TYPOLOGICAL SCHEMES AND AGRICULTURAL CHANGE - BEYOND BOSERUP IN PRECOLONIAL SOUTH-INDIA

Anthropological conceptions of the nature and course of agricultural c hange have been strongly influenced by the seminal work of Ester Boser up. In this paper I suggest that the Boserup model is best viewed as o ne example of a unilineal and universalizing cultural-evolutionary sta ge typology. As such it evinces many of the same weaknesses as other n eoevolutionary schemes that purport to describe change in sets of link ed cultural, technological, and organizational attributes. At the hear t of the Boserup model is a set of propositions about the nature of ec onomic organization and of change, propositions that find expression i n a series of quasi-historical stages that falsely sequentialize modal agricultural strategies. I argue, however, that diversity and variabi lity are critical aspects of both the structure of agricultural produc tion and the process of agricultural intensification. The utility of t his model and its constructed sequence of change is considered in ligh t of a case study from late precolonial southern India. In this analys is, archaeological, historical, and palaeobotanical data from the area surrounding the city of Vijayanagara suggest that multiple strategies of agricultural production were pursued simultaneously and, further, that the course of change was itself complex, incorporating diverse sc ales and forms of production differentially employed by producers at a ll levels of society.