FREE ESSAY ON STRUCTURES OF RESISITANCE

STRUCTURES OF RESISITANCE

The nature of interaction between traditional agrarian society and the 'modern world' has
remained a controversial debate amongst anthropologists, sociologists and political
theorists. It remains contentious as to whether the dominance of modern values over
traditional is desirable; whether the arrival of the market and modern commerce betters
or worsens the conditions of rural society and its relationship with the metropol;
whether such change is received with apprehension or optimism by the members of rural
society. Joel Migdal, for example, puts forth certain arguments proposing the concept of
'culture contact'-'that exposure and contact are the causes of change.' Migdal identifies
three reasons suggesting why such change would be likely to occur: 
(1) The benefits of the modern far outweigh the benefits of the traditional. (2) The
individual is free from severe institutional restraints which would prevent him from
making an unimpeded decision. (3) Those individuals who select the new are rational and
are optimisers, and those individuals who do not accept the modern fail to do so because
of "wrong" or nonrational values.' 
Most theorists, however, tend to agree that modern society, for good or bad, is clearly
encroaching on traditional agrarian society and gradually moulding its values, economic
systems and sociopolitical institutions into variants of the modern equivalent. 
However, this consensus fails to account for one extremely significant fact: that despite
the overwhelming economic, political and cultural dominance of the modern world,
traditional agrarian structures continue to persist in various forms: the feudal estates
of Third World countries, plantations and latifundismos in Southern Italy and much of
Latin America, and so on. The questions thus arise: why do such traditional social
relations persist in spite of the modern impulse? Why do customs and rituals and social
codes play such an important part in determining rural society? Why do inefficient
labour-intensive technology and archaic labour organisation systems continue to determine
the process of economic production? And why do state attempts at modernising rural
production continually face defeat and fail to effect conclusive change? 
This paper attempts to answer these and other questions through an analysis of two
similar anachronistic structures that exist in the contemporary world: the Italian
latifondo and the Latin American latifundismo. Both structures are organised in a very
similar manner, and an analysis of both presents a holistic picture of their social and
economic organisation. The paper begins by describing the administrative structure of the
latifondo, and then goes on to suggest that the socioeconomic peculiarities of the
enterprise may be at least partially explained by the rational voluntarist behaviour of
the landlord, who allows old structures to persist in light of their cultural
peculiarity.
In The Mafia of a Sicilian Village, Anton Blok describes the Sicilian latifondo as being
'in its main features "involutionary"'. Blok invokes this term while alluding to a
complex process in which certain structures undergo internalisation and fixity, as
suggested by Clifford Geertz in Agricultural Involution. 'Involution', according to
Geertz, refers to 'the overdriving of an established form in such a way that it becomes
rigid through an inward elaboration of detail'. Blok's study of the latifondo leads him
to conclude that this agrarian enterprise underwent such a process at both the social and
the economic level. Before further exploring this process, however, it is necessary to
first understand the power structure and organisation of the Sicilian latifondo.
According to Blok, the latifondo was typically leased out to a gabelloto, who in turn
hired a number of permanent employees to manage the enterprise. These administrators
generally comprised an overseer (soprastante) and a number of field guards (campieri).
The overseer was the gabelloto's 'man of confidence' - 'he dealt with the peasants set to
work on the estates and took care of the general protection of the enterprise.' The
campieri assisted the overseer in his work, and 'constituted a kind of private police
force which, in the absence of an efficient formal control apparatus, claimed to maintain
law and order in the countryside.' This hierarchical structure is replicated in Latin
American latifundios, as described by Ernest Feder in 'Latifundios and Agricultural
Labour.' Feder further describes the Latin American latifundismo as being characterised
by 'absentee landlordism'. He asserts that 'for the rural worker almost every estate
owner is an absenteeist, as the bulk of the large estates is managed by administrators';
the latter appearing to be Latin American counterparts of the soprastanti. This
administrative structure has several important repercussions for the socioeconomic
structural evolution ('involution') of the latifondo.
James C. Scott describes 'involution' in agrarian enterprises at the economic level as
involving 'the shift to more labour intensive techniques in return for minute, but vital,
increments in yield per unit of land.' Essential to note here is that this shift is
likely to occur even while more productive, capital intensive technologies are available.
Whereas capital investment in agrarian technologies by cultivators or entrepreneurs could
potentially boost agricultural productivity and allow for greater agricultural surplus
production in the long run, they prefer instead to intensify the 'established form' and
concentrate on traditional labour intensive techniques, which are only able to provide a
limited return. It is this voluntary adherence to traditional labour intensive
technologies in the presence of more productive alternatives that characterises the
process of 'involution'. This peculiar behaviour may be explained in light of the
administrative structure of the latifondo as described earlier. 
The primary characteristic of indirect management (Feder's 'absentee landlordism') is the
administration's lack of long term goals regarding farm productivity. Such visionary
objectives may only exist when the administrator forges strong ties with the land, be
they in the form of active involvement of resident owner-cultivators or tenure security
for sharecroppers, so that there exists an incentive to incur sunk costs in the present
for future gains. The existing land arrangements, however, left little need to incur such
costs. Whereas the owners of the Sicilian latifondo were generally absent from the
picture, having leased the land to gabelloti, the latter were merely entrepreneurs who
preferred to indulge in conspicuous consumption and refrained from long-term investment.
Meanwhile, 'the Sicilian sharecropping peasant . . . lacked any security of tenure over
time. In fact, his position with regard to employment did not basically differ from that
of the landless labourer', thereby leaving him too with little incentive to undertake
productive investment. Consequently, the latifondo characteristically faced a lack of 
investments from the side of both cultivators and entrepreneurs. The latter . . . engaged
in ruthless exploitation of the land and labour rather than undertake long-term
investment. As true rent capitalists they "skimmed off the proceeds." . . . [P]rofits did
not return to the land, but instead were used to acquire more land or were spent on urban
living. 
Finally, the indirect character of management (functioning through the
gabelloto-soprastante administrative heirarchy) further impeded institutional change, as
the soprastante was allowed to operate only 'within a strictly limited sphere of action'
and therefore had no jurisdiction (and little incentive) to induce any radical managerial
reform. Feder concludes:
Absentee landlordism is a guarantee that customary methods of farming are strictly
observed though they may be antiquated. Most administrators are not allowed to introduce
changes in the farming pattern, and landlords hesitate to introduce them because this may
require changes in the tenure status of the workers. Therefore the high rate of
absenteeism is an obstacle to technological progress and improved farming. Management
practices cannot improve beyond that permitted by the sparse interest and knowledge of
farming of most absentee landlords, and the limited abilities and responsibilities of
administrators. 
Meanwhile, the status quo suited the gabelloti on various other fronts. For example,
'[a]ll contracts were arranged with the obvious aim that the gabelloti share only
minimally in the risks of production, which largely devolved upon staff and peasants.'
Consequently, the former had little desire to introduce any technological change that may
subsequently cause renegotiation of contracts. 
At the economic level, therefore, the latifondo continued to function with antiquated
technology and rigid management. Instead of evolving, it underwent an 'involution'
whereby traditional technology, organisation and administration increased in complexity,
became more rigid and inflexible, but did not alter in any significant way. Traditional
means of operation were constantly reified and labour effort intensified in an effort to
extract the most surplus out of a decadent system. This intensification met little
resistance: '[n]ot living on the land and even physically separated from it by fixed
residence in agro-towns, the peasants could less easily lay claim to it and thereby
challenge large landownership'. Eugen Weber even goes on to question whether such radical
action would have any appeal for the peasantry, to whom 'innovation was almost
inconceivable. Routine ruled: the structural balance attained by a long process of trial
and error, reinforced by isolation and physical circumstances.' Such routine 'connoted
not mindless labour but precious experience, what had worked and hence would work again,
the accumulated wisdom without which life could not be maintained.' 
A similar argument is put forth by James Scott in The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Scott
suggests that in opposition to the accumulative preference of urban capitalist society,
the primary concern of the peasantry is subsistence. Because of a tendency towards
leisure preference and the sheer lack of economic security, Scott explains the peasant's
reverence of custom and tradition as reflections of an ingrained risk-aversiveness
developed over the ages. 'The safety-first maxim, a logical consequence of the
econlogical dependence of peasant livelihood, embodies a relative preference for
subsistence security over high average income.' Scott further argues that 'this security
mindedness make[s] abstract economic sense [and] finds expression in a wide array of
actual choices, institutions and values in peasant society.' It is therefore a vast break
from tradition and custom for the peasants to collectivise and attempt to resist the
landlord; such instances of organised revolt, as suggested by Scott, are few and far
between. 
With oppressor and oppressed buying into the structure, it is hardly surprising that the
economic 'involution' of the latifondo was closely accompanied by a social 'involution',
which exhibited similar trends towards complexity and inflexibility. Feder argues:
Besides being complex, the social structure of the estate tends to be rigid from the
point of view of economic development. . . . An autocratic organisation is well adapted
to having orders from above carried out efficiently . . . However, this efficiency is the
highest when matters go their usual way, in a routine manner. . . . [W]hile the landed
elite has no interest in the peasants' aspirations and keeps aloof from their world, it
is still keenly aware of its obligations to keep the peasants in check and subservient.
It can achieve this simply through inaction-as the social structure automatically ensures
obedience up to a point-or actively, through coercion, sanctions and total hostility to
any peasant organisation. 
The peasants' obedience of tradition thus made the landlords' job easier; where
grievances did arise, they could be ignored, or at worst suppressed, without having to
significantly alter the social structure. Blok, for example, suggests that 'the
fragmented occupational structure of the peasant class . . . stifled the emergence of
class consciousness and enduring interest groups among the labour force'. This lack of
desire and ability to organise collective action was reinforced through the evolution of
an entire culture of violence, deriving its roots from the criteria underlying the
process of administrator selection. 'As a rule, strong men were recruited for this post,
from those who were able to "make themselves respected"-inspire fear-among the people of
the state as well as outsiders.' The overseer's authority was 'reinforced by strong-arm
men, a private police force.' The post of overseer was sought after by most, because it
was permanent, came with various benefits and allowed for tremendous social power. As the
ability to 'inspire fear' was a prerequisite to attaining this post, dominating and
violent behaviour began to be perceived as desirable. This resulted in the evolution of a
social code of honour that laid down strict rules and criteria for the functioning of
society; in Sicilian society, this code was known as the mafia. Blok asserts:
mafia provided the large estate with its mainstay. . . . [P]hysical violence dominated
the social relationships through which the large estates were exploited. In this way
mafiosi kept restive peasants in submission, while opening up avenues for upwardly mobile
peasants who qualified in the use of violence. 
It is important to note that this social code evolved in response to a need to maintain
the status quo, and was subsequently complicated and institutionalised till it came to
dominate all spheres of life in Sicilian society. This was the social 'involution'
associated with the latifondo-'inward elaboration of detail' of an 'established' social
need, making it 'rigid' and codifying it in social norms. Although the social rules by
which the mafia operated remained for the large part unwritten, similar processes of
social involution elsewhere went to the extent of actually transcribing these laws. Scott
Anderson's study of Albania, for example, reveals such a codified set of social norms:
'[T]he traditional laws and loyalties of the village . . . are spelled out in the kanun .
. ., a book of rules and oaths. By the dictates of the kanun . . . one's primary alliance
is to clan and community, not to the state.' 
The implications of such socioeconomic 'involution' are manifold. At an economic level,
it appears that one reason why rural areas appear hesitant to adopt new technology is
because of the 'involutionary' administrative structure and organisation-new technology
means change and change is unpopular with the adminstration; consequently, the enterprise
is so structured as to prevent change. Social codes evolve to complement this process of
'involution', becoming codified in the culture of the society and forming a rigid
institution which embeds itself firmly in the social structure and becomes more and more
elaborate with time. The socioeconomic institutions resulting from this 'involution'
thereby display increasing complexity and inflexibility, and become extremely resistant
to outside pressures. 
This further implies that nothing short of revolutionary and committed intervention would
be able to significantly alter these institutions. If such intervention is attempted in a
half-hearted manner by the state, which is at the best of times completely alien to rural
society, it is bound to have only limited success. Blok describes various attempts by the
Fascist government to introduce new agrarian technologies and to implement agrarian
reform; as may be expected, the 'new techniques of cultivation were applied on a small
scale', 'the Fascist agrarian policy did not promote the development of more intensive
methods of cultivation and inhibited the expansion of a more balanced agriculture', and
even after the post-Fascist agrarian reform law of 1950, 'the type of agriculture that
had always characterised the inland region did not substantially change . . ., even
though huge funds were allocated for improvement.' It is testament to the longevity of
'involutionary' enterprises that the latifondismo of Sicily 'manage to survive' to date.
Of Albania, Anderson similarly concludes: 'Communism never actually modernised Albania,
but merely put the old ways, the village ways, in a kind of deep freeze-much as Tito did
in Yugoslavia following World War II. The collapse of the state and the national economy
has led many Albanians to once again openly embrace the . . . kanun'. 
We may therefore conclude that such socioeconomic structures, which at first glance
appear to be anachronistic in the extreme and anomalous in the context of contemporary
modes of production and social organisation, appear to defiantly face the challenge
presented by modern society by undergoing a process of 'involutionary' change. This
process involves the rigidification and complication of existing structures and a
strengthening of the implicit social relationships, making these structures less
vulnerable to the advent of commercialisation and state intervention. Enterprises based
on these structures constitute a subculture in the larger society, and codes of social
conduct evolve that present an opposition to prevailing legal and social organisation.
Attempts by the state to enforce institutional change are unlikely to succeed in the
absence of radical and committed reform and a breaking-down of such 'involuted'
codes-till such institutional reform occurs, it is unlikely that rural society will
'modernise' per se. 
Bibliography
Blok, p. 72.
Blok, p. 73.
Blok, p. 79.
albeit due to State patronage of the owners. Blok, p. 84.
Anderson, p. 5.