Social bandits, modern capitalism and the traditional peasantry. a critique of Hobsbawm.

O’Malley, Pat

doi:10.1080/03066157908438087

Cited by 32 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…While many concur with O'Malley's critique of Hobsbawm, his own attempt to straightjacket banditry into class struggle is also problematic given the heterogeneity of bandits in history. 59 Blok has argued that banditry terrorises peasants with depredations on large scale landholdings and this renders peasants…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kings versus Bandits: Anti-colonialism in a Bandit Narrative

Mayaram¹

2003

JRAS

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Debate and controversy have bedevilled the subject of social banditry. The early writing on social banditry saw it as primitive rebellion, as prepolitical and antithetical to class consciousness. Another approach identified it with weak state formation. The literature on South Asia saw social banditry as absent having been eroded by the institutional structure of caste. This article examines and critiques some of these theses on banditry. It argues, firstly, that social banditry can be simultaneous with a phase of intensified state formation. The specific theme investigated here is the interaction of the king, peasant and bandit in an Indian kingdom under late colonialism. A window to this universe is opened up by a folk epic from the oral tradition of a community of Muslims called the Meos. Far from being prepolitical, banditry raises crucial questions with respect to authority and legitimacy. This narrative not only interrogates the legitimacy of kingship, it also challenges the authority of the colonial state. Secondly, the article challenges the argument of South Asian exceptionalism to banditry that is perhaps easier to refute. Thirdly, as this article demonstrates, banditry need not relate to a pre-industrial capitalist world. Our bandit narrative indicates the reverberations of industrialism and attendant exchange relations and institutions in the colony even though it belongs to an area of ‘indirect’ rule.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kings versus Bandits: Anti-colonialism in a Bandit Narrative

Mayaram¹

2003

JRAS

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“…Hobsbawm's original formulation has come under attack among scholars working outside of Africa (Blok, 1972;Lewin, 1979;O'Mally, 1979), and a number of Africanists have voiced skepticism about its analytical utility. Some see the study of social banditry as one more example of the "glorification of the inconsequential."…”

Section: Getting Even: the Politics Of Retributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peasants and Rural Social Protest in Africa

Isaacman¹

1990

African Studies Review

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Peasants are an ambiguous social category. They are difficult to define and their political behavior defies most generalizations. Nevertheless, social scientists, many working outside of Africa, have produced a voluminous literature debating both the critical characteristics and the analytical utility of the term peasant. Some take the view that peasants have been defined so broadly and contradictorily as to render the concept virtually useless and that the notion should either be discarded or referred to only by negation (Dalton, 1972; Hill, 1963; Moore, 1972; Ennew, Hirst, and Tribe, 1977; Friedmann, 1980). Other scholars obviously disagree, having advanced definitions of the essence of peasants and varieties of agrarian change. Culturalists such as Kroeber (1948) and Redfield (1956) highlighted the peasants' folk version of a higher culture. Chayanov (1966) emphasized the demographic cycle of the peasant household, exhibiting a natural pattern of growth and change. Wolf (1966) and Godelier (1973) shifted the focus to the historically derived relationships of domination in which peasants were subsumed. Shanin defined peasants “as a kind of arrangement of humanity” (1973: 76) in which their partial involvement in the market and their partial subordination to the state or appropriating class were their most salient characteristics. These debates were reproduced within African Studies. Those skeptical that the concept had any analytical value initially prevailed. This position was defended most vigorously in a theoretical essay by Fallers (1961) and in Hill's (1963) masterful work on agrarian change in southern Ghana. As late as 1972, Post noted that “most writers either evade this issue or display analytical uncertainty or forthrightly reject the term [peasant]” (1972: 223).

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Social Bandits

Seal¹

2013

The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice

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The concept of the “social” bandit was introduced by the late historian, Eric Hobsbawm, to describe “noble robbers” or outlaw heroes who resist oppressions visited on the poor and weak. The English Robin Hood is perhaps the best‐known example, but such figures appear in folk traditions around the world and across at least several thousand years of history. Hobsbawm's contention that certain nominally criminal figures could be considered fighters against oppression, and therefore supported by their environing communities, has been influential and controversial across many fields of scholarship.

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Social bandits, modern capitalism and the traditional peasantry. a critique of Hobsbawm.

Cited by 32 publications

References 7 publications

Kings versus Bandits: Anti-colonialism in a Bandit Narrative

Kings versus Bandits: Anti-colonialism in a Bandit Narrative

Peasants and Rural Social Protest in Africa

Social Bandits

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