I. James Scott on Moral Economy and Peasant Resistance, continued

A. Capitalism and industrial model of agricultural production disrupt moral economy --> people idealize the past
B. Moral economy = idealized model to interpret world, shapes behavior, challenges development
C. Capitalism intrudes on old order
D. Ideology lags behind economics (gap between infrastructure and superstructure) ==> possibility for everyday resistance, concrete and symbolic

1. actions: obstruct combines, threaten to boycott transplanting for farmers who mechanize, minimize their effort by beating rice sheaves only a few times, and engage in petty theft of paddy and property, killing livestock
2. delay tactics, keep wealthy embedded in moral world of peasants
3. not openly acknowledged, no armed resistance
4. words: accuse rich of being stingy, unconcerned for peasant welfare, immoral, untrue to Islamic ideals

E. Everyday resistance is class struggle, done covertly on level of morality

 

II. Samuel Popkin's Answer to Scott: The Rational Peasant (1979)

A. Rational peasant: formalist model, peasants = self-interested actors
B. Like Scott, looks at Vietnam
C. Popkin's view of traditional village

1. Landlords were "monopolistic patrons" (1979:4)
2. French colonialism and capitalism created village society, inequality between rich and poor
3. Moral economy didn't really exist

D. Capitalism with democracy can be good for peasants
E. Peasants as self-interested actors

1. "I argue that peasants are continuously striving not merely to protect but to raise their subsistence level through long- and short-term investments, both public and private. Their investment logic applies not only to market exchanges but to nonmarket exchanges as well."
2. Strive to improve positions, get surplus

F. Assessing Popkin

1. Convincing history: inequality of village society, kinship and moral ideology used to naturalize inequality
2. Too far to other extreme? Neglects communal spirit of village, fact that capitalism today creates much greater inequality than ever before

 

III. Darjeeling

A. Besky, Sarah. 2014. The Darjeeling Distinction: Labor and Justice on Fair-Trade Tea Plantations in India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
B. Topic [i.e., "this book..." statement]: "This book narrates how Darjeeling tea workers' ideas about value, plantation life, and social justice emerge through their encounters with tea's colonial legacy. It shows how these ideas have been reshaped by strategies to reinvent Darjeeling tea for twenty-first-century consumers seeking not only escape and refinement, but also, through 'fair trade' and other agricultural certification schemes, a sense of social solidarity in their daily cup" (2).
C. Central argument

1. 3 visions of justice: Fair Trade, Geographical Indication (GI), and Gorkhaland: "Each, then, attempted to put tea workers 'in the market' for the purposes of achieving different kinds of justice. If there is a market for justice, however, then some ideas (i.e., those of owners, consumers, and powerful politicians) will dominate while others (i.e., those of workers) will be suppressed" (21).
2. Plantation labor, in workers' eyes, offers some promise of sustaining people and plants over time, and fair trade, GI, and Gorkhaland, despite their claims to justice, ultimately provide little promise of improvement" (33).

D. Today: history of Darjeeling tea production and consumption
E. Wednesday: 2 movements that claim to be seeking justice for tea workers
F. Locating Darjeeling: Besky 2014: xxi

 

IV. History of Darjeeling tea

A. Besky: emergence of production landscape thorugh interaction of cultural, environmental, economic, and geopolitical processes
B. British East India Company, founded in 1600

1. Hill stations and health
2. Wars with Nepal (1814-16) and Burma (1824-26 and 1852): lands in the Himalayas come under the East India Company
3. Darjeeling comes from Dorje-ling monastery (thunderbolt place in Tibetan)
4. 1835: East India Company annexes small area to become hill station: uninhabited "wasteland"

C. Nepal, late 18th, early 19th c.

1. Gorkha rulers gave status to high caste Hindus
2. Eastern Nepalis displaced into the mountains, conscripted into kingdom's army
3. British respected the skills of "Gurkhas," soldiers against whom they fought

D. After 1814-1816, British annex Darjeeling
E. 1820s: East India Company recruits landless Nepalis for Gurkha regiments (wage labor)
F. British tea consumption increases

1. Problem of reliance on China
2. Intensive and extensive cultivation would "improve" Asian populations and land
3. Show off glory of empire through production and consumption

G. Darjeeling production

1. Research: "As part of 'improvement,' colonial governments needed to understand the florae, faunae, and geologies of these new colonies so that they could be integrated into commercial use" (49-50).
2. Assam, to the east, is not as similar in climate to Southwest China as Darjeeling
3. Commercial planting + on-site processing technology --> plantation system and economy of scale
4. Tea cultivation grows

a. 1866: 39 "gardens," 10,000 acres, annual production of 433,000 pounds
b. 1870: 56 gardens, 11,000 acres, 8000 Nepali workers, 1,708,000 pounds
c. 1873: Machinery introduced
d. 1874: 113 gardens, 20,000 laborers
e. Late 1800s: 64,000 laborers (1/3 of population of district), 96% were Nepali
f. 1940: 142 gardens, 63,059 acres, 23,721,500 pounds

H. Land: leases to "improve"
I. Labor

1. British saw Gurkha as hardworking, industrious, and loyal
2. Nepali recruiters
3. Today, most tea plantation workers are descendants of Nepali migrant laborers

 

V. Plantation versus Garden

A. Plantation system (kaman): peasant, sharecropping, and industrial

1. No open labor market
2. Workers form lifelong relationships, bound to land
3. Ethic of care for land
4. Wages in kind: land, housing, food rations, medical facilities, schooling, firewood
5. Small villages of 50-150 people
6. Mostly women, harvest and prune by hand
7. Work six days a week, 7am-4pm
8. Wages just over a dollar per day in 2010
9. On site processing done by men, but other men do odd jobs, high male unemployment
10. Nuclear families

B. Why women's work?

1. Paternalistic colonial system recruited through networks, brought extended families from the same area in eastern Nepal to Darjeeling
2. Tea work wasn't gendered during colonial era
3. Provision of facilities: dispensaries with medicine, spaces for rituals
4. 1940s: men recruited for army, women took over tea work
5. Post-war (1945) and post-independence (1947): men return

a. Labor union movement
b. Unemployment
c. Rise of communist party

C. Decline of tea

1. Plantations Labour Act (1951): codifies provision of services
2. British owners begin selling to Indian owners
3. Tea market declines, USSR becomes key buyer
4. Capital leaves region, number of cultivated acres declines
5. Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (1973): plantations must be Indian owned
6. Plantations become smaller, workforce reduced to reduce costs
7. Planters buy off unions

D. Women workers continue to see plantation work as humane, jobs passed from generation to generation
E. Tourists, officials, planters: tea gardens
F. Tripartite moral economy: workers, managers, and agro-environment

1. Industri

a. Planters: ensured workers' welfare through facilities, invested capital in land and workers
b. Workers took care of agro-environment
c. Agro-environment actively demanded nurture, shaped relationship

2. Bisnis

a. Extractive: most money from resources
b. Degrade environment, destabilize plantation life

G. Fair Trade: revitalized market, but promotes bisnis
H. Garden visions

1. Tourism: http://www.happytrips.com/darjeeling/travel-guide/darjeelings-most-charming-tea-estates/gs35784398.cms
2. Tea marketing: https://happyearthtea.com/blogs/blog/14945005-darjeeling-tea-gardens

 

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