I. Michael Taussig and the Devil in South America

A. Impact of 500 years of colonialism

1. On Europe: plantations provided proto-industrial model for organizing labor and cheap source of food for growing industrial working class (Mintz)
2. On colonies: depletion of raw materials, dependency on commodities produced in Europe

B. We haven't yet explored profound social and cultural changes in colonies

1. How did people respond to changing forms of industrial production?
2. What did they think about money and commodities?
3. How do social and cultural factors relate to economic effects of colonialism and global capitalism?

C. Taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (1980)

1. Sugar plantation workers in Colombia and tin miners in Bolivia
2. How does devil relate to capitalism?
3. Why is devil important as peasants become proletarians?

D. Taussig's theory of human consciousness

1. Reality is social product which appears as product of nature
2. Change in mode of production entails change in consciousness
3. We can't critique capitalism because it has naturalized itself, a la Marx and Weber
4. Peasants in South America see contradictions of capitalism because imposed on them from outside, not yet naturalized

E. Explanations for devil among Afro-American peasants in Cauca Valley, Colombia

1. Pacts to increase production, but money is barren, leads to untimely and painful death
2. Functionalist explanation

a. Manage uncertainty
b. Problem: why do beliefs take a particular form? Taussig says form is significant

3. "Limited good"

a. Wealth of the few is achieved at expense of the many
b. Problem: Why devil?
c. Why not peasants who work their own land?
d. Peasants see that economic pie is expanding, limited good theory doesn't make sense

4. Taussig's interpretation: devil as response to "evil and destructive way of ordering economic life" (17), including capitalism, money, alienation of labor, exchange value

 

II. The Devil of Colonialism

A. Devil is related to historical change in consciousness: he "signifies a response to the change in the fundamental meaning of society as that meaning registers in precapitalist consciousness" (18)
B. Impact of Spanish colonialism

1. 16th to the 17th century: Spaniards bring over African slaves

a. Use slaves for production of sugar
b. Christianize slaves

2. Mistreated slaves denounced Christianity, e.g. "I denounce God" while being flogged
3. Afro-American slaves embrace the anti-God of Christianity: the devil
4. Devil as unruly trickster in slave folklore
5. Slave beliefs coincide with Inquisition, scare colonizers because they believe they can be effective
6. Afro-American religion = syncretic, animism mixed with belief in Jesus, saints, and devil

C. Post-Independence, 19th century

1. c. 1830: Colombian independence
2. 1850s: slaves are freed, become peasants working own land
3. Spanish landowners experiment with neo-feudal arrangements: land rents, labor payments, sharecropping
4. Stagnant economy
5. Peasants can support selves on fertile soil, 100 days of work per year on subsistence-sized plot, no reason to work for former owners
6. Role of Catholicism declines, even though many former slaves identify themselves as Catholic

D. Civil wars between liberals and conservatives, late 19th century

1. Afro-Americans see religion and class as linked
2. Rise of liberation theology
3. Former slaves side with liberals as liberators, conservatives as wishing to re-institute the "evil law of the Spanish"
4. Whites seen as representing the devil

 

III. 20th Century Developments

A. Civil war 1902

1. Conservatives win
2. Rail lines and canals open Cauca Valley to trade
3. Land prices soar
4. Landowners dislodge peasantry, rise of commercial farming
5. Large plots of land enclosed by barbed wire

B. Peasants resist, but increasingly dependent on cash economy (cocoa and coffee)
C. The violencia of 1948-1958

1. Spontaneous outbursts against large landowners
2. Hastened enclosure, supported by World Bank and US government

D. 1970 landholding patterns

1. 80% of cultivable land held by four large sugar plantations and a few large farms
2. 85% of the holdings overall are less than 6 hectares

E. Green Revolution since 1970: wealthy peasants buy out poorer ones, growing gap between haves and have nots

 

IV. Peasants and Proletarians

A. Legacy of history: partial proletarianization of most peasants in Cauca Valley
B. Peasants

1. control means of production
2. use cash
3. sell in order to meet qualitatively defined needs
4. recruit labor through kinship, ties of mutual obligation, reciprocity
5. see an organic unity between people and things

C. Capitalist proletarians

1. no control over means of production
2. use capital to invest in production, production itself becomes the goal of labor
3. labor based on contract, exploitation
4. goal of work is to accumulate surplus
5. things dominate people

D. 1970s: transition from peasant to proletarian is partial, incomplete

1. Most people have some land, work it according to non-capitalist principles

a. Divisions of labor by age or sex weren't clearly defined
b. Kinship used to mobilize surplus labor during peak production periods

2. Mutual dependence between peasant and proletarian systems of production

a. Plantation owners don't have to pay enough to cover food and housing
b. Peasants need supplemental income, not enough land

E. Today: neocolonial economic development

 

V. The Devil and Proletarian Peasants

A. Male plantation workers make contracts with devil to increase production

1. Wealth can't be used productively
2. Wealth must be spent immediately
3. Sugarcane won't grow again
4. Frequency of contracts less important to Taussig than widespread belief in their existence

B. Devil pacts symbolize neo-proletarian consciousness of exploitation
C. Groups who don't make pacts with devil

1. Women: concerned with household, fertility
2. Peasants: pacts would destroy their own land's fertility
3. Immigrants from coast: concerned mostly with survival, not economic success

D. Syncretism of devil beliefs

1. Come from Christian division of hell, earth, heaven
2. Folk adaptations of Christian rituals, e.g. house curings from church consecrations
3. Good and evil are intertwined

E. Effectiveness of sorcery depends on people believing in it

1. Plantation owners mostly don't believe in sorcery
2. Sorcery isn't directed against wealthy
3. Negative object of sorcery: the system itself

 

VI. Use Value and Exchange Value in Colombia

A. Devil represents: "creative response to an enormously deep-seated conflict between use-value and exchange-value orientations" (21)
B. Marx's discussion of use value and exchange value

1. Use value: an item's value comes from its function, how people use it
2. Exchange value: "the proportion, in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind"
3. Capitalism: expansion of exchange values
4. Alienation of labor: Value comes not from labor or use, but from item itself

C. Taussig: peasants in Colombia see what Marx was arguing

1. Peasant production: mutual exchanges allow purchase of use values, people, things, labor, and land are linked
2. Capitalist plantation agriculture: peasants see the use values they produce being alienated and commoditized as property of plantation owners
3. The clear vision of marginality: Because Colombian peasants are still partly peasant, they can see the conflict between use and exchange values
4. The devil symbolizes new economy but exists because the old still does
5. Once peasants are fully proletarian, devil will lose its meaning