Page 368 - Ranah Studi Agraria: Penguasaan Tanah dan Hubungan Agraris

Agrarian and Nonagrarian Bases ...

of all incomes. Our analysis shows that although the agricul-
tural sector by now generates incomes more or less sufficient
to maintain the rural population at a minimal level of living,
the great majority of these incomes are captured by a minor-

ity of larger landowning households (‘large’ in the context of
Java meaning those owning more than 1.0 ha) leaving the
majority of households with farm and/or agricultural wage
incomes which do not provide even minimal levels of repro-
duction. This picture of stark inequality and widespread pover-
ty in conditions of agricultural productivity growth is altered,
but only partly so, by the inclusion of nonfarm income sources
in the analysis. Patterns of nonfarm income distribution tend
to reflect, though in more muted form, the inequalities ob-
served in the agricultural sector. Particularly for landless
households they are a far more important source of income
than agricultural sources. These patterns (which are subject
to great variation between villages) provide grounds for ques-
tioning attempts to define rural ‘classes’ or the nature of rural
‘classness’ itself on the basis of agricultural production rela-
tions alone.
In attempting in a short paper to analyze agrarian condi-
tions in nine villages at two points in time, we—and in turn our

readers—face a difficult problem of presentation. Given the
wide variations between villages, no useful purpose is served
by lumping them together in ‘average’ form except for certain
restricted purposes. We have therefore presented the quanti-
tative data for each village separately, but in as abbreviated
form as possible, in a series of tables covering all nine villages;
this unavoidably requires straining the reader’s patience and

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