ABSTRACT
Renting land is a multi-dimensional, multi-market transaction which fascinates scholars. The act of renting land in or out is both an intentional act of agency, and a fluctuating part of the class structure which distributes resources. In this paper deep divisions among theorists will be shown to have implications for poverty studies. In particular, the neoclassical and new institutionalist economists, who theorise tenancy differently from political economy, find that they have to build bridges with political economy before they can embark on linking their research to the anti-poverty agenda. The specific bridges built in this paper relate to measuring the productivity of tenants; the ethics of challenging poverty in the sharecropping literature; discussing landlords' power explicitly; relating government regulation to the empowerment of tenants; and using a relational approach to poverty rather than a residual approach. The paper arrives at these substantive points through a methodological lens. The assumptions associated with realism are described in this initial section. In development studies, the sharecropping literature proves a good sowing-ground for cultivating a theoretically pluralist approach to poverty research.
