Review by Choice Review
Everyone interested in modernization and economic development should read this book. The field of peasant studies has always been dominated by Marxist scholars and those embracing or rejecting the primacy of material progress at all cost. Baud deftly challenges this tradition and debunks the current myths about peasant societies and their political economy. Baud sees Caribbean peasants in the context of the modern capitalist world system. Instead of isolating themselves in an anticapitalist and antimarket cocoon, the Cibao peasants of the Dominican Republic became fully integrated participants in the overseas market, highly mobile, capable of capital accumulation, and well informed of risks in the marketplace. The commercialization of agriculture enhanced the position of the peasants in their relations to landlords. Instead of evicting squatters, the landlords invited peasants to settle on their land because of the shortage of wage labor. The book is at once tantalizing and disappointing. What Baud says about the Cibao and the Caribbean is pathbreaking, but when he digresses to other parts of Latin America, some of his analyses offer questionable applicability, e.g., conclusions concerning the intercropping of tobacco with food crops, the relationship between cultivators and export merchants, and peasants' using the market to escape the clutches of landlords. Nevertheless, Baud's book is skillfully crafted and highly readable. Upper-division undergraduate through faculty. E. Pang; Colorado School of Mines
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
