METHODOLOGY

This study is a comparative analysis of data collected by my 1967 baseline study and a restudy of the village in 1999 and 2002.⁸

One principal reason for the selection of Shishdangi in 1967 for field research was its plural agrarian structure. This included the coexistence of four different types of agricultural-production systems in the village: (1) a peasant production system (nizam-i dihqani); (2) pump-owner tenant farmers (nizam-i tulumbah kari); (3) a large private capitalist farm (nizam-i sarmayi dari); and (4) the remnant of the landlord-sharecropping system (nizam-i arbabi). The 1967 baseline study provides a set of socioeconomic data on the village population, landownership, its four production systems, and social stratification. In the initial phase of the restudy in 1999, information was gathered on the village's land ownership, irrigation, agricultural and livestock production, and population characteristics. During summer 2002, a random sample of 39 households was selected for interviews from a listing of the total 176 landowning households. In addition, 39 landless households were randomly selected for interviews from a listing of 143 such households. In total, seventy-eight interviews were conducted by the author with the heads of the sample households. The information obtained from these interviews, the key informants, and personal observations constitute the bulk of data used in the restudy.

Between 1967 and 2001 major changes occurred in the village's population, per capita arable land, crop density, and agricultural productivity (Table 1). There was a substantial decline in per capita arable land (by 47%), resulting from the combination of a high population-growth rate and a slight decrease in the village's arable land. Substantial increases occurred in crop yields (wheat by 200%, barley by 156%, and sugar beet by 102%), which correspond to average annual growth rates of 3.2 percent, 2.8 percent, and 2.1 percent, respectively. The changes in Shishdangi reflect corresponding trends throughout Iran in the agricultural sector, as overall per capita arable land has declined by an estimated 24 percent,⁹

In light of changes in the pattern of land ownership, three distinct periods can be discerned in Shishdangi's transformation: (1) the village under landlord domination; (2) land reform, the rise of peasant proprietorship, and the development of capitalist farming; and (3) revolution, the demise of capitalist farming, and the transformation of the peasants. This paper will explore and analyze the dynamics and consequences of the socioeconomic changes in the village agrarian transition under each of the three periods, with a special focus on the postrevolutionary era.

THE VILLAGE UNDER LANDLORD DOMINATION

There is little information on the historical development of Shishdangi for the period under landlord domination, which roughly ended by the mid-1960s. In 1935, a sugar-beet refinery was founded in Marvdasht, and as far as the villagers recall, the entire village (Shish-dang)¹¹

For further discussion, see Javad Safi-Nezhad, Bunah: nizamha-i zira

ati sunnati dar Iran (Bunah: Traditional Farming Systems in Iran) (Tehran: Muassisa-yi Intisharat-i Amir Kabir, 1989); Hushang Elyasian, “Bunah bandi dar dasht-i qazvin: nimunah-yi az nizam-i kar kishavarzi-yi dastihjami dar Iran” (The Structure of Bunah in Qazvin: An Example of Agricultural Work Team in Iran), Iqtisad-i Kishavarzi va-Tawsiah 2 (1994): 143–50; and Eckart Ehlers, “The Iranian Village: A Socio-economic Microcosm,” in Agricultural Development in the Middle East, ed. P. Beaumont and K. McLachlan (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1985), 151–70.

With the development of pump irrigation by the late 1950s, a new system of agricultural production, locally known as tulumbah kari (pump-owner tenant farmer), emerged in the village. Tulumbah kari involves the transfer of land-use rights (usufruct) from the landowner to the peasant, who digs a well, installs water pumps to irrigate the land, and provides other production inputs for the cultivation of the land. This system of production spread very quickly in the village, and by 1967 some 340 hectares (28% of the total arable land) were cultivated by thirteen pump-owner tenant farmers. Furthermore, another new agricultural system, capitalist farming, began to develop in the village in the late 1950s when Aqa Muhandis's eldest son took over the management of his family estates from the mustajir. He proceeded to dig four wells and water-pump installations, introduced tractors, and dismissed the sharecroppers. Consequently, some forty-eight sharecroppers lost their cultivation rights to the capitalist farm and joined the ranks of the wage laborers (khwushnishin), a lower socioeconomic status than the sharecropper in the village's social hierarchy.

Before these changes, Shishdangi's social structure was nearly homogenous, largely dominated by absentee land ownership and sharecropping arrangements. Most households were sharecroppers at the same level in the village's social hierarchy and lacking any appreciable internal socio-economic differentiation. The village exemplifies the pre–land reform agrarian structure in Iran, characterized by (1) the predominance of an absentee landlord–sharecropping system; (2) low capital investment in agriculture, leading to low productivity and poverty of the peasants; and (3) a pattern of landlords' domination over the social and economic institutions of the countryside.¹³

LAND REFORM, THE RISE OF PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALIST FARMING

Iran launched a sweeping land reform in 1962, which was implemented in three phases over a decade under the shah's “White Revolution.” While the shah's regime's interest in land reform is believed to have been primarily political¹⁴

In 1965, the half of the village that belonged to Haj Arbab was cultivated under sharecropping arrangements, subject to land redistribution under the second phase of the land-reform program. Consequently, one-third of this half, along with the water rights from the Sivand River, were transferred to the thirty-four occupying sharecroppers—on average, about 4.7 hectares each. The other half of the village (Aqa Muhandis' farm), which was worked by wage laborers, was exempt from redistribution.¹⁷

For a discussion of peasant production system (nizam-i dihqani), see Gholam Reza Heydari, “Yikparchigi arazi tawsi

ah-yi kishavarzi dar Iran” (Land Consolidation and Agricultural Development in Iran), Iqtisad-i Kishavarzi va-Tawsi

ah 4 (1996): 145–203; and Ismail Ajami, “Naqsh-i nizam-i bahrih bardari-yi dihqani dar tawsi

ah-yi kishavarzi” (The Role of Peasant Production System in Agricultural Development], Namah-i Ulum-i Ijtimai 2 (1976): 189–99.

The implementation of land reform reinforced the trends toward development of capitalist agriculture. Haj Arbab redistributed more than 30 percent of his estates in 1965, discontinuing sharecropping arrangements and transforming his remaining land into capitalist farming by investing in water-pump irrigation and farm mechanization, and by hiring wage laborers and a farm supervisor. Aqa Muhandis further expanded his capitalist farming by adopting new agricultural technologies and increasing crop diversification, including leasing 30 hectares of the farm to a contractor for melon cultivation under a 50–50 profit-sharing arrangement (generally referred to as nisfah kari).¹⁹

The Shishdangi data show the development of a dualistic agrarian structure, the demise of sharecropping, the disintegration of the bunah system, and deterioration in the socioeconomic conditions of the khwushnishins,²³

REVOLUTION, THE DEMISE OF CAPITALIST FARMING, AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE PEASANTRY

As the 1977–79 revolutionary upheavals gathered momentum in the urban centers, they eventually reached the rural areas, leading to peasant radicalization and land seizure in the countryside. Current scholarship suggests that the peasants' participation in pre-revolution antiregime demonstrations and political activities was by and large limited.²⁹

In the case of Shishdangi, interviews with the two landlords and the village's key informants suggest that peasants were mostly in the “wait-and-see” mode during the revolutionary upheavals, except for a few activists who began agitating against the Aqa Muhandis capitalist farm about three months before the collapse of the regime in February 1979. In fact, peasants' protests against the village's two landlords occurred at different times, depending largely on the nature of their past relations with the landlords. Those who had been evicted by Aqa Muhandis in the early 1960s when he transformed his estate into capitalist farming were the ones who began their uprising prior to the revolution. In contrast, the peasant sharecroppers who were the beneficiaries of land redistribution by Haj Arbab under the 1962 land-reform program did not join the land-takeover movement until almost a year and a half later.

The earliest uprising was organized by two brothers whose father had been evicted by Aqa Muhandis when the capitalist farm was developed. They mobilized the former sharecroppers against the landowner by seizing the farm piece by piece. The peasants first took over about 14 hectares of land, then they moved to stop the landlord's delivery of sugar beets to the Marvdasht processing plant. Their next move was to occupy another 130 hectares of the capitalist farm's fallow land, which they collectively ploughed and planted with sugar beets. Finally, immediately after the revolution, the peasants seized the remaining fields, occupied the landlord's five water pumps, and expelled his farm's supervisor from the village. They then subdivided the farm among themselves and began working the fields by initially setting up the former harasah system. Despite the landowner's protest and frequent appeals to the local authorities, the peasants continued farming the occupied fields without paying any rent or a share of the crops to the landowner, except for the 1978–79 grain crops planted by the landowner. Almost a year and a half after the revolution, the peasants who were the beneficiaries of the land reform in the other half of the village began to agitate against Haj Arbab, the other landowner. They began by disrupting his farming operations, including the irrigation and fertilizing of the fields. Haj Arbab appealed to the Marvdasht governor's office, local gendarmes, and the Islamic Guards to prevent the peasants' aggressions on his estate. He argued that, since more than 30 percent of his estate had been distributed to the peasant sharecroppers in 1965 under the land-reform program, the peasants had no legitimate claim. His complaints were to no avail, however, and the peasants continued to disrupt his farming activities. Finally, in January 1981 they took over his land, two water pumps, a tractor, and other farm machinery.³⁴

The dispute over the occupied lands between different peasant groups and the two landowners has passed through various phases since the 1979 revolution. First, in addressing the petition of the landless agricultural workers for a portion of the village farmland, the local members of the “Sevener Commission”³⁵

In the meantime, both the peasants and the two landowners remained unwilling to settle their disputes. The peasants hoped that the revolutionary government might eventually transfer the ownership of the occupied lands to them, while the landowners expected to gain the return of their estates through the courts. This climate of uncertainty drastically changed in October 1986 when the Islamic Parliament approved a land-reform law whose primary purpose was to legalize the transfer of the occupied lands to the peasant squatters.³⁶

The revolution's impact³⁸

For an overall review of the revolution's impact on the villages, see Mansur Vosooghi, Jam

ahshinasi-yi rusta

i (Rural Sociology) (Tehran: Intisharat-i Kayhan, 1987), 229–89; and Mostafa Azkia, “Rural Society and Revolution in Iran,” in Twenty Years of Islamic Revolution, ed. Eric Hooglund (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 96–119.

THE DEMISE OF CAPITALIST FARMING

The impact of revolutionary changes besides the peasants' land seizures and land redistribution includes the disintegration of capitalist farming in the village. As mentioned, the two capitalist farms were seized and parceled out among former sharecroppers, farm-workers, and its two landowners. In 1988, when Aqa Muhandis and his brother regained a portion of their farm, they contracted their total 140 hectares to three local farmers, who were each to work the land for a three-year period. Farming operations during the period consisted mainly of an annual cultivation of roughly 70 hectares of wheat and 35 hectares of corn, while the remaining 35 hectares were left fallow. This simple cropping pattern is in sharp contrast to the pre-revolution period, when this capitalist farm was characterized as a highly diversified and productive agricultural enterprise. The other large estate—that is, the remnant of the nizam-i arbabi, which was also developed into capitalist farming by its owner, Haj Arbab, after the 1965 land redistribution—has totally disintegrated and ceased to operate as an agricultural enterprise.

In 2002, continued land disputes, economic insecurity, and vacillating state agrarian policies were cited by the three urban landowners, Haj Arbab, Aqa Muhandis, and his brother, as primary reasons for their hesitation to commit capital investment and management to what has remained of their estates since the revolution. This insecurity of land tenure and government indecisiveness on the role of the private sector also are often postulated in the literature as the main causes in the deterioration of private capital formation in agriculture in post-revolutionary Iran.³⁹

On the decline of domestic capital formation in agriculture, see Kambiz H. Kiyani and Mohamad R. Alizadeh, “Barrisi-yi

avamil mu

asir bar sarmayi guzari-yi bakhsh-i khususi dar kishavarzi-i Iran” (A Study on the Factors Affecting Private Sector Investment in Iranian Agriculture), Iqtisad-i Kishavarzi va-Tawsi

ah 8 (2000): 45–73; and Ahmad Mojtahed and Hadi S. Esfahani, “Agricultural Policy and Performance in Iran: The Post-Revolutionary Experience,” World Development 17 (1989): 839–60.

It seems clear that these socioeconomic changes have led to a dramatic interruption in the village agrarian transition to capitalism, as is evident in a quadrupling of the number of peasant smallholders, reinstatement of the sharecropping system by one of the former large landowners, and the fact that there was less investment in agriculture by urban merchants and former large landowners. The local-level changes were strongly reinforced by post-revolutionary political instability, social turmoil, and the new regime's antagonism toward large capitalist agricultural enterprises. Taken as a whole, the Shishdangi evidence suggests that agrarian transition to capitalism can follow a number of different paths, depending on the configuration of local-level conditions and on external sociopolitical forces. As Benjamin White argues, “[T]here is no universal or all-purpose ‘agrarian question’ awaiting investigation, nor is there any universal form of ‘agrarian differentiation’ (agrarian transition).”⁴⁰

TRANSFORMATION OF THE PEASANTRY

The increased access to land and water resources by a larger number of villagers coupled with the impact of rapid urbanization in the Marvdasht region and further integration of the village economy into the market (see later) have largely contributed to the acceleration of the socioeconomic transformation of the peasants in Shishdangi. This is mainly reflected in (1) changes in the agricultural production system; (2) diversification of occupational structure; and (3) shifts in social stratification. Each transformation will be discussed in detail.

Changes in the Agricultural Production System

An analysis of the production system in Shishdangi over the post-revolutionary period reveals a fundamental change: a transition from peasants whose livelihood depended largely on subsistence agriculture to farmers who practice intensive agriculture within a market economy.⁴¹

For a discussion of a similar trend in Egyptian agriculture, see Nicholas S. Hopkins and Kirsten Westergaard, “Introduction: Directions of Change in Rural Egypt,” in Directions of Change in Rural Egypt, ed. Nicholas S. Hopkins and Kirsten Westergaard (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1998).

As part of this transition, we will see the emergence of a small number of petty capitalist farmers. The peasant production system, which depended heavily on family labor and farming for domestic consumption, has made a drastic shift to mainly mechanized and commercial agriculture. Plowing, planting, weeding, and harvesting of grains are now highly mechanized, even on small farms. The rapid expansion of farm mechanization has substantially reduced the need for household labor, except in tomato weeding and harvesting, as well as in managing the irrigation system, which have remained labor intensive. The peasant household that used to produce a significant part of its own subsistence (roughly 60% in 1967) now sells almost all of its output to the market (Table 4). Even a family's daily bread is now acquired from bakeries in Marvdasht—in sharp contrast with 1967, when nearly all village households baked their own bread.⁴²

Since urban bread is highly subsidized by the government, it is to the village producers' economic advantage to sell their wheat harvest to the market and buy family bread from urban bakeries.

A comparison of 1967 and 2001 production-system data (Table 4) indicates a substantial increase, due primarily to the 1979–81 land takeovers, in the number of smallholders (from 34 to 91), as well as the emergence of forty-five medium farmers by 2002.

The data also show a considerable rise in crop diversification, yields, and the increase in the percentage of output sold into the market by small and medium farmers. The dramatic rise in yields is primarily the result of the adoption of Green Revolution technologies, especially fertilizers and high-yielding seed varieties, and increased investment in irrigation pumps.⁴³

As an illustration, the number of water pumps increased from twenty-seven in 1967 to sixty by 2002, and the average amount of fertilizer used per irrigated hectare increased from 92 to 550 kilograms over this period.

It should be stressed that the development of transportation and market networks in the Marvdasht region, as mentioned earlier, has brought the village more into the urban economy, which has contributed considerably to this transition.

Peasant agriculture has also changed with regard to animal husbandry. Most villagers have moved to new housing outside the old confinement of the qalah, and so they have largely given up the practice of raising a few sheep and goats. In 1967, each household had an average of twenty head of sheep and goats and one cow, but by 2002, sheep raising and milk production had been largely taken over by a few relatively specialized farmers. A further indicator of peasant transformation is reflected in new patterns of household consumption that have appeared gradually over the past thirty years, including the adoption of new types of housing, clothes, food items, televisions, refrigerators, and telephones.⁴⁴

The 2002 sample household survey shows that all of the small and medium farm households except one now have a refrigerator, television, and telephone, whereas in 1967, 39 percent of peasant households had just a radio.

Considering the fundamental changes that have taken place in peasant production and consumption patterns since 1967, it can be argued that the concept of a peasant mode of production is no longer applicable to the village's small landholders.⁴⁵

For a discussion of a similar trend in peasant transformation, see Caglar Keyder, “Paths of Rural Transformation in Turkey,” Journal of Peasant Studies 11 (1983): 34–50.

With this transformation in mind, the village households currently engaged in small-scale agriculture are more correctly referred to as farmers, not peasants or peasant farmers. The emerging production system in Shishdangi is a shift from peasant labor–intensive agriculture to mechanized commercial agriculture, and from large urban (absentee) landlord capitalist farming to small and petty capitalist farmers.

A striking feature of the transformation in the mode of production is the emergence of a small number of petty capitalist farmers in the village. The changes actually began in the 1960s when a few pump-owner tenant farmers increased the number of fields under sugar-beet cultivation and introduced melons into their cropping pattern. This trend has continued, particularly since the early 1990s, when some farmers began to diversify into milk production and increase tomato cultivation in their fields. The new developments, which required increased investment and hiring wage labor, have resulted in sharp distinctions between “ordinary” smallholders and the emerging petty capitalist farmers.⁴⁶

For a discussion of theoretical perspectives, see, among others, John Hariss, Capitalism and Peasant Farming: Agrarian Structure and Ideology in Northern Tamil Nadu (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1982); and Luis Llamli, “Small Modern Farmers: Neither Peasants nor Fully-Fledged Capitalists,” Journal of Peasant Studies 15 (1988): 350–72.

Reinhold Loeffler observed a similar development in Sisakht, a village in the Boir Ahmad region, where the farmers installed drip irrigation in their vineyards in 2002, drastically increasing their grape production and shipping to markets all over Iran.⁴⁷

Reinhold Loeffler, “Change and Continuity in Sisakht,” paper presented at the Fifth Biennial Conference on Iranian Studies, 28–30 May 2004, Bethesda, Md.

Also, the farmers in Kheirabad, in the Marvdasht region, abolished their cooperative arrangements for land and water use a year after the revolution and proceeded to build chicken farms, dig wells, install irrigation pumps, and expand cash crops in their fields.⁴⁸

Ono, Kheirabad Namah, 133–36.

The question of how these patterns of emerging capitalist farmers may be typical of rural Iran can be answered only in tentative terms because of the limited amount of comparable field research. We can reasonably argue that conditions conducive to the development of capitalist farmers are prevailing in most villages, especially those in proximity to urban centers. This argument can be supported by the fact that the number of rural entrepreneurs in agriculture—that is, capitalist farmers—increased by 255 percent between the 1976 census and the 1996 census.⁴⁹

Sohrab Behdad and Farhad Nomani, “Workers, Peasants, and Peddlers: A Study of Labor Stratification in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” International Journal of Meddle East Studies 34 (2002): 667–90.

Furthermore, the size of holdings of about 50 percent of commercial farms enumerated in the 1993 Agricultural Census was less than 50 hectares, which can be assumed to be operated mostly by local capitalist farmers.⁵⁰

Sarshumari-yi umumi-yi kishavarzi kull-i kishvar, 1372 (National Census of Agriculture, 1993) (Tehran: MAI, 1998).

The development of petty capitalist farming in Shishdangi is primarily associated with two groups. The first consists mainly of a small number of relatively well-off pump-owner tenant farmers who have extended their farming into the production of high-value crops, primarily tomatoes. These farmers, whose tomato fields in 2000–2001 covered 2–5 hectares of their holdings, are referred to hereafter as “cultivators.” The second group is made up of those farmers who have diversified into milk production, holding some eight to thirty-three dairy cows; hereafter referred to as “cultivator/milk producers.”⁵¹

For an empirical study of integrated crop/dairy farming in Fars Province, see Javad Torkamani and Mahmood A. Borazjani, “Muqayisa-yi ulguha-yi bihinah-i vahidha-yi zira

i va-damdari-yi infiradi va-talfiqi” (A Comparative Study of Crop Farms with Integrated Crop/Dairy Farms), Iqtisad-i Kishavarzi va-Tawsi

ah 7 (1999): 61–76.

A total of seventeen farmers (11.6 %) can be identified as petty capitalist farmers—nine cultivators and eight cultivator/milk producers. The landholding size of cultivators ranges from 10 to 25 hectares, while among the “cultivator/milk producers” the landholding size is from 3 to 10 hectares.

Table 5 shows a sample of six petty capitalist farmers (three cultivators and three cultivator/milk producers). The three cultivators had diversified their cropping pattern by planting 4 to 4.7 hectares of tomatoes and sugar beets in 2000–2001. They used Green Revolution technologies, widespread farm mechanization, and wage labor, and sold nearly all of their output to the market in 2000–2001. The three farmers who have diversified into dairy come from the ranks of small and medium farmers. Although corn and barley were used for animal feed, almost all of the wheat crop and milk were sold to the market. The development of petty capitalist farming in Shishdangi has been influenced mainly by increased access to landholdings, a growing demand for commercial crops by agroindustries developed recently in the Marvdasht region, and state policies of highly subsidized inputs and favorable guaranteed prices, especially for milk.

This transformation has been reinforced by a rising number of land transactions in the village. Since the early 1990s, approximately 33 landholders (22% of the total) have sold all or part of their holdings, amounting to 156 hectares (12.8% of the total arable land). About two-thirds of the land was sold to the city of Marvdasht to construct housing, as well as to three small agricultural-processing plants. The remaining one-third, approximately 55 hectares, has changed hands among the farmers.

This rise of petty capitalist farmers does not mean the agrarian transition to capitalist agriculture accompanied by rural polarization—as postulated in the classical model—has taken root in the village. Rather, it should be interpreted as revealing an emerging tendency toward the development of farmer capitalism, which calls for further studies.

Diversification of Occupational Structure

The peasant transformation is further manifested in the diversification of village occupational structure, primarily as a result of increased access to urban jobs. The proportion of the male population ten years or older engaged in agriculture has dramatically decreased, from 86.8 percent in 1967 to 45.9 percent by 2002,⁵²

It is interesting to note that this trend is much stronger in Shishdangi when compared with the other rural areas in the Marvdasht region, where the share of male employment in agricultural and nonagricultural occupations were 55.6 percent and 44.4 percent, respectively, in 1996: see Sarshumari-yi umumi-yi nufus va-maskan shahristan-i marvdasht, 1375 (National Census of Population and Housing—Marvdasht Region, 1996) (Tehran: MAI, 1997), 29.

while the share of the nonagricultural occupations, especially in transportation, mechanics, and shughl-i azad (petty trading, moneylending, and other similar activities) has sharply increased (Table 6). The decline in agricultural occupation in Shishdangi is similar to the overall trend in rural Iran, as the percentage of the population age 10 and older engaged in agriculture has declined from 76.6 percent in 1956 to 49 percent in 1996.⁵³

Sarshumari-yi nufus va-maskan kull-i kishvar, 1335 (National Census of Population and Housing, 1956) (Tehran: Vizarat-i Kishvar, 1956); Sarshumari-yi umumi-yi nufus va-maskan kull-i kishvar, 1375 (National Census of Population and Housing, 1996) (Tehran: MAI, 1997).

The reduction in agricultural employment in Shishdangi has come about particularly as a result of a phenomenal drop in the percentage of farm laborers, from 66.7 percent in 1967 to 7 percent of the village labor force by 2002. This can be partly accounted for by the disintegration of the two large capitalist farms, which together employed some twenty-four permanent workers and a larger number of seasonally hired laborers before the 1979 revolution. Moreover, the rise in family-operated small holdings, widespread use of farm machinery, and increased access to urban jobs has contributed to this change. Similarly, Loeffler notes that, even for prerevolutionary Iran, “the occupational structure of Sisakht has become totally transformed. Whereas in 1966 virtually all Sisakhti gained their livelihood exclusively from the land, already ten years later only 44 percent of households did so any longer. Today the members of young generations are either students or have an income from salaries, business, craft, or wage labor…. Agriculture, which now largely means horticulture, has become a sideline, producing, however…substantial additional income.”⁵⁴

Loeffler, “Change and Continuity,” 7.

Accompanying the occupational changes, the primary source of income for the heads of households, which previously depended heavily on agriculture (78.8% in 1967), had declined to 50 percent by 2002—while the nonagricultural income increased from 21.2 percent to 50 percent during the same period. The analysis of farm-household data also suggests that even though most farmers have managed to keep their farms, a large number of household members (41.3%) now commute daily to jobs in nearby towns, mostly in Marvdasht (70%). These urban jobs have provided additional sources of household income, some of which has been spent on the family farm. It can therefore be postulated that occupational diversification and changes in the production system have acted through concurrent processes to accelerate peasant transformation in the village.

Shifts in Social Stratification

The changes in the production system, along with increased access to nonfarm occupations, resulted in relatively large-scale shifts in the village's social stratification by 2002. It contributed to a substantial increase of small holders and the rise of medium farmers. Among the latter are former peasant proprietors who enlarged their holdings by occupying additional land during the 1979–80 land takeovers. By 2002, small and medium farmers together constituted 45.2 percent of all the households and owned 61.6 percent of the cultivated area (Tables 4 and 7). This pattern is in sharp contrast to the 1967 situation, when peasant proprietors made up 25.8 percent of the households and owned about 13 percent of the farmland. It should, however, be pointed out that the peasants' upward movement in the village's stratification was not affected merely by an increased access to land. It was also significantly influenced by the adoption of improved agricultural technologies and expanded participation in the market economy. These changes, as discussed earlier, have contributed greatly to the peasants' transition to small farmers, with far-reaching implications in their mode of production, social status, and way of life.⁵⁵

For a discussion of similar trends in a village northwest of Shiraz, see Eric Hooglund, “Letter from an Iranian Village,” Journal of Palestinian Studies 27 (1997): 76–84.

The changing village stratification is further characterized by the emergence of petty capitalist farmers. While only 11.6 percent of the landholding households fall into this category, they exert considerable influence in the village's socioeconomic structure by controlling larger landholdings or dairy herds, providing them with substantially higher incomes than other villagers. Yet the petty capitalist farmers who have invested heavily in tube-well irrigation, dairies, and farm machinery do not appear to have created or accelerated social polarization in Shishdangi. The limited land transactions, resistance of small farmers, and state policies supporting smallholders have so far prevented concentration of landownership by only a few individuals. A similar pattern was observed by Nicholas Hopkins, who investigated capitalist farmers in rural Egypt, where smallholders continue to function as petty commodity producers in a highly differentiated market economy.⁵⁶

Nicholas S. Hopkins, “The Agrarian Transition and the Household in Rural Egypt,” in Household Economies and Their Transformations, Monographs in Economic Anthropology, no. 3, ed. Morgan D. Maclachlan (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), 155–72.

The shift in village stratification is also seen in the sharp decline in the proportion of landless khwushnishin households and the increased diversification of their occupations. This stratum, as is the case in most villages in Iran, is composed of two distinct social categories: the agricultural and nonagricultural laborers and the village petty bourgeoisie.⁵⁷

Azkia, “Rural Society and Revolution in Iran,” 101–103.

The latter includes shopkeepers, small traders, moneylenders, artisans, and peddlers. The khwushnishin population, especially its laborer segment, has declined significantly, from 60.6 percent of all households in 1967 to 33.9 percent in 2002, whereas the petty bourgeoisie component had nearly quadrupled over the same period. The upward mobility of the khwushnishin is clearly reflected in the higher literacy rate as well as in their adoption of new types of housing and consumer goods (Table 7). The sample household survey indicates that by 2002, some 97 percent of khwushnishin households had a refrigerator, and 85 percent had a television set, whereas in 1967 only 27 percent had just a radio. The khwushnishin vision of their life conditions also appears to have changed, as revealed in personal interviews.⁵⁸

In the 1967 study, khwushnishins often expressed their overall life conditions as being destitute and powerless. They did not express such a negative outlook on life during interviews conducted in 2002.

Finally, a comparison of 1967 and 2001 data (Table 7) points out two opposite trends in the village's stratification. First, there has been a pronounced increase in income inequalities, as indicated by the growing income gaps between various social strata over the past thirty-five years. For example, the ratio of rich-to-poor farmers' income, which in 1967 was 3.9 (pump-owner tenant farmers-to-peasant proprietors), had tripled to 11.6 (petty capitalist farmers-to-small farmers) by 2001. Second, however, the sharp differences in literacy rates and mean household sizes that existed in 1967 between various social strata has almost totally disappeared. This trend reflects the widespread diffusion of education and family planning across all socioeconomic classes in Shishdangi over the past thirty-five years. However, the widening income-inequality gap between rich and poor farmers, despite land redistribution and land takeovers by the latter, cannot readily be explained. One possible reason for this growing disparity might be that the adoption of Green Revolution technologies and better farm-management skills are more predominant among the petty capitalist farmers than the small and medium farmers.