Haroon Akram-Lodhi and Cristóbal Kay (eds): Peasants and globalization: political economy, rural transformation and the agrarian question

Abstract

On May 23, 2007, for the first time in history, most of the world’s population lived in urban rather than rural settings (Araghi, this volume). Furthermore, neoliberal globalization has tended to deepen agricultural integration into global economic flows (Akram-Lodhi and Kay, this volume). For some, most notably Hobsbawm (1994), these trends signify the ‘‘death of the peasantry’’, and place in doubt the continued relevance of the agrarian question. Peasants and Globalization: Political economy, rural transformation and the agrarian question is about the fate of the peasantry in the contemporary world—a world subject to continual agrarian change. It asks if peasants, and agriculture more broadly, continue to matter in contemporary processes of capital accumulation on a global scale. The volume brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars who all use the agrarian question as their analytical starting point. It is framed as a conversation between different positions on the agrarian question—a conversation that sometimes plays out in fascinating ways, like the side-by-side chapters by Henry Bernstein and Michael Watts that debate the contemporary relevance of ‘‘peasant’’ as an analytical category. This book would be suitable for graduate and advanced undergraduate readers and courses, particularly since it locates itself within a timely and highly relevant debate about the future of rural spaces, people, and products. Each author brings his or her own perspective to this discussion, which the editors highlight through six different ‘‘agrarian questions’’ at play within the chapters of the book. Still, the reader is struck by the ways in which these different positions are frequently not at all mutually exclusive. Thus, while the editors identify separate agrarian questions of land, gender, labor, class and food, for example, a reading of the full volume suggests that the answer to the contemporary agrarian question must simultaneously incorporate all these factors. The bulk of the book is arranged in two parts, highlighting, respectively, historical and contemporary perspectives on agrarian change. The first three chapters of the section on historical perspectives focus on the origins and early period of capitalism, arguing that capitalism had its origins in agriculture, and in particular in changing patterns of land use, rather than technological development (Ellen Meiksins Wood), that rural class differentiation determined the timing and nature of agrarian transition (Terence Byres), and that colonialism was the most important factor preventing the agrarian transformation in the colonies and new republics in Africa, Asia and Latin America (Amiya Kumar Bagchi). A chapter by Farshad Araghi takes a world-historical perspective and draws connections between the globalization of the late twentieth century and the colonial-liberal globalism of the nineteenth century. Using the memorable metaphor of the ‘‘visible foot’’, Araghi outlines global depeasantization, the process of dispossession by displacement, as a defining feature of the agrarian program of postcolonial neoliberal globalism. Wrapping up the historical section of the book is Miguel Teubal’s discussion of peasant struggles in Latin America, in which he argues that contemporary social movements around land and agrarian reform present new characteristics not seen in twentieth century movements. The new movements are based on the peasantry and indigenous communities, which were frequently left out of or hurt by previous reforms. In these movements, land remains of central importance, but agrarian reform is not associated M. Walsh-Dilley (&) Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA e-mail: ms396@cornell.edu