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Structure, Agency, and Strategy Among Tenants in India

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  • Wendy Olsen

Abstract

This paper arises from the Global Poverty Research Group (www.gprg.org), under which I have conducted fieldwork in rural south India. My focus is on strategies, choice, and constraints as aspects of tenants' decisions. My aim is to treat tenants (as both households and as individual agents) in their structural contexts (class, caste, religion, gender).The strategies that people use involve an orientation to current and future events, including possible events which are imagined or which could happen. This orientation creates a context for immediate decision-making as well as a context for reflection and deliberation. The strategies of tenants include being friendly toward landlords but making this conditional upon their proper behaviour; the renegotiation of work; switching from land management to livestock; choosing to rent rainfed land or irrigated land; and so on. Agents negotiate and enforce proper behaviour and thus both create and change the system of norms that exists. In Macintyre's terms (1985), the virtues intrinsic to the socio-economic practices are continually being re-worked. In the paper, I reframe this in dynamic structure-agency terms. Both structural relationships and concrete past incidents act as reference points for decisions made today in a given relationship.The strategy of a household is an emergent property of the household as an agent, and includes detailed first-order strategies along with more reflective second-order strategies which reconcile goals in the education, migration, and marriage domains with assumptions - and explicit strategies - about domestic and paid labour. The paper is thus interdisciplinary and links together several schools of thought.

Suggested Citation

  • Wendy Olsen, 2007. "Structure, Agency, and Strategy Among Tenants in India," Economics Series Working Papers GPRG-WPS-080, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:gprg-wps-080
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Julie A. Nelson, 1995. "Feminism and Economics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 131-148, Spring.
    2. Wendy Olsen, 2006. "Pluralism, poverty and sharecropping: Cultivating open-mindedness in development studies," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(7), pages 1130-1157.
    3. Bell, Clive & Srinivasan, T N, 1989. "Interlinked Transactions in Rural Markets: An Empirical Study of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 51(1), pages 73-83, February.
    4. Wendy Olsen & University of Manchester, 2005. "Pluralism, Poverty and Sharecropping: Cultivating Open-Mindedness in Development Studies," Economics Series Working Papers GPRG-WPS-008, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    5. Bina Agarwal, 1997. "''Bargaining'' and Gender Relations: Within and Beyond the Household," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 1-51.
    6. Emmanuel Skoufias, 1995. "Household Resources, Transaction Costs, and Adjustment through Land Tenancy," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 71(1), pages 42-56.
    7. Wendy Olsen & University of Manchester, 2006. "Pluralist Methodology for Development Economics: The Example of Moral Economy of Indian Labour Markets," Economics Series Working Papers GPRG-WPS-053, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    8. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1974. "Incentives and Risk Sharing in Sharecropping," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 41(2), pages 219-255.
    9. Martha NUSSBAUM, 1999. "Women and equality: The capabilities approach," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 138(3), pages 227-245, September.
    10. Julie Nelson, 2003. "Once More, With Feeling: Feminist Economics and the Ontological Question," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 109-118.
    11. Wendy Olsen, 2007. "Pluralist methodology for development economics: the example of moral economy of Indian labour markets," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 57-82.
    12. Wendy Olsen, 2009. "Moral political economy and moral reasoning about rural India: four theoretical schools compared," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 33(5), pages 875-902, September.
    13. Agrawal, Pradeep, 1999. "Contractual structure in agriculture," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 293-325, July.
    14. Agarwal, Bina, 1997. "Bargaining and gender relations: within and beyond the household," FCND discussion papers 27, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
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    JEL classification:

    • B5 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East

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