46 SOCIAL SCIENTIST 88. Those who do not receive any permanent stipend, are little less dissolute and abandoned in their habits of life, than a female of similar description in European countries' [Foster, A Journey, p. 60. 89. According to the Surgeon General Bengal who wondered how registering a few could help (cited in Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class under the Raj (London: Weidcnfeld and Nicholson, 1^80), p. 52. 90. See Christine Delphy, 'Patriarchy, domestic mode of production, gender and dass' in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (London: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 259,262; Harrison and Mort, 'Patriarchal Aspects', p. 92-3. 91. Indira Rajaraman, 'Economics of Bride-price and Dowry' EPW 18:8 (Feb. 1983) p.276. 92. Jack Goody dwells only on the former failing to understand its double character (The ancient, the oriental and the primitive (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press, 19—, pp. 381-2, 413-5, 453. For a critique of Goody see Bina Agarwal, 'Who Sows? Who Reaps? Women and Land Rights in India' Journal of Peasant Studies 15:4 (July. 1988), p. 547. 93. Delia Davin discusses the problems of Chinese marriage legislation that failed to confront the problem that marriage, divorce, custody of children and women's rights to land and other property had implications 'for the household as a productive unit.In small scale peasant production the basic economic unit is the family in which reposes ownership of means of production—tools,stocks, land etc, making divorce and remarriage of women problematic and their property rights difficult to implement, especially since much property is still seen as belonging to the family as a unit. The connection between a small producer economy and patriarchal power continued in China even after collectivisation since private plot production and household sidelines, both outside the collective economy continued to supply an important .proportion of household needs. Since housing was privately controlled and under de facto control of the household head who represented the family, its patriarchal power did not disappear. But since 1979 collectivisation has increasingly given way to family farming. Land was now contracted out to individual households who within limits take production decisions and after giving a quota to the state kept the rest for sale and consumption. Domestic crafts and non-agricultural family enterprises have grown. Rural China is once again a small producer economy of which the family is the basic socio-economic unit renewing the power of the household Ifead over contracts for land and privately owned equipment for household enterprises, making women more dependent on their relations with men, and so more vulnerable. ('Engels and the Making of Chinese Family Policy' in Engels Revisited, pp. 149-158). 94. For a suggestive discussion of the heterogeneity of the labour of medieval English peasant women see Middleton, 'The Sexual (Mvision of Labour in Feudal England'. )