What are the issues shaping contemporary African peasant movements? Are they fundamentally democratic or anti-democratic? Are they defensive and local in their organization and aspirations or should they be seen as taking a leading role in a wider process of economic, social, and political transformation? Are they in the state's pocket or can they pose a threat to state power? And how do they fit in with other organs of African civil society, with overseas donor groups, and with imposed programs of structural adjustment? In this collection of important new research findings from all corners...

A compelling and critical destruction of both the English agricultural revolution and the theory of comparative advantage, upon which unequal trade has been justified for three centuries, this account argues that these ideas have been used to disguise the fact that the Northfrom the time of colonialism to the present dayhas used the much greater agricultural productivity of the South to feed and improve the living standards of its own people while impoverishing the South. At the same time, the imposition of neoliberal reforms in the African continent has led to greater unemployment, spiraling...