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Agric Hum Values (2011) 28:287288 DOI 10.1007/s10460-011-9312-3
Haroon Akram-Lodhi and Cristbal Kay (eds): Peasants and globalization: political economy, rural transformation and the agrarian question
Routledge, London and New York, 2009, 347 pp, ISBN 978-0-415-44629-7
Marygold Walsh-Dilley
Accepted: 10 January 2011 / Published online: 25 February 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
On May 23, 2007, for the rst time in history, most of the worlds population lived in urban rather than rural settings (Araghi, this volume). Furthermore, neoliberal globalization has tended to deepen agricultural integration into global economic ows (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 worlda 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 questiona 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...