Ambivalence of class subjectivity: the sharecroppers of the post-bellum southern USA

Serap A. Kayatekin

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2009, vol. 33, issue 6, 1187-1203

Abstract: The paper argues that the economic literature on sharecropping uses a modernist notion of subjectivity that fails to explain the complexity of economic behaviour or the social context in which agency is formed. I look at the case of economic subjectivity of southern sharecropping tenants in the post-bellum USA, using non-determinist Marxist class analysis together with the concept of subjectivity drawing from postcolonial theory, in particular the work of Homi Bhabha. I argue that this alternative approach to economic subjectivity, which posits an ambivalent, or contradictory subjectivity provides us with a better analytical grasp of economic agency and a better explanation of the perpetuation or demise of a productive form such as sharecropping. Copyright The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

Date: 2009
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