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making cannot be considered completely subservient to the dominant sectors interests. The approach to
the other two spheres is for the most part descriptive, outlining the institutional development of a public
health and education system in Tucumn.
When Sugar Ruled is a thorough and vital contribution that analyzes how an area that had been
important in the colonial period integrated and transitioned to capitalist development. From the time of
the constitution of the Argentine nation, Tucumns economy and society has been dominated by one
principal activity sugar. Juarez-Dappe, in When Sugar Ruled, exposes how the sugar industry was a
phenomenal driving force that deeply transformed pre-existing social and productive structures, allowing
Tucumn to contribute to the national economy and broader modernization processes. But sugars
driving force had its weaknesses and, crucially, its basis was feeble, since it depended heavily upon political
alliances between national and provincial actors. It is thus surprising that this key dimension is not
analysed in depth as a structuring feature of the book. Further examination of the relationship between
local and national actors by Juarez-Dappe could have contributed crucial new knowledge to social and
political studies of sugar in Argentina.

REFERENCES
Campi, D., ed., 1991. Estudios Sobre la Historia de la Industria Azucarera. Tucumn: AGE.
Elias, N., 1996. La Sociedad Cortesana. Mxico City: FCE.
Delich, F., 1970. Tierra y Conciencia Campesina en Tucumn. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Signo.
Gimenez Zapiola, M., 1975. El Interior Argentino y el Desarrollo Hacia Afuera: El Caso de Tucumn. In El rgimen
oligrquico. Materiales para el estudio de la realidad argentina hasta 1930. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu Editores.
Guy, D., 1980. Argentine Sugar Politics: Tucumn and the Generation of Eighty. Tempe, AZ: Center for Latin American
Studies, Arizona State University.
Pucci, R., 1984. La Elite Azucarera y la Formacin del Sector Caero en Tucumn (18801920). Buenos Aires: Centro
Editor de Amrica Latina.
Rosenzvaig, E., 1986, Historia Social de Tucumn y del Azcar. Tucumn: Universidad Nacional de Tucumn.
Santamara, D., 1986. Azcar y Sociedad en el Noroeste Argentino. Buenos Aires: IDES.
Scott, J.C., 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

PETER MOLLINGA
The New Peasantries. Struggles for Autonomy and Sustainability in an Era of Empire and Globalization, by Jan
Douwe van der Ploeg. London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2008. Pp. 352. 29.99 (pb), 85.00 (hb).
ISBN 978-1-84407-882-0 and ISBN 978-1-84407-558-4

While reading The New Peasantries, I watched two films on the fate and future of European farming, with
two very different messages. The first was the 2008 prize-winning film by Raymond Depardon, La Vie
Moderne, which is set in the French region of the Cvennes. It sketches the disappearance of the
profession of farming, and the peasant way of life, in an intimate, ethnographic way. The second was a
BBC documentary A Farm for the Future, also from 2008, and set in Devon, England. This film looks at
the possibility of an agricultural production system beyond oil. It discusses the fossil fuel dependence of
modern, industrialized agriculture and outlines alternative approaches for a sustainable form of farming.
Both films have farmers farming way past retirement age, not expecting that their farm and their way of
life will be continued. As regards the future, the Cvennes film has a young couple who fail to make their
goat farm profitable and who give up farming for urban employment. The Devon film is made by and
features as storyteller the daughter of the post-retirement farmer. After an urban career (as a film maker),
she decides to return to the land to start a farm for the future for which bright prospects are sketched.

Peter Mollinga, Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, UK. E-mail: pm35@soas.ac.uk

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 Book Reviews 613
Although van der Ploegs The New Peasantries does not have an explicit ecological,post-carbon focus, the
two contrasting film scripts do illustrate the main thematic of his book. Is the peasantry (finally)
disappearing and will agriculture (finally) become fully industrialized and globalized by food empires, or
is the contrary the case, and should new peasantries be regarded as the pioneers and agents of desirable
agricultural transformation? Van der Ploegs book passionately argues for the latter.
The two key theoretical pillars of the books argument are that: (1) the nature of the agricultural
labour process (its specific materiality) makes or, rather, can make for a distinctive peasant mode of
farming that does not agree with capitalist commodification; and (2) the autonomy thus acquired or
maintained by peasant farmers needs to be understood as resistance and the pursuit of progress. While
the first element is convincingly evidenced and argued, the second raises a set of complicated questions.
Van der Ploeg understands peasant agriculture as labour-driven intensification and a promising
trajectory for tackling unemployment, food shortages and poverty (p. 19). Peasants, as opposed to
entrepreneurial and capitalist farmers, the two other modes of farming distinguished, relate to nature in
ways that sharply differ from the relations entailed in other modes of farming (p. 21). The peasant mode
of farming focuses on the multiple and internally coherent ways in which peasants actively pattern the
agricultural process of production, which is premised on the creation and development of a self-
controlled and self-managed resource base (p. 23). Characteristic of the agricultural labour process is that
the conversion of resources into output only has to move through commodity circuits partially; it can also
move through non-commodity circuits.Van der Ploeg provides evidence that this is not only a possibility,
but that it actually, actively and sustainably happens, yielding incomes comparable to those in other modes
of farming, with similar investments of labour time, in the main cases that he discusses (dairy farming in
northern Italy and in Friesland, the Netherlands). He shows that degrees of market integration in these
regions are considerably lower than in Peru (both in coastal cooperative farming and mountain potato
farming by peasants).1
Van der Ploeg does not argue that all farming is of this kind quite the contrary. He registers
enormous pressure on the peasantry to integrate into agro-food systems (which he speaks of as Empire)
more comprehensively. One chapter, for example, is devoted to the rise and demise of the Italian
multinational Parmalats dairy emporium, a chapter that reads as a rehearsal of the global financial crisis
that was soon to follow. It is precisely such efforts to integrate that farmers who choose to practise peasant
modes of farming resist, by distancing themselves from some and engaging strategically with other
markets, and improving their farms and incomes through labour-driven intensification.That this can take
collective forms is shown in a chapter on the establishment of territorial cooperatives in the North Frisian
Woodlands (the Netherlands). Here lies the parallel with the Catacaos region in Peru, treated in a chapter
that argues the case for repeasantization and its benefits and prospects in a developing country setting.
Here, it is the peasant community that resists Empire, in the form of large enterprises involved in export
agriculture of asparagus, with conflict concentrating on the appropriation of irrigation water. According
to van der Ploeg, these types of struggles will probably be more radical and far-reaching than ever
before (p. 85).
There are several avenues for critical engagement with van der Ploegs book and argument. The first
is an empirical question: the form of production that van der Ploeg calls peasant mode of farming clearly
exists, but it could be asked how prevalent it is, and whether that prevalence is decreasing or increasing?
This is an old question in agrarian studies, but to which van der Ploeg brings new elements. A first new
element is van der Ploegs suggestion that there is a process of repeasantization going on, an expansion
of peasant farming, of a modern kind, fully supported by vanguard, progressive agricultural science (a
topic that receives interesting treatment in van der Ploegs book, notably in the chapter on the territorial
cooperatives). Such a process is illustrated in the film A Farm for the Future, referred to above. A second
new element is the need and interest to think anew about post-carbon forms of agriculture, triggered
by the 20078 food and fuel price hikes, as well as more recent price increases that seem to be surpassing

1
Tables in The New Peasantries that summarize relevant evidence are 2.1 (p. 40); 2.2 (p. 41), 5.2 (p. 116), 5.3
(p. 123), 5.4 (p. 139), and 5.5 (p. 148).

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the peak levels of 20078.2 While this is not the starting point and perspective of van der Ploegs book,
his understanding of the agricultural labour process is also relevant for the post-carbon debate. In fact,
questioning to what extent van der Ploegs perspective provides elements of a potential alternative
(post-carbon, post-industrial, sustainable etc.) mode of farming seems to be the more pertinent issue at
this moment in time.
A second avenue of critical engagement relates to the way in which van der Ploeg treats the social
relations of agricultural production. Remarkably, an analysis of the gender relations of agricultural
production is virtually absent from the book. Similarly, the discussion of the community relations in the
peasant communities in Peru could easily be considered as homogenizing, or at least paying insufficient
attention to social differentiation and relations of dependence and exploitation within the community.Van
der Ploegs account focuses on the relationship between peasants (individual and collective) and Empire.
The problems associated with such binary framings have been extensively discussed in critical agrarian
studies (for example, in critiques of populism), and need not be repeated here. I would just add that I am
not convinced that the notion of Empire as used by van der Ploeg adds much to understanding the
dynamics of capitalist accumulation and expansion to the contrary.
Van der Ploeg has quite a few axes to grind with the Marxist political economy of agriculture of the
1980s, but his analysis of the structural conditions and dynamics of globalizing agriculture and food
regimes could benefit from more recent Marxist scholarship in this field, or so I suggest. This starts with
the analysis of the agricultural labour process itself. The notion that there is something specific about
the agricultural labour process has been put forward in the domain of Marxist agrarian studies too. The
seminal paper is that by Mann and Dickinson (1978), published in the Journal of Peasant Studies. The
objective of that paper was to explain the persistence of the family labour farm in agriculture, particularly
in industrialized countries such as the USA, Canada and Western Europe. It argues that certain spheres
of agriculture are unattractive for capitalist penetration because of the relatively rigid non-identity of
production time and labour time (creating problems in accelerating turnover time), which has an adverse
effect on the rate of profit, leads to inefficient use of constant and variable capital, and prevents smooth
functioning of the circulation and realization process, and also affects the organization of (the) labour
(process) on farms. A second Marxist effort on the specificities of the agricultural labour process, from an
ecological perspective and concern, is Bentons (1989) discussion of agriculture as an eco-regulatory
labour process being qualitatively different from the manufacture type labour process3 (manufacture
being the basis of Marxs and most Marxist theory).
Interestingly, neither of these two studies has found a stable home in Marxist agrarian studies, but they
have received extensive citation and reflection in other domains, particularly in rural sociology, geography
and environmental studies.4 This suggests that Marxist agrarian studies lost interest in the specificity of
the agricultural labour process after the 1980s, a decade in which Marxist labour process theory was very
vibrant. In 1992, Mann (and Baxter) summarized the criticisms that had been put forward:5 Among the
central contentions shared by [critical] authors is that research in the sociology of agriculture should stop

2
Inaugural lecture, Did Food Prices Plant the Seeds of the Arab Spring?, by Professor Jane Harrigan at SOAS, 28 April
2011.
3
The characteristics of eco-regulatory labour process are as follows: labour is applied to optimize the conditions
for transformation (not to transform raw material); this labour is a labour of sustaining, regulating and reproducing,
rather than manufacturing; the spatial and temporal distributions of labouring activity are strongly shaped by the
environmental context and by the rhythms of organic developmental processes; nature-given conditions are both
conditions of the labour process and subjects of labour (which does not fit Marxs classification of elements: labour,
instruments of labour, raw materials). (Benton, 1989, 678).
4
I counted 60 references to Benton (1989) in peer-reviewed journal articles, one of which is in the Journal of
Peasant Studies, and none so far in the Journal of Agrarian Change. Bentons paper finds considerably more reference
in sociological journals (nine), but particularly in environmental and geographical ones (15 and 18). I counted in
total 135 references to the Mann and Dickinson (1978) paper in peer-reviewed journal articles, of which 62 are
in sociological journals (particularly Rural Sociology and Sociologia Ruralis), and only 13 in the Journal of Peasant
Studies and the Journal of Agrarian Change combined, the latter 13 concentrated in the first decade after publication
(five up to 1990), and in 200910 (a total of six).
5
Critiques of the MannDickinson thesis include Perelman (1979); Mooney (1982, 1987) and Singer et al.
(1983). For what is perhaps the most innovative Marxist use of the MannDickinson thesis, see Henderson (1998).

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 Book Reviews 615
the reification of agriculture as a distinct sphere and integrate it into the analysis of the state and circuits
of industrial capital. (Baxter and Mann 1992, 231). And thus it happened: [T]hese writers [have shifted]
away from the analysis of class conflict and surplus-value extraction within production and toward an
analysis of domination based on state policies and surplus appropriation through market exchange
(. . .) (ibid., 231).
Despite being a professor of rural sociology, van der Ploeg refers to neither Mann and Dickinson
(1978) nor Benton (1989) for specifying the peculiarities of the agricultural labour process.6 Nevertheless,
the materiality of the agricultural labour process plays a key role in van der Ploegs argument, a role that
could have been profiled more strongly theoretically, rather than using notions such as the mystery of
farming (pp. 1213).The gains would lie in: (i) adding accumulation as a category to commoditization,
and conceptualizing the specificities of accumulation in agriculture (cf. the innovative use of the
MannDickinson thesis in Henderson 1998) and the related vulnerabilities of the peasant mode of
farming; (ii) in opening up the farm family-enterprise and peasant community for an analysis of the
(unequal) social relations of production (as in established Marxist political economy of agriculture); and
(iii) taking a cue from Benton (1989), in more elaborated theorization of the ecological destruction
associated with capitalist farming and the potential of the ecological sustainability of peasant farming that
are part of van der Ploegs argument.
However, there is, I believe, a broader critique to be made of the book that can assist further
development of its main contribution and argument, beyond highlighting what is perhaps missing or
unsatisfactory about it. This is essentially a book about (West) European agriculture; essentially because
it does contain one chapter on Peru. This suggests, and is at points claimed by van der Ploeg, that there
is a universality associated with the peasant mode of farming. The North Frisian Woodlands territorial
cooperatives and their struggles are put on the same (analytical) plane as the peasant communities of
Catacaos and their struggles. Equally,Empire is treated as being one of a kind in these different locations.
This is unsatisfactory. Why not an example from, say, rural India? If such an example were included, it
would be very difficult to avoid the issues of gender relations and the social relations of production, as
well as the questions of food security and income poverty, as part of a highly differentiated and polarized
rural environment. No doubt in such a setting peasants make out creatively (cf. Burawoy 1985), but with
their backs against the wall.The general point is that different regions will present different circumstances
and options for alternatives to present-day productivist agriculture and agricultural development strate-
gies, which in turn influence different agricultural and food politics processes and outcomes. For instance,
it may be suggested that particular conditions of the West European pattern include: protection of
individual property rights of land; relatively sizable farms due to a low percentage of the population being
agricultural producers; substantial purchasing power in the form of a health- and environment-conscious
middle class; and a rule-dense European Union.Together, these conditions enable a particular articulation
of food and agricultural politics.The (major) contribution that van der Ploeg makes is that he brings the
characteristics of the labour process back into the analysis of agrarian change and agrarian politics, but the
general argument that materiality matters (so to speak) requires unbundling and contextualization. Just
as there are variegated neoliberalisms, there will be variegated peasant modes of farming, with different
characteristics and prospects for addressing the challenges of poverty, equity, sustainability and social
justice.
In conclusion, there is a revived interest after the 20078 food and fuel price peaks in interrogating
the material characteristics of the modernist agricultural paradigm, across a wide theoretical spectrum (cf.
IAASTD 2009; Moore 2010). There are too few social scientists who take farming as a practice so
seriously, have such an intimate appreciation of it, and are able to think through its relational and
transformative implications as originally as van der Ploeg does in this book. The New Peasantries can play
a constructive role in reconciling and advancing political economy and political ecology perspectives on
agrarian change and agrarian politics.

6
There is no such reference in either van der Ploeg (1991a) or van der Ploeg (1991b), which have detailed
discussions of the specific nature of the agricultural labour process.

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REFERENCES
Baxter, V., and S. Mann, 1992. The Survival and Revival of Non-Wage Labour in a Global Economy. Sociologia
Ruralis, 32 (2/3): 23147.
Benton, T., 1989. Marxism and Natural Limits. An Ecological Critique and Reconstruction. New Left Review, 178:
5186.
Burawoy, M., 1985. The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism. London: Verso.
Henderson, G.L., 1998. California and the Fictions of Capital. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
IAASTD (International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development), 2009. Agriculture at a
Crossroads: Synthesis Report. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Mann, S.A., and J.M. Dickinson, 1978. Obstacles to the Development of a Capitalist Agriculture. Journal of Peasant
Studies, 5 (4): 46681.
Mooney, P.H., 1982. Labor Time, Production Time and Capitalist Development in Agriculture: A Reconsideration of
the MannDickinson Thesis. Sociologia Ruralis, 22 (3/4): 27991.
Mooney, P.H., 1987. Desperately Seeking: One-Dimensional Mann and Dickinson. Rural Sociology, 52 (2): 28695.
Moore, J.W., 2010. The End of the Road? Agricultural Revolutions in the Capitalist World-Ecology, 14502010.
Journal of Agrarian Change, 10 (3): 389413.
Perelman, M., 1979. Obstacles to the Development of Capitalist Agriculture: A Comment on Mann and Dickinson.
Journal of Peasant Studies, 7 (1): 11921.
Singer, E.G., G.P. Green and J.L. Gilles, 1983. The MannDickinson Thesis: Reject or Revise? Sociologia Ruralis, 23:
27687.
Van der Ploeg, J.D., 1991a. Landbouw als Mensenwerk: Arbeid en Technologie in de Agrarische Ontwikkeling. Muiderberg:
Coutinho (in Dutch).
Van der Ploeg, J.D., 1991b. Labor, Markets and Agricultural Production. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd