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Nonwaged peasants in the modern world-system: African households as dialectical units of capitalist exploitation and indigenous resistance, 1890-1930

Author

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  • Wilma A. Dunaway

    (Virginia Tech University)

Abstract

Colonialism did not transform African peasants into waged labor. A majority of peasants worked as forced laborers, often unpaid, and they returned to their agricultural household labor as soon as they completed work assignments mandated by the colonizers. Colonial Africans resided in mixed livelihood households in which nonwaged labor forms (both free and unfree) predominated, and very few became dependent on wages. For a majority of colonial Africans, informal sector activities, tenancy, sharecropping, and subsistence production on communal plots were not temporary nonwaged forms on an inevitable path toward proletarianization. Wage earning was not the primary mechanism through which these households were integrated into the modern world-system. Instead, these households primarily provided nonwaged labors to capitalist commodity chains that, in turn, extracted surpluses from them and externalized costs of production to them.

Suggested Citation

  • Wilma A. Dunaway, 2010. "Nonwaged peasants in the modern world-system: African households as dialectical units of capitalist exploitation and indigenous resistance, 1890-1930," The Journal of Philosophical Economics, Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, The Journal of Philosophical Economics, vol. 4(1), pages 19-57, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:bus:jphile:v:4:y:2010:i:1:p:19-57
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    Cited by:

    1. Sullivan, Dylan & Hickel, Jason, 2023. "Capitalism and extreme poverty: a global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117731, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Africa; African colonialism; African peasants; indigenous resistance; forced labor; nonwage labor; households; proletarianization; semiproletarians; modern world-system;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • P19 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Other
    • P48 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Other Economic Systems - - - Legal Institutions; Property Rights; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Regional Studies

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