The first volume in a new series on agrarian change and peasant studies, this work by Bernstein (development studies, U. of London, UK) provides a Marxist perspective on the political economy of agrarian change, focusing on the key questions of how capitalism developed in agrarian societies prior to industrialization and the impacts of the establishment and spread of industrial capitalism on processes of agrarian change. Major themes include class and gender differentiation in the countryside; divisions of access to land, divisions of labor, and divisions of the fruits of labor; property and its relationship to livelihood, wealth, and poverty; colonial legacies and the activities of states; paths of agrarian development and international markets for technologies, finance, and agricultural commodities; and relations of power and inequality, their contestation, and the violence often used to maintain them. Kumarian Press is an imprint of Stylus Publishing. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)