Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform

by Peter Rosset (Editor), Raj Patel (Editor), Michael Courville (Editor)

Agrarian reform is back at the center of the national and rural development debate, a debate of vital importance to the future of the Global South and genuine economic democracy. The World Bank as well as a number of national governments and local land owning elites have weighed in with a series of controversial policy changes. In response, peasants landless, and indigenous peoples' organizations around the world have intensified their struggle to redistribute land from the underutilized holdings of a wealthy few to the productive hands of the many. The essays in this volume, edited by scholars from the Land Research Action Network (LRAN), critically analyze a wide range of competing visions of land reform. Promised Land is an essential resource for academics, students, policy makers, activists, and peasant organizations.

380 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2006