Introduction: Critical Agrarian Studies in Theory and Practice

In this introductory article we argue for renewed attention to life and labor on and of the land—or what we call the field of Critical Agrarian Studies. Empirically rich and theoretically rigorous studies of humanity's relationship to “soil” remain essential not just for historical analysis but for understanding urgent contemporary crises, including widespread food insecurity, climate change, the proliferation of environmental refugees, growing corporate power and threats to biodiversity. The article introduces an innovative and varied collection of works in Critical Agrarian Studies and also examines the intellectual and political history of this broader field.     

Waltz the Hall: The American Play Party

Spurgeon has provided the academic world with a superb exampleof how oral history has the power not only to supplement thehistorical and academic record but also to enlarge our understandingof a topic. These days, few know of the esoteric folklore genre,the play party, and those who do might well assume that it hasbeen defunct for several decades. Even nineteenth- to earlytwentieth-century folklorists wrote about it as an old and dyingform of childhood recreation. Vance Randolph wrote some     

Non-standard work and fertility: a comparison of the US and Japan

Using General Social Survey data from Japan and the US (N?=?5101), we examine the effect of non-standard or non-regular work status on men’s fertility. We employ a cross-national comparative approach to explore how this relationship differs both within and across the two countries. Consistent with features of the Japanese context which make it challenging for non-regular workers to realise the breadwinner role we find a negative effect of non-standard work status on men’s fertility in Japan, but not the US. Specifically, Japanese men employed as non-regular workers have the lowest chances of having a child. Non-regular work status has no such effect on men’s fertility in the US. We also find that the difference in the non-standard work effect between the two countries can be accounted for by differences in the effect of marriage, which illustrates the close connection between marriage and fertility in Japan.     

Land Reform in the Time of Neoliberalism: A Many‐Splendored Thing

Abstract: Over the past 20 years, land reform – defined here as the redistribution of land from large to small properties – has emerged as an important political issue in the Global South. Actors with widely differing ideological perspectives have claimed land reform as central to their political, social and economic platforms. In this paper, I compare reforms championed under the neoliberal auspices of the World Bank (the so‐called Market Led Agrarian Reforms) with those supported by popular grassroots actors such as the Movement of Landless Workers (the MST) in Brazil. I argue that although these two approaches to land reform are often considered antithetical to one another, they share a common theoretical foundation. Both are rooted in a labor theory of property that attributes the fruits of one's labor to the laborer. Where the two differ is in their interpretation of the “original sin” through which land and labor came to be misaligned: neoliberal actors see the state as the key source of land‐related inefficiency while popular grassroots actors identify the market as the key source. I analyze case material from northeastern Brazil and suggest that the institutionalization of the labor theory of property (across civil society, state and market in the region) has generated insecurities for new land reform beneficiaries who must protect their property rights with visible evidence of their productivity.