Markets, Class and Social Change

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. Exploring Market Diversity

   • Ben Crow

   Pages 1-19

3. Class and Change in the South Asian Countryside

   • Ben Crow

   Pages 20-45

4. The Diversity of Exchange

   • Ben Crow

   Pages 46-87

5. Grain Outflows: Advantage Rich, Disadvantage Poor

   • Ben Crow

   Pages 88-113

6. The Markets of Adversity, or Why the Rich Don’t Buy Rice

   • Ben Crow

   Pages 114-136

7. Why are Big Traders Big and Small Traders Small?

   • Ben Crow

   Pages 137-173

8. Why is Agrarian Growth Uneven?

   • Ben Crow

   Pages 174-194

9. Local Consequences of Global Policy

   • Ben Crow

   Pages 195-211

10. Diverse Markets and Public Action

    • Ben Crow

    Pages 212-230

11. Back Matter

    Pages 231-265

    PDF

At the beginning of the twenty-first century an idealized view of markets informs government policy. Real differences in how markets interact with social change are obscured and public action on poverty is constrained. Markets, Class and Social Change uses a detailed study of the grain trade in Bangladesh to show how socially-constrained patterns of market involvement may systematically benefit the rich while disadvantaging the poor. More generally, the book suggests that markets are implicated in the making of society, its divisions, identities and directions.

• Asia
• government policy
• growth
• network
• networks
• poverty
• trade
• trader
• trading

'...a tour de force... enjoyable to read even though its subject matter...is grim in the extreme.' - Barbara Harriss-White, Oxford University

'...a truly significant contribution to agrarian political economy: at once, clear, to the point, incisive and original.' - T.J.Byres, Editor, Journal of Peasant Studies

'Writing against the grain of globalization and the free market, Ben Crow's book is not only a trenchant theoretical critique but also a fertile and sustained work of empirical inquiry. Focusing on the grain trade and its impact in inequality, Crow manages to illuminate the whole world of rural South Asia. Readers will reap a rich harvest of ideas and insights from this wonderful work.' - John Lie, Department of Sociology, Harvard University

• Sociology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

  Ben Crow

BEN CROW is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has written or co-authored several books including Sharing the Ganges, Third World Atlas, Survival and Change in the Third World and The Food Question.