|
Marc Edelman has been involved in research on agrarian issues in Central America since 1980. In northwestern Costa Rica he analyzed the persistence of large, underutilized properties-- " latifundios"-- in a dynamic modern economy. Most of the large estates, such as the one he's riding across in the picture, ran cattle, but many also grew rice and sorghum. By the mid 1980s, after Costa Rica embraced free-market policies that flooded the market with imported grain, only irrigated farms grew rice any more, and hardly anybody could grow sorghum or maize. This crisis led to the formation of remarkably sophisticated new peasant movements, which Edelman began studying in 1988. By the early 1990s, rural people from all seven countries of the Central American isthmus organized in transnational peasant associations, some of which formed links to global networks of small farmers and agricultural activists. Edelman's research on these networks has involved fieldwork in Latin America, Europe, and North America. It builds on longstanding interests in social movements, changing forms of capitalism, and the politics of controlling markets, whether through welfare states, civil society pressure or global trade rules.
