Hostname: page-component-6b989bf9dc-6f5p8 Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-04-14T22:23:25.069Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Genesis of Capitalism Amongst a South American Peasantry: Devil's Labor and the Baptism of Money

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Michael Taussig
Michael Taussig
Affiliation:
The University of Michigan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

What does wage labor and capital mean to a peasantry that is subjected to rapid rural proletarianization and what is the basis of that meaning?

I wish to discuss an aspect of this question in the light of certain ideological reactions manifested by a South American lowland peasantry as expanding sugar plantations absorb their lands and peasants are converted into landless wage laborers. In the southern extremities of the Cauca Valley, Colombia, it is commonly thought that male plantation workers can increase their output, and hence their wage, through entering into a secret contract with the devil. However, the local peasants, no matter how needy they may be, never make such a contract when working their own plots or those of their peasant neighbors for wages. It is also thought that by illicitly baptizing money instead of a child in the Catholic church, that money can become interest bearing capital, while the child will be deprived of its rightful chance of entering heaven.

Type
The Accommodation to Capitalism in Peasant Societies
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , April 1977 , pp. 130 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Asocaña, , (Asociacion Nacional de Cultivadores de Caña de Azúcar) (1965) Development of the Colombian Sugar Industry, 1967–1968. Cali, Colombia.Google Scholar
Brown, Norman O. (1959) Life Against Death. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Burtt, Edwin Arthur (1954) The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
C.I.M. (1969) “Los Iguazos, Proletarios y Parias en el Azúcar,” Estudios Marxistas, No. 1, pp. 43–86. Editorial Colombian Nueva Ltda., Colombia.Google Scholar
Pierre, Gilhodes (1970) “Agrarian Struggles in Colombia,” in Stavenhagen, R. (ed.) Agrarian Problems and Peasant Movements in Latin America. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
German, Guzman and Fals-Borda, O. and Luna, E. Umana (1962-1964) La Violencia en Colombia, 2 vols. Bogotá, Colombia: Ediciones Tercer Mundo.Google Scholar
Hesse, Mary B. (1963) Models and Analogies in Science. London: Sheed and Ward.Google Scholar
Horkheimer, Max (1974) The Eclipse of Reason. New York: Seabury Press.Google Scholar
Knight, Rolf (1972) Sugar Plantations and Labor Patterns in the Cauca Valley, Colombia. Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto Anthropological Series, No. 12.Google Scholar
Levi-Strauss, Claude (1963) Totemism, Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Mancini, S. (1959) “Tenencia y uso de la Tierra por la Industria Azúcarera del Valle del Cauca,” Acta Agróndmica (Facultad de Agronomìa, Palmira, Colombia), IV, 1.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl (1967) Capital, 3 vols. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl (1973) The Grundrisse, Nicolaus, M. (trans.), Middlesex, England: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Nash, June (1972) “The Devil in Bolivia's Nationalised Tin Mines,” Science and Society, XXVI, 2.Google Scholar
Needham, Joseph (1956) Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 2. Cambridge, England.Google Scholar
Oilman, Bertell (1971) Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capitalist Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Karl (1947) “Our Obsolete Market Mentality,” Commentary, Vol. 3, 02 1947:109–117.Google Scholar
Robbins, Lionel (1935) An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, 2nd Edition.London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Roll, Eric (1973) A History of Economic Thought, 4th Edition.London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall (1972) Stone Age Economics. Chicago & New York: Aldine Atherton.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Alfred (1971) The Concept of Nature in Marx. London: New Left Books.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam (1967) “The History of Astronomy,” Lindgren, J. Ralph (ed.), in The Early Writings of Adam Smith. New York: A. M. Kelley.Google Scholar
Tambiah, S.J. (1973) “Form and Meaning of Magical Acts: A Point of View,” in Horton, Robin and Finnegan, Ruth (eds.), Modes of Thought. London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Tawney, R.H. (1954) Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. New York: Mentor.Google Scholar
Weber, Max (1927) General Economic History, Knight, Frank H. trans., Greenberg, New York.Google Scholar
Weber, Max (1958) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Parsons, Talcott (trans.), New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.Google Scholar
Whitehead, , Alfred North, (1967) Adventures of Ideas. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar