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This article reviews the author’s own research over the years from the question of how to relate Western theory and China research. The author has found through empirical research that Chinese realities generally run counter to Western theoretical expectations. And, further, that Western theories tend to overlook one side or another of dualities that coexist and interact in the real world—for example, the simultaneous resort to high moral values and practical actions in the Chinese justice system. Those findings have led the author to question the very nature and structure of the major Western social science theories, which exhibit a strong tendency to emphasize one or another side of binary oppositions, not just with regard to such binaries as subjectivism versus objectivism or voluntarism versus structuralism, but even with regard to theory versus experience, and the West versus the non-West. In the real world, however, the two sides coexist and interact within a single whole. Western theories have also shown a strong tendency to reject moral values as somehow irrational and un-modern, while the Confucian “golden rule” of “what you would not have others do unto you, do not unto others” has persisted through the ages down to the present. It still serves as a viable guide to practice. What we need is a method of research that would enable us to grasp accurately Chinese realities and to develop theoretical concepts that would be anchored on those realities.

Since the outbreak of the 2007–2008 global food crisis, the two models of industrial agriculture and agroecology have been involved in a heated debate about how to feed the world. Despite their sharp differences on the choice of agricultural technology and preferred policy priorities, both sides exhibit a narrow understanding of the relationship between technology and social institution. A Marxist political economy approach, based on the insights of classic Marxist theorists into agricultural technologies in alternative institutional contexts, is developed to look beyond the two sides of the debate. Upon careful examination of agroecology as an ecological sublation of industrial agriculture and of conscious social control of production as an institutional sublation of capitalism, this article concludes that socialism is more suitable than small peasant economy for achieving the twin goals of fully scaling up agroecology and promoting socioeconomic equality for small peasants.

James Scott's \"The Moral Economy of the Peasant\" (1976) appeared at a time when \"peasant studies\" had begun to occupy an important place in the social sciences. The book's focus on Vietnam, as well as its novel argument about the causes of rural rebellion, attracted widespread attention and unleashed acerbic debates about peasants' \"rationality\" and the applicability of concepts from neoclassical economics to smallholding agriculturalists. In this article, I analyze E. P. Thompson's notion of \"moral economy\" and Scott's use of it to develop an experiential theory of exploitation. I then discuss other influences on Scott, including Karl Polanyi, A. V. Chayanov, and the Annales historians. \"Moral economy\" and \"subsistence crisis\" are concepts that Scott elaborated mainly in relation to village or national politics. In the final section of the article, I outline changes affecting peasantries in the globalization era and the continuing relevance of moral economic discourses in agriculturalists' transnational campaigns against the WTO.

Traditional agricultural systems in Mediterranean Europe were characterised by diversity and multifunctionality, and polycultures played a fundamental role in them. Some of these farm systems and the traditional agricultural practices linked to them have now largely disappeared, but they are increasingly recognised as a valuable source of agroecological knowledge. In this study, we seek to recover the long-lost experience from a traditional Mediterranean intercropping system that combined the cultivation of vines and cereals. Using local historical resources available for a Catalan village for the second half of the nineteenth century, we compare the characteristics and functioning of intercropping and monocultures of vines and cereals using socioeconomic and agrarian metabolism indicators, and discuss the advantages of the traditional intercropping system as an adaptation to the productive limitations of the agroecosystem (particularly in terms of soil quality and productivity, and availability of labour and draft force), but also as a peasant economy strategy that responded to a multifunctional balancing rationale. This way, this research contributes to recovering the knowledge and experience of a long-lasting traditional crop system that had been used until the second half of the twentieth century, and provides an understanding of the rationale and advantages of traditional Mediterranean crop systems beyond productivity and profit maximisation strategies.

This article argues for the construction of a new political economy based on Chinese practices. It begins with an explanation of the research approach of starting from practice, and from a distinctive mode of thinking that is akin to that of medicine, rather than Newtonian physics and mathematical logic. Then it discusses the present-day Chinese practices of combining socialism with market economy, state enterprises with private enterprises, the peasant economy with an industrial economy, and the party-state with the economy—all distinctive realities about the new Chinese political-economic system. The foil for the discussion is the long-standing hegemonic ideology and worldview of Anglo-American classical and neoclassical liberal economics and law. This article suggests that we employ China’s traditional dyadic integration worldview, evident in today’s practices, to arrive at a new integrative cosmological view that rises above both. To a considerable extent, this article is also a reinterpretation of classical Marxist political economy. What the article advocates may be termed a “participatory socialist market economy,” to be distinguished from a bureaucratized and controlling socialist planned economy. This is a system that is still very much in the process of formation, its particular content and characteristics yet to be clarified and specified through a sustained period of searching through practice.

This article presents the correlation between the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and the area planted, production in tons, and productive yield for various crops in Colombia from 2018 to 2021. The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between agricultural productivity and multidimensional poverty in Colombia, focusing on the cultivation of coffee, plantain, and corn. The methodology employed included a literature review through a bibliometric analysis to understand the relationships between the MPI and agricultural production. In the second stage, the agricultural sector statistics for the years 2018 to 2021 and the MPI by regions and departments of Colombia during the same period was systematized. Finally, a quantitative statistical analysis was conducted to establish the correlation of the MPI with the area planted, production in tons, and productive yield for coffee, plantain, and corn crops in Colombia. The MPI identifies those who are deprived in 50% or more of the index’s dimensions as living in extreme poverty. The results show that higher productive yields in the crops analyzed correspond to a lower MPI. Coffee crops have an MPI below 50%; plantain crops have an MPI between 20% and 50%, and for mechanized corn crops, the data show an MPI between 20% and 30%. This demonstrates that coffee, plantain, and corn crops represent an alternative for reducing the MPI in Colombia.

Russian serfdom was characterized by the tension between the need of the state and of the nobility to restrict peasant mobility and the simultaneous need of both parties to keep peasants moving in order for the economy to function. Previous studies have examined this movement through the lens of long-distance peasant migration. This article shifts the focus to short-distance movement in which serfs traveled on their estates, to neighboring villages, and to nearby towns and cities. Serfs journeyed in order to carry freight for themselves and for their serfowners, to conduct business at nearby markets and district towns, and to find work. Travel brought many dangers for peasants, which could result in economic and physical harm. Peasants endured these hardships because the road offered the advantages of financial gain and the pleasures of social interaction. Moreover, travel offered moments of autonomy during which serfs were not directly supervised by their owners. Some serfs enjoyed their autonomy so much that they changed the itineraries on their travel documents, moved beyond the spatial or temporal limits of their documents, or engaged in flight in an effort to escape the personal control of their owner.

This article addresses deforestation processes in the Amazon basin, using regression analysis to assess the impact of household structure and economic circumstances on land use decisions made by colonist farmers in the forest frontiers of Brazil. Unlike many previous regression-based studies, the methodology implemented analyzes behavior at the level of the individual property, using both survey data and information derived from the classification of remotely sensed imagery. The regressions correct for endogenous relationships between key variables and spatial autocorrelation, as necessary. Variables used in the analysis are specified, in part, by a theoretical development integrating the Chayanovian concept of the peasant household with spatial considerations stemming from von Thünen. Results from the empirical model indicate that demographic characteristics of households, as well as market factors, affect deforestation in the Amazon basin associated with colonists. Therefore, statistical results from studies that do not include household-scale information may be subject to error. From a policy perspective, the results suggest that environmental policies in the Amazon based on market incentives to small farmers may not be as effective as hoped, given the importance of household factors in catalyzing the demand for land. The article concludes by noting that household decisions regarding land use and deforestation are not independent of broader social circumstances, and that a full understanding of Amazonian deforestation will require insight into why poor families find it necessary to settle the frontier in the first place.

Archaeology provides valuable insights into the later medieval peasant economy. This evidence gives some support for the view that around 1300 there was widespread rural misery, but the main finding is that peasant material culture was always varied and complex, and that peasants were able to make choices, take initiatives, and on occasion enjoy some modest prosperity.

The notion of a 'commune' has become a part of evolutionistic view on social development over the course of 19th-20th cc. and heavily influenced various fields of Social Sciences and Humanities. The Russian statisticians have also accepted the category of a commune while they were investigating the Russian peasants' household budgets. This theoretical pattern was also applied to Kazakh land tenure during the carrying out the Russian colonial project on searching land 'surpluses' for Russian settlers in the Kazakh steppes. In particular, it was used in the statistical research \"Materials on Kirgiz land tenure collected and developed by the expedition for research of the Steppe area\" under Fedor Shcherbina's leadership (1896-1903). In fact, the statisticians could not identify the commune borders among the nomads as those borders were very conditional. As a result, the surveyors turned from investigating commune to their creation. Soon the maps on Kazakh land tenure were made and 'communes' were established on the juridical base. After finishing that statistical research those invented communes served for colonial authorities as the ground for ceasing land in favor of the Russian peasants.