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WiSe 14/15: Agrarian Transitions in Global Perspective

Julia Tischler

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Is agriculture 'out', a thing of the past that modern societies have long left behind? Certainly not, as we all eat and wear clothes. While fewer and fewer people are themselves involved in food production, agriculture has managed to keep up with our rapid population increase, now feeding - at least in theory - over seven billion people. Countrysides around the globe have seen massive changes, becoming involved in market economies, subject to state regulation and control, while new production methods and technologies left many rural families unable to compete. These transitions profoundly affected the way people led their lives. Many societies underwent such processes; at the same time, the concept of "agrarian transition" has been criticized for being too linear and Eurocentric. We will therefore discuss "agrarian transitions" between the late 19th century and the end of World War II from different perspectives. Shifting between the global macro-level and specific cases in both 'Western' and 'non-Western' regions (USA, northern Europe, South Africa, Russia), we enquire into issues of political economy, state regulation, peasant resistance, power and knowledge production, and gender. Alongside with this thematic focus, the course engages with methodological concerns of comparison, entanglement, and multi-level analysis.
By way of a literary introduction to the topic, I recommend John Steinbeck's 1939 novel Grapes of Wrath.
Further reading:
M. Tauger (2011) Agriculture in World History. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis. C. Bayly (2004) The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914. Malden: Blackwell (pp. 1-12, 27-64, 114-120, 128-138, 155-165, 402-419, 432-450). D. Bryceson, C. Kay, and J. Mooji (eds, 2000) Disappearing Peasantries? Rural Labour in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Bourton: ITDG Publishing. close