchangeably. This may be considered normal for the first period in which the concepts are not in place. However, in the following centuries, the works that were copyrighted and, except for a few, instead of understanding and explaining this confusion, chose to use the word jizya from these two words which can be used interchangeably in texts. Therefore, this approach has led to the widespread conviction that the Umayyad state has taken jizya from the mawālī in the conceptual sense.Al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf is claimed to have started the application of taken jizya from mawālī. However, Haccac aimed to provide the regularity of both agricultural products and the kharāj which is taken from farmers because of the status of the soil by sending Sawad villagers who migrated to the big cities and became Muslims by changing their religions. The status of the lands seized was decisive in taxation. According to this, the conquest and the territorial lands were taxed differently, but in some cases the same tax (kharāj) was taken. Non-Muslims who living in the territory of conquest were demanded jizya per capita. The jizya and kharāj tax collected from this category can be expressed as “joint jizya”. Regardless of whether the person is a Muslim or not, the fact that he was demanded from him due to the status of the land was interpreted by some researchers as juristic. However, in times of political instability, it is also a fact that mawālī is demanding jury in addition to the tribute tax. The point that is misunderstood or interpreted is that this practice was carried out throughout the entire Umayyad territory and the history. When examined, this distorted tax concept is actually concentrated in the area of Transoxania. Although some attempts were made to take the jizya from the mawālī to the country, the Umayyad caliphs have not allowed it. The practice of taking the jizya from the mawālī is actually followed by the killing Qutayba ibn Muslim al-Bāhilī (d. 96/715). This started political instability in the Transoxania and continued by some Khurāsān governors. These governors act according to the provocations of the Turkish governors and tax collectors of the region in order to be able to send their taxes completely. They claimed that the region in the region was not a sincere Muslim and, they continued to take the jizya from them.It can be said that jizya is not demanded as it is taken from non-Muslims in the common meaning from mawālī. Because any Umayyad caliph wrote no written instructions regarding this issue in the sources. It is understood that until the caliphate of ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Azîz, the Umayyad caliphs were not even aware of this distorted tax policy in the area of Transoxania. To put it once again, this practice was initiated by some Khurāsān governors with the concern that tax revenues might decrease. However, it should not be forgotten that this unfair practice after 96/715 is limited to certain governors. For example, during the tenure of Naṣr b. Seyyâr, the last governor of Khurāsān (120-131 / 738-748), the jizya tax was completely removed from the mawālī. Another activity that shows this action is regional and that was ordered by some governors of Khurāsān. Therefore, this practice does not reflect the Umayyad state policy. This is also apparent in the fact that the Shiites, Kharijites, and those who carried out the Abbasid Revolution for thirty-two years, did not make an anti-Umayyad propaganda with provoking the slave by the way of wrong application. (shrink)

A discussion of the economic work of Genovesi, the first professor of political economy in Europe. Genovesi supports a physiocratic theory of value as the net produce of agricultural work; a theory of interest as the motive of human action, intermediate between the extreme poles of excessive self-love and benevolence; a doctrine of innate rights as a limit to the sovereign's action; a commercial policy that limits dependence on foreign countries. He also took a position in the eighteenth-century debate (...) on "luxury", taking a firm stance in favour of moderate luxury, considered not vice but virtue as the right means between excessive parsimony and prodigality. He also discusses the function of the classes not dedicated to "mechanical arts" and not producing "rents" but nevertheless useful to society (Adam Smith's "unproductive" workers) in which he includes the proprietary classes which he defends against Rousseau's radical criticism, limiting himself to advocating the abolition of inalienable properties. Finally, he advocates population growth as a way to increase public happiness, the development of agriculture, the freedom of grain trade and the interest rate. (shrink)

During the 1990s, the Government of Peru began to aggressivelyprivatize agriculture. The government stopped loaning money to farmers' cooperatives and closed the government rice-buying company. The government even rented out most of its researchstations and many senior scientists lost their jobs. As part of this trend, the government eliminated its seed certification agency. Instead, private seed certification committees were set up with USAID funding and technical advise from a US university. The committees were supposed to become self-financing (bycertifying seed grown (...) by small seed producers) and each committee was supposed to encourage the development of a group of small seed-producing firms, clustered around the seedcertification agency. The amazing thing is that many of the seed committees actually accomplished these goals. The agronomists who staffed the committees stood by their jobs,even after US funding ended, even though the committees' income was (at best) modest, and occasionally under the threat of violence from the extreme left. Some seed certificationcommittees failed and others did not. Some of the problems with Peruvian agricultural liberalization can be seen in regard to the seed programs of maize, rice, potatoes, and beans. For example, the government abandoned most research, yet could not resist creating certain distortions in the seed market (e.g.,buying large amounts of seed and distributing them for political ends). (shrink)

We examine changing production relations in the Mexican tequila industry to explore the ways in which large industrial firms are using “reverse leasing arrangements,” a form of contract farming, to extend their control over small agave farmers. Under these arrangements, smallholders rent their parcels to contracting companies who bring in capital, machinery, labor, and other agricultural inputs. Smallholders do not have access to their land, nor do they make any of the management decisions. We analyze the factors that (...) have led some producers to participate in reverse leasing arrangements, while allowing other producers to continue farming independently. In addition, we look at the ways in which farmers are responding to these new production relations and constraints and the strategies that they are using to regain control over the production process. (shrink)

As populations grow and arable land becomes increasingly scarce, large-scale long- term land leases are signed at a growing rate. Countries and investors with large amounts of financial resources and a strong agricultural industry seek long-term land leases for agricultural exploitation or investment purposes. Leaders of financially poorer countries often advertise such deals as a fast way to attract foreign capital. Much has been said about the short-term social costs these types of leases involve, however, less has been (...) said about the normative dimension of their long-term environmental impact. We therefore will focus on the likely impact such deals have for soil conservation, by (1) briefly introducing the basics of long-term leasing arrangements by comparing land leases to the renting of buildings, (2) explaining from a soil sciences perspective the difficulties in assessing the current value of an estate and in calculating the damages of soil erosion and degradation, and (3) show how difficult it is to incentivize the conservation of soil quality when one cannot sufficiently and cost-effectively valorize existing environmental capital and eventual future damages. Attempting to oblige tenants through contracts to invest in sustainable stewardship has limited potential when liability payments do not reflect true costs and are hard to enforce. (shrink)

Causes of increased productivity Value and Price Wages Reasons for Difference in Wages Rent Stock The Course of Economic Development in Europe The Mercantile System Protectionism Export Bounties The Corn Laws Of Colonies The American Revolution Injustices to native peoples The economic case against colonial monopolies The Agricultural System (IV.ix) Defence Justice Taxation..

Rent seeking by lobbying for government favors is generally thought to be wasteful. In view of this wastefulness, it is puzzling that rent seeking by corporations has not been criticized as a failure to be socially responsible or even as an unethical business practice. This article examines the compatibility of rent seeking with corporate social responsibility by utilizing Thomas Dunfee's idea of a marketplace with morality. This idea is useful for solving this puzzle because in considering whether (...) rent seeking is compatible with corporate social responsibility, it is necessary, first, to define rent seeking, which this article argues is a normative concept, and, second, to find some principled way of identifying rent-seeking behavior. It also solves the puzzle about rent seeking by revealing that the concept of rent seeking itself is of little use in determining whether certain conduct is or is not socially responsible since rent seeking activity cannot be identified without first evaluating which activity is rent seeking. (shrink)

This paper explores what it takes for research laboratories to produce valuable knowledge in academic institutions marked by the coexistence of multiple evaluative frameworks. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork carried out in two UK-based epigenetics research laboratories, I examine the set of practices through which research groups intertwine knowledge production with the making of scientific, health, and wealth value. This includes building and maintaining a portfolio of valuable resources, such as expertise, scientific credibility, or data, and turning these resources into assets (...) by carefully organizing and managing their value. Laboratories then put these assets to productive use within and outside their labs toward the creation or extraction of value. I identify two models for producing value within academic science: a commodity-based model whereby laboratories mobilize their assets to produce results, which can be converted into publications for the accumulation of credibility capital, and a rentier model of accumulation whereby laboratories own valuable assets, which they rent out to others outside their lab against revenue. Following recent developments in Science and Technology Studies on value production in the bioeconomy, I argue that the concepts of asset and rent are essential analytical tools for getting to grips with the origins of value within academic science. (shrink)

Contemporary, technoscientific capitalism is characterized by the configuration of a range of “things” as assets or capitalized property. Accumulation strategies have changed as a result of this assetization process. Rather than entrepreneurial strategies based on commodity production, technoscientific capitalism is increasingly underpinned by rentiership or the appropriation of value through ownership and control rights, monopoly conditions, and regulatory or market devices and practices. While rentiership is often presented as a negative phenomenon in both neoclassical and Marxist political economy literatures—and much (...) in between—in this paper, I conceptualize rentiership as a technoeconomic practice and process framed by insights from science and technology studies. So, rather than a problematic “side effect” of capitalism, the concept of rentiership enables us to understand how different forms of value extraction constitute, and are constituted by, different forms of technoscience. This allows STS to contribute a distinctive analytical approach to ongoing debates in political economy about economic rents and rent-seeking. (shrink)

Renting is a common property relation, and it is becoming more common. In spite of this, there is little treatment of renting in political philosophy. In this paper, I remedy this neglect by offering a defence of renting personal goods such as housing, clothing, and means of transport. I argue that we should want each person to rent a much greater proportion of their personal goods than at present they typically do. I offer two arguments for this claim: “The (...) Community Argument” and “The Mitigation Argument.”. (shrink)

The concept of economic rent is among the oldest in political economy. This reflects the fact that economies have always included parties whose income appears more parasitic than productive. The concept of rent-seeking refers to the efforts of parties seeking to secure such income by way of gaining influence over economic regulation or otherwise gaining favors from government. In spite of its intuitiveness, however, it has proven difficult to precisely distinguish rent from other categories of income. This (...) chapter seeks to acquaint readers with this problem. The privatization of incarceration is then supplied as an important case study in current rent-seeking behavior. (shrink)

In this article, I develop the point that whereas talent is the basis for desert, talent itself is not meritocratically deserved. It is produced by three processes, none of which are meritocratic: talent is unequally distributed by the rigged lottery of birth, talent is defined in ways that favor some traits over others, and the market for talent is manipulated to maximally extract advantages by those who have more of it. To see how, we require a sociological perspective on economic (...) rent. I argue that talent is a major means through which people seek rent in modern-day capitalism. Talent today is what inherited land was to feudal societies; an unchallenged source of symbolic and economic rewards. Whereas God sanctified the aristocracy’s wealth, contemporary privilege is legitimated by meritocracy. Drawing on the work of Gary Becker, Pierre Bourdieu, and Jerome Karabel, I show how rent-seeking in modern societies has come to rely principally on rent-definition and creation. Inequality is produced by the ways in which talent is defined, institutionalized, and sustained by the moral deservingness we attribute to the accomplishments of talents. Consequently, today’s inequalities are as striking as ever, yet harder to challenge than ever before. (shrink)

The market for kidneys offers a case study of Baptists and Bootleggers. In almost every country, sales are currently illegal and donated organs are allocated by a central planner. Thousands of people die every year, because of the shortage caused by the absence of markets. This paper starts by examining the free-market alternative, and shows that a market would solve the shortage. It then uses gains-from-trade analysis to explain why current vested interests oppose a move to a market, despite the (...) immense potential for saved lives. In a shift to a market, gains from trade would be distributed away from lucky patients and various industries that benefit from the shortage ; these “Bootleggers” form an alliance with “Baptists”. (shrink)

La conjoncture historique qui a vu naître le capitalisme cognitif trouve son origine dans une transformation radicale du rapport capital/travail. À la suite de cette transformation, l'ensemble des normes fordistes-industrielles qui ont structuré l'organisation sociale de la production, la valorisation du capital ainsi que la répartition du revenu entre salaire, rente et profit, en sont sorties profondément modifiées. C'est pourquoi, dans cette majeure, nous avons tenté d'établir un état des lieux de l'avancement de la recherche autour de questions cruciales, celles (...) en particulier qui nous mènent à nous interroger sur les relations entre la montée de la dimension cognitive et immatérielle du travail, d'une part, et l'essor d'une économie de rente, d'autre part. Le développement du capitalisme cognitif est en fait allé de pair avec un puissant processus de financiarisation de l'économie ; il s'est aussi, plus généralement, accompagné d'une multiplication des formes de la rente. Cette évolution du capitalisme contemporain est souvent interprétée à travers une grille de lecture de type néo-ricardien qui tend à opposer le ' bon ' capitalisme productif de l'âge d'or du fordisme au ' mauvais ' capitalisme rentier de ' l'actuel régime de croissance financiarisé '. Selon cette approche, c'est notamment le pouvoir de la finance qui, en établissant de nouvelles règles de gouvernance des firmes, aurait été le facteur premier de la crise de la régulation fordiste du rapport salarial et de la fin des politiques de plein-emploi. Aussi dans ce numéro l'idée est-elle de prendre à contre-pied ce schéma d'analyse en partant du rôle moteur des transformations de l'organisation sociale du travail, pour comprendre, à la lumière de la thèse du capitalisme cognitif, l'essor de la finance et le retour en force de la rente. Nous essaierons aussi d'identifier sur cette base les processus de recomposition sociale susceptibles d'entraver la logique de la rente et d'impulser un processus de réappropriation du commun. (shrink)

Rent-control laws limiting the rents private landlords can charge tenants are controversial in the United States. Critics have condemned rent control’s mandated wealth transfer from landlords to tenants, and economists have decried its negative effects on rental supply and quality. With the advent of the sharing economy, rent-controlled tenants can rent out their below-market units for short durations at market-level or premium prices, a practice I term “rent control sharing.” The reaction to rent-controlled tenants (...) pocketing money from Airbnb and other homesharing sites at the expense of their hapless landlords has been negative. Yet, the sharing economy has not changed an essential feature of rent control: the redistribution of wealth from landlord to tenant. Instead, Airbnb and similar platforms have altered the form of the redistribution and the legal relations between landlord and tenant, and increased the salience of the wealth transfer from landlord to tenant. As a result, rent control sharing collides with public preferences for in-kind redistribution and stronger legal protections for property used personally or intimately. This Article explores how rent control sharing accentuates some of the flaws of rent control and fuels the debate over rent control’s future. (shrink)

Smart Farming Technologies raise ethical issues associated with the increased corporatization and industrialization of the agricultural sector. We explore the concept of biomimicry to conceptualize smart farming technologies as ecological innovations which are embedded in and in accordance with the natural environment. Such a biomimetic approach of smart farming technologies takes advantage of its potential to mitigate climate change, while at the same time avoiding the ethical issues related to the industrialization of the agricultural sector. We explore six (...) principles of a natural concept of biomimicry and apply these principles in the context of smart farming technologies. (shrink)

The central concern of this essay : the emergence of the figure of the « wage shareholder ». There is nothing new about this figure in and of itself if one thinks of wage differentials linked to social hierarchies determined by the professions. Or again if one thinks of wage-earning shares obtained by sections of the wage-earning system at the expense of feminine, precarious, and immigrant wage earners. What is new is that today the wage share results from a double (...) process of wage individualization and « socialization of capital ». It is thus of a new nature, and its emergence therefore renders more indistinct the boundaries that separate the main categories of revenue : wage, annuity and profit. In this article, it is less a question of accounting for the figure of the wage-earning shareholder from a strictly economic point of view as to see it in terms of a double process that gives to it the functions proper to a machine producing subjectivity that unite the dangerous link between cognitive capitalism and neoliberalism. (shrink)

Smallholder farmers in Rattanakmondol District, Battambang Province, Cambodia face challenges related to soil erosion, declining yields, climate change, and unsustainable tillage-based farming practices in their efforts to increase food production within maize-based systems. In 2010, research for development programs began introducing agricultural production systems based on conservation agriculture to smallholder farmers located in four communities within Rattanakmondol District as a pathway for addressing these issues. Understanding gendered practices and perspectives is integral to adapting CA technologies to the needs of (...) local communities. This research identifies how gender differences regarding farmers’ access to assets, practices, and engagement in intra-household negotiations could constrain or facilitate the dissemination of CA. Our mixed-methods approach includes focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews, famer field visits, and a household survey. Gender differences in access to key productive assets may affect men’s and women’s individual ability to adapt CA. Farmers perceive the practices and technologies of CA as labor-saving, with the potential to reduce men’s and women’s labor burden in land-preparation activities. However, when considered in relation to the full array of productive and reproductive livelihood activities, CA can disproportionately affect men’s and women’s labor. Decisions about agricultural livelihoods were not always made jointly, with socio-cultural norms and responsibilities structuring an individual’s ability to participate in intra-household negotiations. While gender differences in power relations affect intra-household decision-making, men and women household members collectively negotiate the transition to CA-based production systems. (shrink)

The ideas of face consciousness, group conformity, extended family concept, and crisis consciousness in Confucian culture have a subtle and far-reaching impact on housing consumption decision among the Chinese public, forming a housing consumption model of “preferring to own a house rather than rent one.” The poor interaction between the housing rental market and the sales market caused by the shortage of rental demand and irrational purchasing behaviors has led to soaring house prices and imbalance between supply and demand (...) that prevail in major cities in China. To gain a deeper understanding of public cognitive attitude toward decisions on owning and renting a house, this study divided the subjects into high and low impact groups based on the overall Confucian culture and four subdimensions. It attempts to take a cognitive neuroscience approach for assessing public stereotypes of housing consumption decision with different types based on the analysis of event-related potentials. The results are as follows. First, overall, there is an obvious implicit stereotype of renting a house and explicit stereotype of owning a house among the public. Second, ERPs data show that descriptions of renting a house with positive adjectives could evoke more significant N400 responses. In other words, in the heuristic system, the public perceive that renting a house is restrictive, stressful, unhappy, and crisis. Data from subjective reports show that, after processing information in the analytic system, the public tend to think that owning a house is self-contained, restful, warm, and comfortable. Third, a more negative stereotype of renting a house exists in the high Confucian culture influence group Group than in the low Confucian culture influence group Group, and is more inclined to own a home. Fourth, under the Confucian culture sub-dimension, there are differences in housing consumption stereotypes between high and low groups in terms of extended family concept, group conformity, and crisis consciousness. Fifth, the moderating effect analysis found that perceived usefulness, trust in the rental market, and policy perception can be important factors in guiding public housing consumption stereotypes. (shrink)

Procedures that increase the sustainability of agriculture often result in animals being treated more humanely:both livestock in animal and mixed farming and wildlife in arable farming. Equally, procedures ensuring humane treatment of farm animals often increase sustainability, for example in disease control and manure management. This overlap between sustainability and humaneness is not coincidental. Both approaches can be said to be animal centered, to be based on the fact that animal production is primarily a biological process. Proponents of both will (...) gain from recognition of commonality and development of cooperation. A collaborative approach to humane sustainable agriculture will benefit animals, people, and the environment. (shrink)

In this thought provoking work Thomas DeGregori presents the uncommon premise that technology is a human endeavour and a positive force that defines our humanity. Examining a number of revolutionary technological advances in this century, especially those in the agricultural areas, the author debunks common conventional wisdom that would dictate otherwise. For instance, the use of chemicals, including DDT and other pesticides, id often maligned as damaging the environment and the quality of life. Dr DeGregori counters this argument with (...) documentation that demonstrates how use of these chemicals has actually increased life span. Agriculture and Modern Technology will prompt readers to re-examine current popular belief in technology. (shrink)

Mankind soon learn to make interested uses of every right and power which they possess, or may assume. The public money and public liberty...will soon be discovered to be sources of wealth and dominion to those who hold them; distinguished, too, by this tempting circumstance, that they are the instrument, as well as the object of acquisition. With money we will get men, said Caesar, and with men we will get money. Nor should our assembly be deluded by the integrity (...) of their own purposes, and conclude that these unlimited powers will never be abused, because themselves are not disposed to abuse them. They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when a corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price. (shrink)

A growing body of literature argues that achieving radical change in the agri-food system requires a radical renegotiation of our relationship with the environment alongside a change in our thinking and approach to transformational food politics. This paper argues that relational approaches such as a more-than-human ethic of care (MTH EoC) can offer a different and constructive perspective to analyse agri-food system transformation because it emphasises social structures and relationships as the basis of environmental change. A MTH EoC has not (...) yet been applied to regenerative agriculture, yet other literature on regenerative agriculture suggests that care may be present in these spaces and calls for the need for social science analysis of the regenerative movement. This paper uses a MTH EoC lens to reveal a diverse array of ways in which power is and can be deployed for change in the regenerative agriculture movement in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Globally, regenerative agriculture tends to be analysed through positivist, scientific approaches that focus on biophysical markers of ecological improvement. Yet, a relational approach reveals how engagement in regenerative agriculture is creating significant shifts in mindset towards more holistic and relational understandings of biological and social ecosystems. A regenerative mindset framework is suggested as a method of understanding the connection between a regenerative form of thinking, being and doing for farmers. Interviews suggested that this shift in farmers’ socio-ecological relations is crucial to the transformational potential of regenerative agriculture. This paper argues that relational analyses such as the MTH EoC approach used to analyse regenerative agriculture in this research, refresh the way we analyse agri-food system change. They also are critical to guiding and supporting on-the-ground socio-ecological shifts that are necessary to see agricultural transformation. (shrink)

Proposer une oeuvre nouvelle, developper une idee neuve ou une vision personnelle differente, c'est dire autre chose. Mais c'est aussi dire quelque chose qui n'est pas radicalement inoui et sans connexion. Impacts, emprunts, initiatives, traditions ou ruptures: ces relations d'influence traversent la vie des idees et des oeuvres, leurs rapports entre elles, leurs caracteres de famille, et ce qui les rend chacune distincte. Invention et memoire vont ensemble. Leur liaison et leur ecart organisent ce qu'il y a d'autonome et d'unique (...) dans un point de vue novateur, et ce qu'il y a de commun et de partage. (shrink)