Liangshan Yi zu she hui de nong zheng bian qian: Zhongguo xi nan gao di nong ye de shang pin hua he zi ben hua = Agrarian change in Liangshan Yi region : the commercialization of agriculture of the development of capitalism in the highlands of southwest China

Ph.D.For China’s agricultural development, the mainstream view promotes the path of modernization through capitalization, while other scholars suggest commercialized agriculture based on the small-scale production. Drawing on Marxist political economy, this dissertation responds to the above point of views by exploring the process of commercialized and capitalized agriculture in the Liangshan Yi ethnic minority region in the highlands of southwest China. This research is based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture during 2013-2016.The first part of the dissertation examines how buckwheat, a local subsistence crop that peasants have cultivated for hundreds of years, has been commercialized. In this case, the local government played an important role to promote the "company + household" model of development. Under this mode, the agribusinesses dominated the buckwheat market and gained large profits from it, while Yi peasants have served as mere raw material suppliers who received income even below the production costs. Obviously, the market exchange has concealed the way that the agricultural surplus is transferred from peasants to boost industrialization.In the second part, the farming of new cash crops – medical herbs such as maca and monkshood – is investigated. It presents the process on how Yi peasants engaged in highly market oriented production and the dilemmas ensued. It shows that the peasants not only suffered from the problem of overproduction, but also fell into trouble in the bubble economy created by big capital.However, peasant’s problems are created not only by the market economy system, but also by the family mode of production itself. Compared with the collective agricultural production in Maoist era, the small-scaled and fragmented way of family farming in the reform era shows limitations in land use and management, mechanization, diversified production and so on. I argue that the peasants need cooperation not only in the circulation realm but also in the production realm.The third part focuses on the development of agricultural capitalization. The farmland market was created along with the introduction of “deepening farmland reform” policy in 2000s. Afterwards, a lot of capital flowed to the countryside. The capitalists bought large areas of woodlands from the peasants in low prices, and transferred swidden fields and farmlands from farming households. As a result, the decrease of land has compressed peasants’ livelihood spaces and caused conflicts. At the same time, the commercialized agriculture has deepened the on-going rural social differentiation, paving the road to agricultural capitalization.To understand how capitalist farms operate, I study the labor control strategies that capitalist farmers deployed. They mostly relied on temporary laborers who were recruited by local brokers. In addition, the traditional ethic norms were used in labor management. By doing so, the capitalist farms were able to obtain low cost labor and reliable workforce.The study shows that the commercialized agriculture is a plight rather than an opportunity for petty commodity producers in the highly market-oriented economic environment in China today. In this process, rural society and farming resources have been being reconstituted and transformed by agrarian capital.對於中國農業的發展，主流觀點主張以促進資本化來達成農業現代化，另一些學者則提出，農業小生產基礎上的農業商品化才是出路所在。本研究從馬克思主義政治經濟學的理論視角，通過考察中國西南涼山彝族農村地區的商品化之路，試圖對上述觀點形成回應。論文的討論基於在2013-2016年期間為期18個月的實地田野調查，以民族志的形式展開寫作。論文首先以苦蕎為主線，考察傳統糧食作物的生產及其市場收益。在“公司+農戶”農業產業化模式下，農戶作為苦蕎原料的提供者，不僅被排除在分享苦蕎產品市場利潤之外，甚至其種植收入為負收益，而企業憑藉廉價的原料以及對本土文化的市場運營獲得了豐厚的超額利潤。這種企業與農戶的對接模式實際上是資本通過市場交換對農業剩餘的掠奪轉移，它促進了資本主義工業的發展。論文其次考察了新經濟作物藥材的種植，以紅極一時的瑪咖以及傳統藥材附子為例，呈現彝族農民捲入高度市場化的農業經營的過程及其結果。在這過程中，來自兩方面的因素對農民生計形成了破壞性力量：其一，無序生產形成的生產過剩，可以瞬間將勞動化為烏有；其二，大資本在市場中佔了主導的位置，它完全有能力通過操縱市場對小生產者進行財富的掠奪。這些問題指向了市場經濟制度本身的內在矛盾。論文最後關注了農業資本化的進程。在土地商品化的條件下，大量資本湧向了農村，囤積山林資源，并流轉輪歇地和農地，由此資本主義農業生產得以展開。同時，商品化帶來的農民群體內部的分化，亦促進了農業資本主義轉向。在生產組織形式上，企業採取了以傳統社會組織為基礎的包工頭制和臨時僱工方式，這種用工策略為企業節約了更多的人工成本。而傳統社會倫理關係之下，工人的自我行為約束不僅減少了企業的監工成本，并降低了工人採取對抗行為的可能性。研究表明，在今天中國經濟高度市場化的情況下，商品化農業並非小農經濟的福音。在這過程中，資本已展開了對農村社會和農村資源的改造和重組。阮池茵.Parallel title from added title page.Thesis Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2017.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-168).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Title from PDF title page (viewed on July 22, 2020).Ruan Chiyin