Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform

Agrarian reform is back at the center of the rural development debate after being considered taboo for decades. There was a time when peasant actvists would be shot or disappeared if they dared to utter "land reform" or "agrarian reform." But though they contnue to suffer sometimes violent repression, now even the World Bank talks about agrarian reform. And that´s the rub, because what the World Bank calls agrarian reform is little more than the privatization of land, while what movements like the Via Campesina call for is real redistribution. This is the basis of the new global debate about land reform, which is wonderfully covered in this volume, which also touches on important issues like gender and land, indigenous peoples and territory, and food sovereignty. This is must read for anyone interested in rural development.