Editor’s introduction

This is an exciting time to be working in the field of peasant – or agrarian – studies. Around and across the globe, rural actors have organised themselves to protest the dominant trends of commodity agriculture, proposing alternatives based in new and old community-environment solidarities (Borras et al. 2008, Deere and Royce forthcoming). Landless movements have forced the seemingly anachronistic topic of agrarian reform back onto national and even international agendas (Rossett et al. 2006, Moyo 2007, Wolford 2007); indigenous movements have formed to promote cultural awareness, the struggle for territory or homeland, and political autonomy (Harvey 1998, Perrault 2003, Postero and Zamosc 2004); farmers’ movements have come together to protest the environmental and social effects of large-scale industrial agriculture and to promote small-scale diversified farming for local consumption (Featherstone 2003); consumer movements have developed to champion organic, local, humane, and healthy food (Raynolds 2000, Guthman 2004); and environmental activists have entered into the fray, campaigning against new technologies in food production such as Genetically Modified Organisms and confinement livestock rearing (Shiva 2000, Schlosser 2003). Many of these movements have come together at key moments and in key sites to advocate for transnational change (Edelman 2003). Umbrella movements such as the Via Campesina as well as temporary alliances of independent organisations at global events including ministerial meetings of the World Trade Organization and alter-globalisation demonstrations have been crucial in injecting a critical voice into high-level international discussions regulating the production, trade, and consumption of food, fibre, and fuel (McMichael 2006, Desmarais 2007).