Abstract
In the previous chapter, the relative roles and interrelationships between village communities and state agencies in the development and management of local infrastructure were investigated in a case study of the national irrigation system covering East Laguna Village. This chapter aims to examine interrelationships between communities and markets in East Laguna Village. In order to shed light on this highly complicated and elusive issue to which little economic analysis has yet been applied, our analysis is concentrated on changes in labour employment contracts for rice harvesting. Common to rural villages in developing economies, labour employment in East Laguna Village has been embedded in traditional community relationships. Clearly visible in changes in harvesting labour contracts are villagers’ efforts to adjust institutions in response to major changes in market conditions under the constraints of their traditional community norms.
This chapter draws heavily on Hayami (1998, 1999) and Kikuchi and Hayami (1999).
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Notes and References
This chapter draws heavily on Hayami (1998, 1999) and Kikuchi and Hayami (1999).
Increased dependency on hired labour may be explained, to some extent, by increased disutility of labour for enriched land reform beneficiaries. However, that was not the response of land reform beneficiaries in Japan, Korea and Taiwan.
A cultural norm is here distinguished from a social norm; the former is defined as a standard of belief, and the latter defined as a standard of conduct in society. For details of the classification of norms, see Hayami (1998a).
In Central Luzon, north of Manila, where large haciendas prevailed, rice harvesting was done on a daily wage contract and threshing was performed by large threshing machines called tilyadora, mainly for the purpose of the accurate measurement of sharecroppers’ rice outputs, and hence the collection of due share rents by hacienda management. In contrast, in Laguna and its surroundings, where small and medium-scale landownership was traditionally dominant, landlords were able to rely on mutual trust relationships with tenants for the collection of share rents (Hayami and Kikuchi, 1981, ch. 4).
This new hunusan contract was practised from the mid-1970s, with the traditional share rate of one-sixth in exceptional low-yielding plots, where the one-sixth of output was barely sufficient to cover the cost of harvesting at a rate of renumeration to labour comparable to the market wage rate. Also, in the 1970s it began to be observed that marginal farmers cultivating very small plots harvested their fields by family labour, corresponding to an increased subdivision of farms under strong population pressure.
Threshing machines introduced earlier were not equipped with blowers, so winnowing by blowers was contracted out separately. Charges to the custom services of threshing and winnowing were typically 6 per cent and 2 per cent, respectively. Later, as threshers with blowers attached were developed, 8 per cent to 10 per cent of output was allocated to the combined services of threshing and winnowing. Paddy received for the custom service was shared between machine owners and operators: two-thirds to owners and one-third to operators initially, and later shared 50:50.
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© 2000 Yujiro Hayami and Masao Kikuchi
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Hayami, Y., Kikuchi, M. (2000). Community and Market in Labour Relations. In: A Rice Village Saga. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599185_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599185_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-40590-9
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