AGRARIAN STRUCTURE, RESOURCE DISTRIBUTION, AND PRODUCTION CONDITIONS IN A BANGLADESH VILLAGE
Abstract
This thesis investigates the issues in production, resource distribution, village management, and utilization of resources in a Bangladesh village. It focuses on a number of closely related social, economic, and institutional factors, primarily the agrarian structure of a single agricultural peasant village in southeastern part of the country. The study argues that the main constraints on the local economy are neither technological nor scarcity of resources but a highly skewed distribution of land ownership patterns and a marked concentration of productive wealth, particularly landed wealth, in the hands of a small minority of rural elites. This resource control has implications for understanding other dimensions of the socio-economic and political life of the region. The agrarian structure serves the interests of the dominant village groups, who continue to shape the local political economy in much the same way as their predecessors did in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The relational aspects of land-based hierarchy within the village society which were reinforced during colonial rule also remain relatively unchanged. But within this "dynamic of continuity," the pre-existing socio-economic inequalities in the village have become more pronounced, and a polarization of land resources has occurred even under the "minifundist" agrarian conditions. Such inequality in the distribution of land ownership tends not only to perpetuate poverty but also to intensify poverty in the village area. Historical analyses and village-level data, including data derived from a general household survey, direct participation and observation, key informant interviewing, and individual case histories, provide the basis for the conclusions drawn from this study. The primary data were supported and supplemented by the data derived from various published sources, including those based upon recent village studies. The factors that have made and continue to make rural Bangladesh unable to extract itself from its economic and political problems are discussed from the perspective of a single village.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Social structure
Off-Campus Purdue Users:
To access this dissertation, please log in to our
proxy server.