AHA Session 28
Thursday, January 5, 2023: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Congress Hall A (Loews Philadelphia Hotel, 4th Floor)
Chair:
Aaron M. Windel, Simon Fraser University
Panel:
Nikolay Kamenov, Universität Basel
Prakash Kumar, Penn State University
Nicole Sackley, University of Richmond
Aaron M. Windel, Simon Fraser University
Prakash Kumar, Penn State University
Nicole Sackley, University of Richmond
Aaron M. Windel, Simon Fraser University
Session Abstract
The period between 1900 and 1980 was one of extreme political transformations and reconfigurations on a global scale. It began with the heyday of empire only to see the drawn-out process of decolonization seemingly complete. There were steady forces at hand, however, that bridged wars, economic crises, and the changing fortunes of empire. The global economy, growing in spurts to unprecedented levels, and the rise in the world’s population meant an ever-growing demand for agricultural produce on the long-run. Processes of commercialization in the countryside, with which both administrators and agriculturalists were already acquainted since the 19th century in the Global South, accelerated further. The asymmetrical production of agricultural commodities such as tea, cocoa, coffee, sugar as well as fibers like cotton or jute, concentrated in the Global South earned its title as the ‘global countryside’ in recent writings on the new history of capitalism. Late colonial and post-colonial states undertook large-scale community development campaigns, captured loosely in the literature as rural ‘modernization’. In and beyond those national campaigns, a key institutional form enacted in this context to connect producers to the broader market economy were agricultural cooperatives. To smoothen the process of commercialization, dampen market associated risks, and organize farmers contractually, various actors organized cooperatives from around 1900 in South and Southeast Asia, throughout Africa, and in Latin America. Although often promoted as an alternative way to capitalism, in reality cooperatives often furthered the inroads of global market forces into the agricultural economies of the Global South. This roundtable considers the multifaceted and frequently tense relationship between the free market, cooperation, and community development. We look at both the circulation of ideas regarding community development and the establishment of viable cooperative movements – including imperial circuits and organizations like the International Cooperative Alliance, the Ford Foundation, and the Horace Plunkett Foundation – as well as at more structural questions regarding the political economy of agriculture in the ‘global countryside’. In particular, we are looking at colonial state efforts to build and control cooperatives in Uganda (and an independent cooperative movement that sought to challenge colonial controls); the US Cooperative League and its new leadership on the international stage after 1946; the interaction between postcolonial state and international planning and the subjects of community development, for example, refugees in post-Partition Punjab and Uttar Pradesh; cooperatives dealing with cotton in Khandesh, cacao in Ghana, and sugar in Maharashtra, bridging the colonial and postcolonial periods. Among other historical problems, the presentations will raise questions regarding the ambiguity between community development projects and cooperatives. Why were cooperatives hailed as an instrument of emancipation of ‘the peasant’ and simultaneously criticized as a tool of control? How could cooperatives be a main development strategy of both late empires and nascent post-colonial states? What made cooperatives appealing to both proponents of socialism and, conversely, advocates of a global free market?
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