The Logic of Dispossession

Abstract

One particular focus of world-systems analysis is to examine the historical trajectory of capitalist transformation in peripheral regions. This paper investigates the capitalist transformation in a specific peripheral area—the country of Bangladesh. In particular, it examines the role of dispossession in transforming an agricultural society into a neoliberal capitalist society by looking at the transformation of Panthapath Street in Dhaka, Bangladesh, since 1947. Building on the existing literature of dispossession, this article proposes an approach that explains the contribution of dispossession in capitalist accumulation. The proposed theory consists of four logics of dispossession: transformative, exploitative, redistributive, and hegemonic. These four logics of dispossession, both individually and dialectically reinforcing one another, work to privatize the commons, proletarianize subsistence laborers, create antagonistic class relations, redistribute wealth upward, and commodify sociopolitical and cultural aspects of urban life. This paper’s central argument is that dispossession not only converted an agricultural society into a capitalist society in Bangladesh, but that dispossession continues to reproduce the country’s existing capitalist system. This research draws on a wide range of empirical and historical evidence collected from Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2017 and 2018.

The political economy of land expropriation in urban Bangladesh

“…Lastly, the changes seen in Panthapath -land dispossession leading to capitalist transformation and the reproduction of the capitalist system -have been mirrored throughout many of the urban centres of Bangladesh. (Mondal, 2021). Other non-peasant classes, who previously relied on ground-rents, salaries or grants, became capitalists, professionals or entrepreneurs.…”

“…Most of the peasants living on and using the land were Muslims who typically lived adjacent to their farmland in houses called Tong Ghor . Up until 1947, these poor peasants had an independent livelihood system based off of fishing in the canal or other bodies of water, and farming the fields and open areas (Mondal, 2021).…”

“…Starting in 1989, the Panthapath street project (L.A. case no: 40/89-90 and 40B/89-90) replaced the canal with a central road and in the process removed nearly 900 peasant families from their land (Government of Bangladesh, 1993). In total, between 1947 and 1990, nearly 6000 peasants (about 1600 families) were evicted from their homes and approximately 200 acres of land was expropriated in order to develop the Panthapath area into part of urban Dhaka (Mondal, 2021). This dispossession transformed most of the peasants 3 into wageworkers and agricultural land into sites of capital investment, creating two vibrant economic sectors 4 in Panthapath: formal and informal.…”

“… 3. Due to this dispossession and capitalist transformation, most peasants (56%) became wage workers in dozens of factories and other capitalist enterprises in the Panthapath area. The rest of them became rickshaw pullers, small-scale entrepreneurs or were left unemployed (Mondal, 2021). Other non-peasant classes, who previously relied on ground-rents, salaries or grants, became capitalists, professionals or entrepreneurs. …”

A framework for understanding land control transfer in agricultural commodity frontiers

“…The causal effect for the transfer of land control, as highlighted in the definition above, are the existing power asymmetries between competing actors (i.e., 'poor' versus powerful). 2 Therein steps dispossession, which by exacerbating power differentials between the dispossessed and the dispossessor facilitates the appropriation of land and resources by the latter (Cáceres, 2015;Mondal, 2021). In other words, by enhancing the power differentials between competing actors, dispossession effectively creates the potential for the transfer of control (i.e., 'accumulation by dispossession', Harvey, 2003) (Levien, 2013(Levien, , 2015.…”