Synopses & Reviews
Seavoy insists that development economics is a failed discipline because it does not recognize the revolutionary difference between subsistence and commercial social values. Seavoy demonstrates that commercial labor norms are essential for producing assured food surpluses in all crop years and an assured food surplus is essential for sustaining the development process.
The commercialization of food production is a political process, as in the term political economy. If peasants have a choice, they will not voluntarily perform commercial labor norms. Central governments must overcome peasant resistance to performing commercial labor norms by various forms of coercion. The most historically effective coercions are deprivation of peasant control of land use by foreclosure and eviction for excessive subsistence debts. Landless peasants are forced to become supervised paid laborers. Coercion is most effective when it is linked to money rewards for peasants who voluntarily transform themselves into yeomen cultivators or farmers. These commercially motivated cultivators and storekeepers become the resident commercializing agents in peasant villages who administer the central government's coercive and inducement policies. Based on extensive examples and field observation, this book is designed for use in courses that explore problems of economic development. Scholars and government policy makers will find the analysis equally provocative.
Synopsis
Shows why economic development is primarily a political process.
Synopsis
Economic development is primarily a political process. Coercive political policies are needed to induce peasants to perform commercial labor norms in food production because this is the only way to end subsistence privation. Rather than trying to cure rural poverty, Seavoy insists that economic development can only occur when the institutions that protect subsistence labor norms in food production are replaced by institutions that motivate cultivators to perform commercial labor norms.
About the Author
RONALD E. SEAVOY is a Professor in the Department of Business Economics and Public Policy, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, Bloomington. In addition, Professor Seavoy is a consulting exploration geologist with extensive experience in the developing world. Among his earlier books are Famine in Peasant Societies (Greenwood Press, 1982), Famine in East Africa: Food Production and Food Policies (Greenwood Press, 1989), and The American Peasantry: Southern Agricultural Labor and Its Legacy, 1850-1995 (Greenwood Press, 1998).
Table of Contents
Definitions
Primacy of Agriculture
Literacy
The Political Process
Failures
Successes
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index