Markets, Class and Social Change: Trading Networks and Poverty

in Rural South Asia

By Ben Crow
(Analysis)
The book is a product of an extensive ethnography in the grain markets of Bangladesh including
literature from other South Asian countries. Ben Crow reflects upon the localized formats of
market, exchange and bargaining paradigms that have had continuous effect on the formation of
class, social change and social mobility in Bangladesh. His field of study and unit of analysis
include the traders, merchants and localities whose constant interaction shape the foundation of
market which differ from region to region. The ethnography suggests that there is no ubiquitous
market per se which governs the lives of the agrarian society dwelling between stark disparities
of prosperity, but each area is trimmed to have exclusive market that define and shape the class
and living standards of the people. His research is enriched with the previous works of Smith,
Hodgson, Polanyi, Harriss, Bourdieu and others by which Crow progresses through to derive
results out of his field work.
The primal contemplation to be sought through this work is the tendency to overlook small scale
market workings by the neoclassical economists whose academia mostly concern them with the
macro happenings of the global market, thus more than often undermining the repercussions of
indigenous exchange on regional as well as national wealth. Crow is highly interested to study
the causal relationship between global markets and real markets. By real markets he reveals the
diversity of markets not only segregated by level of transactions but also from a historical
perspective. His work entails a rare historical analysis in economic sociology which is highly
pertaining to the current method and modes used by the locals in the formation of markets.
Crow effectively points out that his research area meanders around mud-floored markets with
bare minimum infrastructure and meager investment as compared to large scale transaction. His
methodology includes interviews of 100 traders and 200 households through stratified sampling.
The analysis of the data gathered is done by both quantitative and qualitative methods of
research.
After offering an intricate overview of the book, Crow evinces into details his ethnographical
studies on the two regions of Bogra and Noakhali. He describes the area of Bogra as growth
and that of Noakhali as stagnation, the former being located in the north and the latter in the
south. Crow analyses the causes behind this contrasts through a historical perspective. To
summarize his findings, the region of Bogra has been better efficiently able to utilize the
prospects of Green Revolution, while Noakhali lacks the amenities and capital to spearhead the
investments required for greater production. The Bogra region has small landholdings with
intensive subsistence agriculture with an absence of large land holding class. There are a good

number of rich peasant classes who invest heavily on new mechanical and biochemical
technologies; also, there is an absence of significant rentier class. On the other hand, there arent
much powerful rich peasants but absentee landlords and large merchants in the Noakhali, who do
not engage into heavy investments for large productivity. A historical anecdote reflects that most
of the laborers have lost their lands to the handful merchants and thus work in other lands often
as surplus laborers shrouded in debt.
In this context, Crow draws heavily from Marxs conception of alienation. He capitalizes on the
terms absolute and relative surplus value (or labor). A rentier class of landlords and
merchants can appropriate absolute surplus value, as seems to be happening in the Noakhali
chars, without increasing the productivity of the peasants whose surplus they take. By contrast, a
class of rich peasants accumulates relative surplus value, as is occurring in Bogra, through
increasing the productivity of agriculture with innovation and investment.1
Crow, determines the parameters of social class based on three quantitative indicators such as,
household land ownership, the extent of the household using the work of others by renting out
land and the ability of the household to meet its subsistence requirements. On the basis of these
parameters, Crow deduces the difference in the process of social change between Bogra and
Naokhali. Bogras economy is based more on agrarian investment and increased productivity
while in Naokhali it is based on extraction of paddy through tenurial relations established by
landlords and the credit contracts imposed by merchants.
The research also implies a relation between class and gender. Bangladesh is a conservative
nation where women are mostly confined to the homely tasks. There is an absence of women in
the market exchange places where transactions are carried out by men. However, Crow reveals
that the involvement of women is in relation to the class strata. He presents that the women from
rich peasant households do not share the market space, but the women of smaller peasantry class
do engage into market transactions. This, he concludes is a result of poor conditions of farmers
and peasants who require more labor to increase productivity, the family members engaging into
market transactions lead to an increment in household income. Crow, however, fails to put
forward a more general argument as to how gender leads to enhancing or lowering the income
disparity between the Bogra and Noakhali.
In the concluding part, Crow mentions that the differentiation of peasantry between Bogra and
Noakhali isnt a simple autonomous process; it includes legal and economic changes, more
generally existing outside agriculture. In the later chapters Crow shall evaluate grain outflows,
consumption patterns, the uneven agrarian growth and local consequences of global policies.

Crow, B (2001: 25)