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Accepted version

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2020-07

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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/2445/168066

Labour, nature, and exploitation: Social metabolism and inequality in a farming community in mid‐19th century Catalonia

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https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12359

Abstract

Exploiting the labour of other people has historically been one of the main strategies to tackle the biophysical tension that always exists between the satisfaction of human needs and the labour required to fulfil them. Based on the insights of ecological, feminist, and Marxist economics, we disentangle the exploitation of the labour of women and labouring poor through a novel methodology that integrates energy, material, time, and cash balances. We apply it to the sociometabolic flows between household units endowed with different land and livestock resources in a traditional rural community in Catalonia (Spain) in the mid‐19th century. The results show that land and livestock hoarding led to a process of accumulation through dispossession that increased the exploitative relationships through the labour market, which in turn relied on the patriarchal division of labour between men and women at home. Our estimates of energy labour surplus reveal that male wages represented 88% of the equivalent consumption basket that would have been obtained by carrying out the same amount of labour on land of one's own. However, in the case of female wages, the percentage was 54%. This shows that wage labour incorporated a significant amount of unpaid domestic family labour.

Subject

Productivitat agrícola, Història econòmica, Sòls agrícoles, Sociologia rural, Organització del treball

Subject (English)

Agricultural productivity, Economic history, Rural land use, Rural sociology, Methods engineering

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Articles publicats en revistes (Història Econòmica, Institucions, Política i Economia Mundial)

Citation

MARCO LAFUENTE, Inés, PADRÓ I CAMINAL, Roc and TELLO, Enric. Labour, nature, and exploitation: Social metabolism and inequality in a farming community in mid‐19th century Catalonia. Journal of Agrarian Change. 2020. Vol. 20, num. 3, pags. 408-436. ISSN 1471-0358. [consulted: 19 of August of 2026]. Available at: https://hdl.handle.net/2445/168066

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