The essays in this collection examine agrarian transformation in Latin America and the role in this of peasants, with particular reference to Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Brazil and Central America. Among the issues covered are the impact of globalization and neo-liberal economic policies.

Study of the political behaviour of rural workers and tenant farmers in Latin America, with particular reference to the evolution of peasant movements and their prospects for effecting social change - includes a bibliography pp. 163 to 173.

Essays presented during a seminar on Latin American peasant movements, held at Cornell University, December 8-10, 1966. "Bibliography on Latin American peasant organization [by] Gerrit Huizer and Cynthia N. Hewitt": pages 451-467. Bibliographical footnotes.

First Published 1975, The Latin American Peasant is not a historian’s book, the presentation is rather sociological in that it seeks to explain the working out of a process of social transformation and the social forces which are released by the pursuit of common interests by social entities such as classes and territorial groups, and the pursuit of a vision of livelihood by individuals and families. The peasant, in the sense of this book, is the agricultural producer and cottage craftsman of pre industrial and partially industrial societies, who produces for the provisioning of his own household, and for market exchange, and lives in land groups. The concept peasant, taken as equivalent of the word campesino or campones, does have both historical and geographical reality in the Latin American context. The book discusses important themes such as land labor institutions in Latin America; peasant action; the transformation of the estate; peasants and revolution in Bolivia; and peasant organization and peasant destinies. This this is an important book for scholars and researchers of Latin American sociology, rural sociology, historical sociology and sociology in general.

This collection of twenty-eight essays by renowned anthropologist Eric R. Wolf is a legacy of some of his most original work, with an insightful foreword by Aram Yengoyan. Of the essays, six have never been published and two have not appeared in English until now. Shortly before his death, Wolf prepared introductions to each section and individual pieces, as well as an intellectual autobiography that introduces the collection as a whole. Sydel Silverman, who completed the editing of the book, says in her preface, "He wanted this selection of his writings over the past half-century to serve as part of the history of how anthropology brought the study of complex societies and world systems into its purview."