1. BARBARA HARRISS-WHITEbarbara.harriss-white@qeh.ox.ac.uk
2. Brief Curriculum VitaeCurrent Post:Professor of Development Studies Employment History:1996-1998: Research Fellowships and ‘Honours':1998 appointed to give the Cambridge University Smuts Memorial Commonwealth
Lectures in 1999, with a Visiting Studentship at New Hall, Cambridge Education:1975-7 School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia: Ph. D.
(Development Studies) 3. University Lectures and Classes given:1987-95 : For the M. Sc. in Agricultural Economics:- For the M. Scs. both in Agricultural Economics and in Economics for
Development:- For postgraduate students in social studies and humanities: From 1996 onwards I offer the following courses in addition to the
Contemporary South Asia seminar: 4. Graduate Supervision and other Graduate Teaching undertakenDoctoral research students:-a) doctorates obtained: 11 b) doctorates pending in Oxford: 7 I have supervised Oxford students admitted in economics, agricultural economics, history, geography and forestry. 5. ResearchI am a field economist, specialising in South Asia. I am interested in markets, long term regional capitalist transformation and social structures of accumulation on the one hand and social welfare (particularly gendered life chances, nutrition, disability, poverty, social security) on the other. 5.1 Long Term Agrarian Change in India5.1.1 South IndiaSince 1972 at approximately ten year intervals I have been conducting field research, as a member (and latterly the Director) of multidisciplinary teams, on the impact of agricultural development on the regional economy of what is now two districts in Tamil Nadu state. The first project also compared the impact of high yielding varieties of rice in S. India and in the Sri Lankan Dry Zone. In 1972-7 my contribution (on a team from the Universities of Cambridge, UK and Madras, India) focussed on the generation of marketed surplus, the institutional characteristics of all markets for agricultural inputs and products, the economic base of a market town and a critical analysis of relevant policies. Apart from its theoretical and empirical quality this work subsequently made a practical contribution to multilateral aid for rice processing (FAO), bilateral aid for traction in Sri Lanka (ODA) and the rice processing technology policies of the Governments of India and Bangladesh. Publications from this research comprise three books/monographs and 23
papers or chapters: In 1982-4 my role on the team (from the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, USA and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India) was to update the field material on the evolution of the local urban economy (which was by then unique research) and to analyse official policy on food and nutrition. Thus I came to make the first and only evaluation of the largest nutrition intervention in the world (the Tamil Nadu Noon Meals Scheme) and to develop a theoretical critique of the new economics of growth. Publications comprise one book, awarded a publishing subsidy of
£5,000 by ODA In 1982-4 my role on the team (from the International Food Policy Research
Institute, Washington, USA and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore,
India) was to update the field material on the evolution of the local urban
economy (which was by then unique research) and to analyse official policy on
food and nutrition. Thus I came to make the first and only evaluation of the
largest nutrition intervention in the world (the Tamil Nadu Noon Meals Scheme)
and to develop a theoretical critique of the new economics of growth. In the third phase of this project from 1993-6 (with 6 senior academics from QEH and the Madras Institute of Development Studies, 4 field economists and 2 data processors), which I co-directed, the focus was first on economic diversification, tracing the evolution of the rural non farm economy as a response (heavily screened by site, gender and caste) to agricultural labour surpluses, urban capital generation and the growing hydrological crisis. Second, we examined the institutional characteristics of agrarian markets in a context of deregulation and rapid change, both to track historical changes and to try to explain them (to inform theoretical developments in institutional economics). My own field work updated the economic biography of the town by means of a third round of oral business histories in which the role of corruption and the black economy has taken forms which pose a theoretical challenge to certain rationales for liberalisation derived from the new political economy. The latter critique is developed in the thematic issue of the IDS Bulletin on Liberalisation and the New Corruption edited by Gordon White and myself, in 1996. The field and analytical methods I have developed for the study of agrarian markets are being used by my Indian co-director in his research. Publications include 5 papers and 21 project working papers available
from QEH, Oxford. 5.1.2 North IndiaWith Dr Ben Rogaly (UEA) and Prof Sugata Bose (Tufts, USA), I have also been involved in a research project to examine the reasons advanced for sudden and rapid agricultural growth in West Bengal and Bangladesh after decades of stagnation. A workshop was held with the Centre for the Study of Social Sciences, Calcutta (bringing scholars of the agrarian question in West Bengal and Bangladesh together for the first time ever) and the role of biased data, of politics and agricultural policy and of changes in agrarian structure were discussed. Publications: 5.2 The Social and Political Embeddedness of Market BehaviourThis is an empirical project (which began in 1971) involving the careful examination by field research of the key institutions affecting the behaviour and structure of actually existing agrarian markets and their relations with the local state (and therefore with policy formulation and implementation) to develop a theoretical understanding of the ways social, political and economic institutions interact. 5.2.1 Foodgrains MarketsBefore arriving in Oxford, I had conducted field research in South India and Sri Lanka (under i) directly above), in Central India, West Bengal, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Francophone West Africa. I also had research consultancies from i) the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation in 1977 to advise the Government of Bangladesh on the development of rice processing technologies ii) the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics in 1978-9 to devise a new programme of social science research on cereals in the semi-arid tropics of West Africa for the outreach programme of this seed breeding institute and iii) the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development in 1985-6 to advise on the impact of technical change in domestic commodity marketing systems on market behaviour and exchange relations in South Asia and Subsaharan Africa. Publications comprise 8 books/monographs and 45 papers or chapters: In 1981-2 and 1990, I was able to conduct field research on markets for staple foods in West Bengal examining their relations with local land holding structures, with the social institutions of caste/ethnicity and gender and with state regulatory policy. The role of private institutions of collective action in the regulation of markets defectively regulated by the state has proved of wide interest not only to academics but also to the West Bengal Government. Publications comprise one monograph: A book on the political economy of agricultural markets in South India based
on field research carried out in Coimbatore District was published in 1996 (with
an ODA dissemination subsidy awarded to Sage): A documentary film has been made, based on this work entitled 'Meals Ready...' directed by Surajit Sarkar of 'The Other Media', New Delhi for Doordarshan (Indian TV) and wider distribution in India and the UK where it is being used for teaching. In addition certain of my doctoral students have started to develop this research much further: Majid on land rental relations (Sindh, Pakistan), Rogaly on labour market arrangements in West Bengal, Robson and Pujo on the embeddedness of product markets in gender relations (in Nigeria and Guinee, West Africa), Mooij on state-market relations in the implementation of the Essential Commodities Act in Karnataka and Kerala states of India and Basile on the social structures of accumulation in northern Tamil Nadu. 5.2.2 Field MethodsAn edited book on field methodology for the study of market exchange in
underdeveloped countries: 5.2.3 Price AnalysisThe most commonly available data on markets, however, consist of prices. In a
separate analytical project I have criticised orthodox methods for the analysis
of price series, the common basis of inferences about market efficiency, and
later, with Dr T.B. Palaskas of QEH, helped to develop new methods which form
the present orthodoxy for the analysis of domestic commodity prices. 5.2.4 RegulationLastly I have analysed the slippage between the law and practice of
regulative policy for agricultural markets, the role of non-state institutions
and organisations in the achievement of order in markets and the impact of such
‘legal pluralism' on the implementation of state policy. 5.3 The Political Economy of Social Welfare in South AsiaThe third type of research I conduct has concerned social wellbeing as a developmental goal. It has arisen from an interest in the casualties of market exchange and with those excluded from market exchange. In this context I have researched famine, poverty and social welfare, focussing especially on their gendered nature, on malnutrition and on disability. This research also consolidates an approach to the analysis of policy which distinguishes the politics of policy agenda formation from those of law and procedure and of resource allocation and access and which compares state provision with those of markets and of forms of provision outside both state and market (collective action, non governmental organisations, households etc). Publications before coming to Oxford comprise: Since arriving in Oxford I have finished my work (based on all known survey
data) on gender, age, region and class bias in the allocation of nutrients
(particularly calories) inside households in S. Asia. This threw up a successful
theoretical enquiry into the reasons why a single data base (that of ICRISAT)
could be analysed in five different ways to address a single problem with five
different conclusions and policy recommendations. The ongoing project on agrarian development reported at length in 5.1 updates that nutritional study. It also has a component examining social welfare (education, health (including disability), malnutrition, alcohol consumption and abuse, access to social assistance and the fatal neglect of the girl child) being finalised. In a small project arising from that reported in 5.1 with an anthropologist (Susan Erb) a labour lawyer (Raja Ram) and an Indian development organisation working with raped and battered rural harijan women we researched the direct and indirect economic impacts of disability in adults in rural societies depending on hard manual labour and the exclusion of disabled people from constitutional protection. This is the first such research and has generated many insights useful to and challenging for institutions aiding disabled rural people and for capability theory. Publications: a book is in press co-authored with Susan Erb In the context of social welfare, I have also co-edited multidisciplinary
books on 5.4 Globalisation and Indian Business: an Economic Anthropology of Corporate Governance(with Jairus Banaji and Gautam Mody) This is an innovative application of anthropological methods (tested on
multinationals in London which invest in India) to the board rooms of corporate
industrial firms in order to examine the slippage between policy and practice in
corporate governance and in regulation. Two years' of DFID funded field research
by Banaji and Mody has involved interviews with stakeholders: Directors of
corporates, lawyers and accountants, state and stock exchange regulators and
politicians to assess corporate governance, the regulative interface with
financial institutions and the Securities and Exchange Board of India's
guidelines for corporate governance. The two year pilot is completed and a
follow-up project is in preparation. 5.5 Social Structures of Accumulation in IndiaThe Smuts Lectures in late 1999 are at the core of a book entitled The
Real Indian Economy commissioned by Cambridge University Press and to be
sent them in 2001. Here insights from field economics and economic anthropology
are pulled together to examine the social character of capital, the process of
accumulation and the actually existing state (with chapters on class, the state,
gender, caste, religious plurality and space). 6. Future Research: 2001 to +/-20056.1 Multiple realities : the four dimensions of povertyA DFID project which I help to advise, involving Prof Frances Stewart (Director), Drs Ruhi Saith, Susana Franco and Cate Ruggeri Laderchi and collaborators in Peru and India (NCAER) examining the evolutions of concepts four dimensions of poverty : income, capabilities, social exclusion and participative approaches and through large data bases for Peru and India and small-scale field research analysing the information losses using each approach. 6.2 Trade liberalisation and the Indian informal sectorA project whose funding is being negotiated in which field research will be innovatively spliced with CGE modelling of the Indian informal sector. The case study field research will be focussed on rice and textiles. I will be the administrative director and collaborate with NCAER, new Delhi (Anushree Sinha, Ratna Sudarshan and colleagues) 6.3 The Economic Biography of a Market TownThe material is to hand to write an economic and social history of local
urbanisation through the rural-urban relations of capital, labour and
commodities based on 700 business histories elicited over 20 years in Arni town
in Tamil Nadu (which has grown from 36,000 in 1971 to an estimated 100,000 in
1993). In that book I would propose to use my empirical material to scrutinise a
number of theories about the development of the non-farm economy, the social
embeddedness of markets, the economics of clustering and to raise new issues
(for example i) the role of the black economy in urbanisation, ii) responses to
the deterioration of urban infrastructure and iii) the decay of state capacity). End of file |