Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:27:46.922Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From status to contract: the significance of agrarian relations of production in the West, Japan, and in ‘Asiatic’ Persia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Grace Goodell
Get access

Extract

This paper focuses upon the distinction which Maine and others have drawn between relations of status and those of contract. The particular aspect of contract which interests us is that, due to its characteristic impersonality, it enables individuals and groups who are socially unequal because of stratification, or who have no social links and hence no status at all vis-à-vis each other—enables them to negotiate and enter into binding agreement with each other as political and legal equals. Contract can do this because, unlike status, the former splits the whole-person, enabling him to offer for the purpose of transaction only a singular and specialized aspect of himself to a singular and specialized aspect of another or other partners: the social persona of each participant is set aside. Through this impersonality, contract not only cancels out any social consideration or difference between the participants, but also achieves temporal specificity (delimiting, in advance, the duration of the tie established by the transaction),—whereas interpersonal dealings bind the partners in a relationship that has temporal continuity.

Type
Racines aristocratiques de la démocratie
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , November 1980 , pp. 285 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1980

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

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adams, R. 1966, The Evolution of Urban Society (Chicago, Aldine).Google Scholar
Adams, R. 1974, The Mesopotamian social landscape: a view from the frontier, in Moore, C., (ed.), Reconstructing Complex Societies (Cambridge, Supplement of the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, # 20).Google Scholar
Arasteh, A. 1970, Man and Society in Iran (Leiden, Brill).Google Scholar
Asakawa, K. 1929, The Documents of Iriki (New Haven, Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Banfield, E. C. 1958, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (New York, Free Press).Google Scholar
Bill, J. 1972, The Politics of Iran (Columbus, Ohio, Charles Merrill).Google Scholar
Bill, J. 1973, The plasticity of informal politics: the case of Iran, The Middle East Journal, IV, 35–52.Google Scholar
Bloch, M. 1961, Feudal Society, translated by Manyon, (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul).Google Scholar
Bloch, M. 1966, The rise of dependent cultivation and seignorial institutions, in Postan, E. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Europe, I (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Boserup, E. 1965, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth (Chicago, Aldine).Google Scholar
Coon, C. S. 1951, Caravan (New York, Holt).Google Scholar
Dobb, M. 1947, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul).Google Scholar
Durkheim, É. 1964, Division of Labor (New York, Macmillan/Free Press).Google Scholar
Ehlers, E. 1975. Traditionnelle und moderne Formen der Landwirtschaft in Iran, in Schott, M. (ed.), Marburger geographische Schritfen (Marburg/Lahn, University of Marburg).Google Scholar
Fortes, M. 1969, Kinship and the Social Order (Chicago, Aldine).Google Scholar
Geertz, Cl. 1963, Agricultural Involution (Berkeley, University of California Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodell, G. 1977, The Elementary Structures of Political Life (New York, Ph.D. dissertation written for the Department of Anthropology, Columbia University [unpublished],Google Scholar
Gunderson, K. 1968, Dynamics of Rural Relationships in Iran (Austin, Texas, M.A. thesis for the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin [unpublished]).Google Scholar
Hardin, , 1968, The tragedy of the commons, Science, CLXII, 513–6.Google Scholar
Hilton, R. 1973, Bond Men Made Free (London, Temple Smith).Google Scholar
Hirschman, A. 1977, Passions and Interests (Princeton, Princeton University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoebel, E. A. 1954, The Law of Primitive Man (Cambridge, Harvard University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khaldun, Ibn 1958, The Muqaddimah, II transl. by Rosenthal, (New York, Pantheon).Google Scholar
Kohl, P., and Wright, R. 1977, Stateless cities: differentiation of society in the neolithic and Near East, Dialectical Anthropology, II, 4, 275–84.Google Scholar
Khuzestan Development Service 1961, Status of the Dez Irrigation Pilot Project (Ahwaz, Iran, Imperial Government of Iran).Google Scholar
Lambton, A. K. 1953, Landlord and Peasant in Persia (London, Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Lambton, A. K. 1969, The Persian Land Reform (London, Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Layard, M. 1846, A description of the Province of Khuzestan, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society [London], XVI, 21–60.Google Scholar
Lowie, R. H. 1925, Primitive Society (New York, Boni and Liveright).Google Scholar
Maine, S. 1963, Ancient Law (Boston, Beacon Press).Google Scholar
Morgan, L. H. 1963, Ancient Society (Cleveland, World Publishing Company).Google Scholar
Morgan, J. de. 1914, Feudalism in Persia, Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office).Google Scholar
Osgood, O. T.n. d. (with Nassiry M. T.), Farm Development in the Shushtar Area, F.A.O., 57/3/2/2199, published by the Agricultural Division of F.A.O. and the Independent Irrigation Corporation of Iran.Google Scholar
Pabsons, T. 1937, Structure of Social Action (New York, McGraw Hill).Google Scholar
Penny, N. and Singarimbun, R. 1973, Population and Poverty in Rural Java, Cornell International Agricultural Development Mimeograph # 41 (Ithaca, New York).Google Scholar
Petrushevsky, I. P. 1968, The socioeconomic condition of Iran under the Il-Khans, Cambridge History of Iran, V, ed. Boyle, S. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Pipes, R. 1975, Russia under the Old Regime (New York, Scribners).Google Scholar
Poyck, M. 1962, Farm Studies in Iraq (Wageningen, Netherlands, Laboratory of Agricultural Economics of the Tropical Agriculture University).Google Scholar
Schapera, I. 1956, Government and Politics in Tribal Societies (London, Watts).Google Scholar
Smith, T. C. 1959, Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford, Stanford University press).Google Scholar
Spooner, B. 1972, Population Growth: anthropological implications (Cambridge, M.I.T. Press).Google Scholar
Wilson, S. G. 1895, Persian Life and Customs (New York, Fleming Revell).Google Scholar
Wright, G. 1969, Obsidian Analyses and prehistoric Near Eastern Trade: 7500–3500 B.C., Anthropological Papers # 37 (Ann Arbor, Museum of Anthropology, The University of Michigan).Google Scholar