Land Rents and Accumulation in Late Industrialisation: Anxieties of Class in Rural India

Dr. Mihika Chatterjee (Lecturer in Development Studies, Department of International Development, University of Oxford)

1.30 to 3pm, Friday 11th March 2022

Location: Lecture Theatre 1. Gordon Stephenson Building

Limitations within the labour market in the context of late industrialisation make ‘work’ on commercial rural land a crucial mode for articulating ‘class’ for local rural elites. In line with recent arguments of rescuing a structural understanding of class that does not eschew culture (Chibber 2017), articulating class here implies reproducing economic dominance over lower rural classes, as well as seeking ‘social distinction’. Using such an understanding of class and based on long-term research in Maharashtra, India, I argue that even when dominant caste land farmers exit farming, they seek ‘distinction’ through norms and practices rooted in local agrarian labour relations. To understand the economic demand for rural land  in a rapidly urbanising context in much of the Global South, we need to focus on the labour regime and the possibilities such a regime offers for the articulation of class.  

Part of the Seminar Series “Transformations in Land, Labour, and Meaning” organised by the Power, Space, and Cultural Change Cluster, Department of Geography and Planning.