Henry Bernstein (sociologist)

Henry Bernstein (9 February 1945) is a British sociologist and Emeritus Professor of Development Studies at the University of London: School of Oriental and African Studies. He has worked for several decades on the political economy of agrarian change, social theory, peasant studies, land reform, and the rural economy in South Africa.

Background

Bernstein spent most of his career in the UK. From a working class Jewish communist family in Stoke Newington and the re-housed to a London County Council estate near Reigate, he attended grammar school in Reigate. He then studied history at the University of Cambridge and King's College from 1964, and took a Masters in Sociology at the London School of Economics from 1967-1969. Two sons were born to Renee and him during this time.

Career

He was a research associate at IDS, Sussex University in the late 1960s, a lecturer in interdisciplinary studies at the University of Kent from 1970, with a year at the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara in 1972 when Turkey was under military rule. From 1974-78 he taught at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) in Tanzania. He returned to the UK and was a lecturer at the Open University (1980–85) and then Director of the External Programme at Wye College (1985–89) (which focussed on rural development and agricultural extension, among other topics), and then Senior Lecturer in Agricultural and Rural Development, IDPM at the University of Manchester in the early 1990s. He then moved to SOAS as professor, to develop a Development Studies Department, retiring in 2011. He was adjunct professor at China Agricultural University, Beijing. He has also taught and researched in South Africa, China and the USA.

Research

Bernstein's research spans many areas but focusses on the political economy of agrarian change, as well as social theory, and more recently globalisation and labour. He is well known for theories of agrarian society and its change, identifying with class analysis and Marxist approaches. His 'reproduction squeeze' ideas appear in numerous articles and books. His work in peasant studies is detailed, expressed in dozens of articles and books.

From 1985-2000 he was co-editor with Professor Terry Byres of the Journal of Peasant Studies, and then became the founding editor, again with Byres, of the Journal of Agrarian Change from 2001-2008. The establishment of the new journal was in reaction to the editorial policy of the JPS. Today, both co-exist.

Selected publications

• Bernstein, Henry, (1973) Underdevelopment and Development: Third World Today. Penguin Education.
• Bernstein, Henry, Ben Crow, M. Mackintosh and C. Martin (1990) The Food Question. Earthscan.
• Bernstein, Henry (1992) Rural Livelihoods: Crises and Responses, Oxford University Press.
• Bernstein, Henry, E. Valentine and Tom Brass (eds.) (1992). Plantations, Proletarians and Peasants in Colonial Asia.Frank Cass.
• Bernstein, Henry and Brass, Tom (Eds)(1996) Agrarian Questions: Essays in Appreciation of T.J.Byres Routledge.
• Bernstein, Henry (Ed.). (1996). The Agrarian Question in South Africa. Frank Cass.
• Phil Woodhouse, David Hulme & Henry Bernstein. (2000). African Enclosures? The Social Dynamics of Wetlands in Drylands. James Currey.
• Bernstein, Henry (2000) "The Peasantry" in Global Capitalism: Who, Where and Why. Merlin Press, pp. 25–51
• Bernstein, Henry (2010) Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change. Halifax NS: Fernwood