SHARE CROPPING AND SHARE CROPPERS 79 subsequently elaborated in other articles in the volume are also highlighted, most notably: the inherent inequality of the sharecropping relation (which renders inappropriate any analyses which assume the interaction of choices of equal agents), the survival of cropshare rents into the recent past and the frequently observed close relation between cropshare tenancy and rural indebtedness. Pearce9 s theoretical piece is essentially an attempt to explain the occurrence of sharecropping in general terms and to view its implications for rural change. According to Pearce, sharecropping is a particular mode of surplus appropriation which results from a combination of the configuration of class forces with other, economic factors. Thus share-cropping contracts would be preferred where landlords have dominant control and the supervision costs of labour are very high; alternatively, where tenants can influence the contract choice and are relatively risk-averse as regards income variations; finally, where "class relations are less obviously determined and both landlords and tenants are existing close to the margin of survival." (page 65) This is an extremely neat and clear presentation of a very complex issue, which brings out the main elements in the choice of contract in agriculture. One limitation, however, is that arising from the definition itself: sharecropping is seen solely as a form of control over labour, rather than a distributional contract which may exist along with different forms of production organisation. This ignores the "production syndicate" possibilities of the institution, as mentioned below. This approach is common to all the contributors in this volume (with the sole exception of Utsa Patnaik). While it is powerful in encapsulating those situations where sharecropping is indeed a form of control over the labour process, it cannot deal with all the observed forms of share-cropping (for example, those involving capitalist tenants) and may result in some dubious conclusion, as is evident below. Thus, Pearce argues that sharecropping is consistent with capitalist relations, but only in a transitional sense. He stresses the inevitability of its demise with the advent of the real subsumption of labour by capital in agriculture, e.g., with the so-called green revolution. There are several problems with this relatively orthodox position. The most obvious one is to explain the paradox that in many green revolution areas (for example north-west India) while the area under tenancy was observed to decline, sharecropped area actually increased as a proportion of tenanted area. Further, such a categorization cannot account for the phenomenon of the "rich capitalist sharecropper", i e., land leasing by capitalist farmers, cultivation for profit with machinery or hired labour. This has leen observed in areas as distinct as Ecuador and Punjab, India. The point is that in essence, the institution of sharecropping is neutral to the type of production relation—it is an envelop category encompassing a wde variety of qualitatively different landlord-tenant relations. Some of them may be along classic "feudal" lines, others may be evidence of the