Where have all the Peasants gone?

Abstract

By revisiting earlier debates around the definition of peasantries and new issues around farming in present-day agricultural regimes this review underlines the uneven forms of capitalist surplus extraction. After revisiting the classic debate I explore present-day issues such as market-led agrarian reforms, land grabs and transnational peasant movements that re-center the peasant debate. The following sections address two expressions of small-scale agricultural production: contract farming and agro-ecological short circuit food-provisioning. These two varieties of contemporary peasantries express different forms of dependent autonomy and are integrated in value accumulation circuits in different ways. A final section of the article attempts to compare aspects present in agriculture with similar ones present in other sectors of production in order to show the theoretical value of these discussions