ALOCACION DE RECURSOS

There is an important political economy school of thought that has helped to reveal the nature of agrarian relations, which fundamentally shape food production, from an essentially Marxist perspective (Borras Jr, 2009; Bernstein, 2010, 2001, 1981). This is useful in analysing the economic and power relations that actors are involved in, including the ongoing debate about the place of the peasantry. This thesis presents empirical information and a perspective on these relations through the powerful lens of the food system that feeds the city of Dar es Salaam. In doing this I have attempted to apply Bernstein’s four key political economy questions - “Who owns what? Who does what? Who gets what? What do they do with it?”(Bernstein, 2010: 22). These are interesting questions that I have sought answers to in my field research. I found, however, that analysing the findings through these questions channelled me into the identification of what become quite a narrow set of types of actors and fairly shallow description of the nature of relations these actors have with other actors (human and material). This level of abstraction can be useful for bringing out certain dynamics, but it lacks nuance and prevents the exploration of the complexity and diversity of different types of relations. The political economy perspective and approach is, therefore, not the overarching framework used for this research and analysis of the data. Early in the study it was found to have limitations when it came to explaining the relations empirically observed, as mentioned above and elaborated below.

The political economy approach falls down in exactly the same way the orthodox economic approach does as it holds the same belief in the essential role of external forces to drive change and the essential role of accumulation in driving ‘progress’ and with it class differentiation. It is assumed that without accumulation by some there can be no progress and therefore the peasant tendency toward equity and growth through multiplication is seen as an obstacle to progress (Harris-White, 2012; Long, 2001; Hydén, 1980).

Bernstein has been a key contributor to the thinking on the political economy of agrarian change and the nature of agrarian society for decades (Bernstein, 2010, 2009). He has argued that “[q]uestions of what and who ‘peasants’ are, where they are, and indeed why they are, in the world of global capitalism in the early twenty-first century, remain as difficult, elusive and contentious as they have been throughout the history of industrial capitalism, perhaps even more so” (Bernstein, 2001: 26). In addressing this question, he quotes Marx:

“what has to be shown in order to ‘prove’ the capitalist nature of such social formations is that the social entities and differences which form [their] social division(s) of labour … are only explicable in terms of the wage labour/capital relation” (ibid: 29).

Bernstein then argues that by the end of the colonial era “the social formations of the imperialist periphery are capitalist”, as per Marx’s definition (above), and therefore the peasants in them “had been constituted as petty commodity producers within capitalism” (ibid: 29). Despite the question being difficult and elusive, Bernstein, with a sweeping assumption about the spread of capitalist relations of production and equally sweeping theoretical position, has defined the place and nature of the peasantry, by which he is referring to all the wakulima in Tanzania, apart from the few large corporate operations. The identification of peasants/small farmers as ‘petty commodity producers’ occupying a contradictory position that combines the roles of owning capital and providing labour (Bernstein, 2010), is also not satisfactory. It assumes that they are on their way either to becoming capitalist owners and employers themselves or they will “be liquidated as a class” and, if they are lucky, become labourers employed by others (Harris-White, 2012; Hydén, 1980). In making such assumptions, even if one allows for them to be stuck in this limbo position for a long time, there is a failure to see this social group as having the possibility of being and/or becoming a class on its own with its own logic and ordering principles, not simply an incomplete part of a processes towards full capitalist relations (Hydén, 1980). The social and economic relations observed in the food system feeding Dar es Salaam, cannot be explained in terms of the wage labour/capital relation alone, just as they cannot be explained by ‘rational’ economic choice theories. In my research, I have found people’s actions, lives and interests are more complex and include the ability to take into account common and mutual interests. Just as real people, in my experience, in relation with other people do not make purchasing or selling decisions only based on narrow calculations of

their own best material interest, neither do they make decisions on the use of their labour power and capital on the basis of narrow calculations of economic return on such inputs. There is another school of thought that embraces the notion of the peasantry and argues that indeed the peasantry exists as a group of farmers who operate within a ‘peasant economy’ shaped by a peasant mode of ordering that offers a different (different to the entrepreneurial or corporate/empire farm modes) peasant driven path of development (Van der Ploeg, 2014; Van der Ploeg et al., 2012; Van der Ploeg, 2008; Chayanov, 1986). This overlaps with the concept of food sovereignty that has been embraced by the international peasant farmer organisation La Via Campesina and debated amongst activists and academics (Edelman et al., 2014; La Via Campesina, 2011).

Most of the wakulima encountered in this research, the ones who are producing at least in part to feed Dar es Salaam, all employ some labour, largely seasonal and casual labour. This is an important difference from Chayanov’s ‘peasants’ and ‘family farms’ that as Thorner put it “were pure in the sense that they depended solely on the work of their own family members” (Chayanov, 1986: xiii). The issue of employment of labour on peasant/small farms and the relations involved with that employment also receives almost no attention from the food sovereignty movement and from Van der Ploeg in his popular writing on the peasantry (Van der Ploeg, 2014, 2008). Bernstein in engaging sceptically with food sovereignty, asks the important question; “[a]nd what of farm workers?” (Bernstein, 2013: 13). The question of labour employed on farms and the implications of that and other factors for class formation need to be addressed.