The subject matter of the volume is part of larger research agenda on the process of land collectivization in the former communist camp, focusing on state, identity and property. The main innovation of the volume is to apply recent interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the collectivization process, asking what types of new peasant-state relations it formed and how it transformed notions of self, persons, and things (such as land). The project conceived of changes in the system of ownership as causing changes in the identity and attitude of people; similarly, it regarded the study of personal identities as essential for understanding changes in the system of ownership. This perspective is rare in the area-studies approaches to the topic.

The result of a project initiated and coordinated by Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery, research for this volume was conducted by a group of twenty anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and literary critics from Romania, United States, and Great Britain. Employing interdisciplinary methods and using a wealth of previously unexplored archival and oral sources, the authors managed to produce the most solid monograph to date on the process of collectivization in Romania. Book jacket.

The subject matter of the volume is part of larger research agenda on the process of land collectivization in the former communist camp, focusing on state, identity and property. The main innovation of the volume is to apply recent interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the collectivization process, asking what types of new peasant-state relations it formed and how it transformed notions of self, persons, and things (such as land). The project conceived of changes in the system of ownership as causing changes in the identity and attitude of people; similarly, it regarded the study of personal identities as essential for understanding changes in the system of ownership. This perspective is rare in the area-studies approaches to the topic. Unlike other works on the subject, the volume treats the entire history of the campaign of collectivization in Romania, between 1949 and 1962. It also fully covered Romania's territory, with at least two researchers in every historical province. Since the process of collectivization varied across space and time, the participants to the volume selected a broad sample of research sites differing in religious and ethnic composition, economy, terrain, date of collectivization, and other related variables. Several of the project participants focused on national-level policies and practices (i.e., property legislation, and debates about the form collectivization should take); the others conducted case studies, working across a broad span of communities and experiences.

The essays in this collection explore the social 'construction' of the Russian peasantry in the period between Emancipation and Collectivisation, and the impact of these constructions on Tsarist and Bolshevik agrarian policy. The international group of authors represent different trends in the historical, sociological and geographical investigations of the East European peasantry and draw both upon the insights of cultural studies and recently available archival materials to throw new light on the relationship between peasantry and other classes.

For a long time agriculture and rural life were dismissed by many contemporaries as irrelevant or old-fashioned. Contrasted with cities as centers of intellectual debate and political decision-making, the countryside seemed to be becoming increasingly irrelevant. Today, politicians in many European countries are starting to understand that the neglect of the countryside has created grave problems. Similarly, historians are remembering that European history in the twentieth century was strongly influenced by problems connected to the production of food, access to natural resources, land rights, and the political representation and activism of rural populations. Hence, the handbook offers an overview of historical knowledge on a variety of topics related to the land. It does so through a distinctly activity-centric and genuinely European perspective. Rather than comparing different national approaches to living with the land, the different chapters focus on particular activities – from measuring to settling the land, from producing and selling food to improving agronomic knowledge, from organizing rural life to challenging political structures in the countryside. Furthermore, the handbook overcomes the traditional division between East and West, North and South, by embracing a transregional approach that allows readers to gain an understanding of similarities and differences across national and ideological borders in twentieth-century Europe.

In 1949, Romania's fledgling communist regime unleashed a radical and brutal campaign to collectivize agriculture in this largely agrarian country, following the Soviet model. Peasants under Siege provides the first comprehensive look at the far-reaching social engineering process that ensued. Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery examine how collectivization assaulted the very foundations of rural life, transforming village communities that were organized around kinship and status hierarchies into segments of large bureaucratic organizations, forged by the language of "class warfare" yet saturated with vindictive personal struggles. Collectivization not only overturned property relations, the authors argue, but was crucial in creating the Party-state that emerged, its mechanisms of rule, and the "new persons" that were its subjects. The book explores how ill-prepared cadres, themselves unconvinced of collectivization's promises, implemented technologies and pedagogies imported from the Soviet Union through actions that contributed to the excessive use of force, which Party leaders were often unable to control. In addition, the authors show how local responses to the Party's initiatives compelled the regime to modify its plans and negotiate outcomes. Drawing on archival documents, oral histories, and ethnographic data, Peasants under Siege sheds new light on collectivization in the Soviet era and on the complex tensions underlying and constraining political authority.

This volume of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society contains a sampling of work from some of the most promising junior scholars in the next generation of the law and society community. Nominated by their advisors or mentors, their work explores some of the newest areas of law and society research as well as brings fresh insight to bear on enduring