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Power, Labor, and Livelihood: Processes of Change in Rural Java
228 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 11, 2015
This is Gillian Hart's earlier work on Java. The empirical chapters attend to how labor allocation differs among men and women of various social classes in rural Java. Though the gender analysis isn't very developed (and this is not surprising given that she was an economist by training), the introduction and the conclusion spell out clearly where Hart stands in the debate on agrarian transformations in Java. In essence, she critiques Geertz for underplaying Javanese class differentiation, but goes further to argue that scholars have neglected to account for the political relationship between the state and the agrarian sector. Rather than being an agrarian capitalist class, the rural elite has been able to entrench its power over the landless poor by virtue of being clients of the colonial, and later, the New Order state. Here, Hart seems to draw on Weber's idea of the state as an agent for political domination and not simply for capital accumulation.
April 7, 2023
Highly convincing though sometimes dry, the book offers a glimpse into the problem of socio-economic data and some counter-intuitive phenomena, such as the relative privileged position of sharecroppers versus wage laborers, and how such two-tier agrarian employment reinforced the class interests of rural elites.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews