How relevant are the classic theories of agrarian change in the contemporary context? This volume explores this question by focusing upon the defining features of agrarian transformation in the 21st century: the financialization of food and agriculture, the blurring of rural and urban livelihoods through migration and other economic activities, forest transition, climate change, rural indebtedness, the co-evolution of social policy and moral economies, and changing property relations. Combined, the eleven contributions to this collection provide a broad overview of agrarian studies over the past four decades and identify the contemporary frontiers of agrarian political economy. In this path-breaking collection, the authors show how new iterations of long evident processes continue to catch peasants and smallholders in the crosshairs of crises and how many manage to face these challenges, developing new sources and sites of livelihood production. This volume was published as part one of the special double issue celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Journal of Peasant Studies.

How relevant are the classic theories of agrarian change in the contemporary context? This volume explores this question by focusing upon the defining features of agrarian transformation in the 21st century: the financialization of food and agriculture, the blurring of rural and urban livelihoods through migration and other economic activities, forest transition, climate change, rural indebtedness, the co-evolution of social policy and moral economies, and changing property relations. Combined, the eleven contributions to this collection provide a broad overview of agrarian studies over the past four decades and identify the contemporary frontiers of agrarian political economy. In this path-breaking collection, the authors show how new iterations of long evident processes continue to catch peasants and smallholders in the crosshairs of crises and how many manage to face these challenges, developing new sources and sites of livelihood production. This volume was published as part one of the special double issue celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Journal of Peasant Studies.

How relevant are the classic theories of agrarian change in the contemporary context? This volume explores this question by focusing upon the defining features of agrarian transformation in the 21st century: the financialization of food and agriculture, the blurring of rural and urban livelihoods through migration and other economic activities, forest transition, climate change, rural indebtedness, the co-evolution of social policy and moral economies, and changing property relations. Combined, the eleven contributions to this collection provide a broad overview of agrarian studies over the past four decades and identify the contemporary frontiers of agrarian political economy. In this path-breaking collection, the authors show how new iterations of long evident processes continue to catch peasants and smallholders in the crosshairs of crises and how many manage to face these challenges, developing new sources and sites of livelihood production. This volume was published as part one of the special double issue celebrating the 40th anniversary of theJournal of Peasant Studies.

Henry Bernstein argues that class dynamics should be the starting point of any analysis of agrarian change. Providing an accessible introduction to agrarian political economy, he shows clearly how the argument for "bringing class back in" provides an alternative to inherited conceptions of the agrarian question. He also ably illustrates what is at stake in different ways of thinking about class dynamics and the effects of agrarian change in today's globalized world. CONTENTS: Introduction: The Political Economy of Agrarian Change. Production and Productivity. Origins of Early Development of Capitalism. Colonialism and Capitalism. Farming and Agriculture, Local and Global. Neoliberal Globalization and World Agriculture. Capitalist Agriculture and Non-Capitalist Farmers? Class Formation in the Countryside. Complexities of Class.