The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 166)

غرض

عنوان

The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 166)

المحتوى

150
case, that should not lead to complete abandoning of one’s own land; it is well
known that in Palestine as well as in all other primarily agricultural societies that
working off one’s own land during the off-season was a source of supplementary
income and that the loss of labor time when needed and available is compensated
for by other members of the family. If that were the case, then one would expect
these families to be included in the second category of the Johnson-Crosbie Report
(see Table 3.6) of “owner-occupiers, who also work as laborers,” which, of
course, they were not.
As for the second possible interpretation of “previously” having not
cultivated their own land, that too, raises some serious questions. If by previously
Stein means the Ottoman period, which seems to be the case, it is simply illogical
to imply that the 29.4 percent of families or a majority of them were laborers
during that time. This is borne out by the nature of the economy during the
Ottoman period and the limited extent of changes it underwent. Stein criticized
Hope-Simpson for not “describ[ing] the very lengthy process of small-landowner
alienation and accompanying large-owner accumulation that had taken place during
the Ottoman period,” and for not “defin[ing] the dynamic of socioeconomic
transition from owner-occupier to tenant cultivator to agricultural laborer.””
The process that Stein outlined implies major changes in the social relations
of production, something that, as shown in Chapter 2, did not occur. The rise of
large-landed estates was the result of a combination of sale or grants by the sultan,
Stein, 109-10.
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The Dispossession of the Peasantry

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المنشئ

Riyad Mousa

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