Page 23 - Ranah Studi Agraria: Penguasaan Tanah dan Hubungan Agraris

Ranah Studi Agraria

where non-farm incomes are growing in importance and where
many people (especially the younger generation) are not in-
terested in agricultural work, it may seem odd that so much
importance was attached—by villagers and researchers—to

the ways in which rice was harvested, and rice harvesters rec-
ruited and paid. The way in which labour is recruited and paid
for harvest work is an important determinant of the division
of the agrarian product between those who control land, and
those who provide labour. The rice harvest, in particular, is
one of the key agrarian ‘moments’ at which these divisions are
clearly visible; these moments are also arenas of tension and
potential conflict, of interest not only in themselves but also
because of what they reveal about the internal dynamics of
the communities in which they happen.
We must remember that in the 1960s and 1970s, for land-
less and land-poor households harvest labour often repre-
sented the household’s single most important source of house-
hold income. Researchers were not exaggerating when they
described women harvesters lining up at the edges of the fields
hours before a harvest was due to begin, often in their hun-
dreds, waiting for access to a crowded harvest which might be
finished in 15-20 minutes, or the harvesters’ reactions of con-

fusion, indignation and sometimes open violence when con-
fronted with restrictions on what they saw as their ‘communal
right’ to harvesting work and wages.
These early reports usually lacked historical depth, and
sometimes reported as “new” phenomena which were not new
at all. They reflected and contributed to a rather static and
homogeneous model of a “traditionally” fixed harvest system

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