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CHAPTER 7 Industrialization, Migration, and Land-Tenure Patterns That peasants should adjust the size of their farms in accordance with both family consumption requirements and family labor supply is expected in Chayanov's model of agriculture with family labor farms and, as was noted in chapter 2 (nn. 15 and 16), there is good evidence that the peasants of Sangongni do indeed make these kinds of adjustments . This model of peasant agriculture can operate so long as the size of farms may easily be adjusted to conform to demographic changes in the family. In those Russian villages that continued the tradition of periodic repartition of farmlands, this condition of his model was met. In other villages, Chayanov felt that rental of land would provide the necessary flexibility (Chayanov 1966:111). As Skalweit noted two generations ago, however, the land-tenure regime of many countries-particularly those with impartible inheritance-does not allow such flexibility. Where this is the case, rather than adjust the size of their farms to accord with their family labor supply, families may very well adjust their labor force to accord with the available farmland by taking in agricultural servants and wage laborers (Skalweit 1924) or by manipulating the course of the family cycle, as McGough has observed for China (1984). As Kautsky noted, moreover, under these kinds of land regime, industrialization can alter land-tenure patterns and lead to large-scale migration out of the countryside (1899: 164-74,216-17). Agricultural servants could be found as late as 1977 in Sangongni, and hiring labor for wages is common. For Sangongni, too, migration is also a process through which an equilibrium between farm size and family size can be achieved. In chapter 6, for example, the selective migration from the household between 1977 and 1983 in which mean family size fell one full person from 5.2 to 4.2 while the amount of 205 206 Industrialization, Migration, and Land-Tenure Patterns labor within the household and the proportion of complex families remained stable,1 was interpreted as the result of villagers adjusting their migration strategies in accordance with relatively unchanging fundamental principles of household organization and in accordance with the functional needs of those households. Most agricultural land in South Korea is privately owned, and can be bought and sold subject only to the limitations of the land reform law of 1949.2 Land is expensive, however, and cannot simply be bought when the need arises. Households thus frequently find that the amount of land they own does not correspond with what they need to produce their subsistence needs or make efficient use of household labor. In most cases, villagers try to keep at least one able-bodied female and one able-bodied male in the household to manage the inside and outside labor, respectively. Failure to do this almost always is a sign that a family is following a diversification strategy that will eventually lead to their departure from the village. The precise amount of female and male labor required in the household, however, is dependent upon the size of the farm and the crop mix cultivated. Unlike many horticultural societies, where a correspondence between farm size and consumer/worker ratios is also observed (Sahlins 1972:10223 ), the land in Korea is fully occupied. Households cannot simply expand their farms onto unused land as they grow. Neither can they abandon surplus land with the expectation of taking it up again when it is needed. There are various ways of gaining access to land and of using surplus land (which will be treated in more detail below), but, as is typical of peasant societies, the rate of return on agricultural labor and capital investment depends upon land-tenure relations. Returns are highest when household members cultivate land owned by their household. In other situations part of the surplus generated using household capital or household labor is directed outside the household energy loop. Though in rural Korea in traditional times, adaptation to farming in poor households may have been primarily a question of finding enough land to make use of household labor or, in rich households, of finding enough labor to work household lands, the successful industrialization of Korea has now added a new factor to this equation: the rate of return on capital and labor. In the past, opportunities for the use of capital were confined to conspicuous consumption, usury, and investment in land. There were few realistic alternatives to the use of family labor...

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