This new edition is thoroughly revised, with several new chapters and case studies added. It has been re-structured more as a textbook for students of rural sociology and related disciplines.

Jan Douwe van der Ploeg is Emeritus Professor of Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and Adjunct Professor, College of Humanities and Development Studies at China Agricultural University in Beijing, China.

1. Peasants and peasant agriculture: basic concepts and data 2. A further specification of peasant agriculture 3. Delineating and comparing peasant and entrepreneurial farming 4. Rural development: processes of repeasantization in Europe 5. The struggle for land in Latin America: waves of repeasantization and depeasantization 6. China: the potential of peasant agriculture 7. Self-organizing territories 8. The construction of new, nested markets 9. Theorizing the peasantries of the twenty-first century 10. Food empires and the peasant principle