This book recenters the agrarian question within contemporary capitalism, examining social differentiation in rural societies through a rigorous historical-comparative lens. It positions agrarian transformation as a critical prism for understanding capital's evolution, territorial reconfigurations, and the production of inequality on a global scale.
Through a comparative framework spanning Europe and Latin America--including post-Soviet Russia, Bolivia, and Argentina--the chapters integrate theoretical analysis with empirical evidence using diverse methodological approaches: historical-structural analysis, case studies, ethnographic research, and socio-spatial methods. The book examines key processes including the reconfiguration of land ownership, labor market transformations, the persistence and mutation of communal forms, and resource commodification. It demonstrates how distinct phases of capitalist development generate specific class configurations that resist reduction to linear proletarianization narratives, while illuminating the pivotal role of state-territory-accumulation dynamics in producing and reproducing inequalities.
Class Differentiation in Contemporary Rural Societies is essential reading for researchers, educators, and graduate students in sociology, history, geography, and agrarian studies, as well as professionals engaged with rural development and public policy. It provides sophisticated analytical frameworks for interpreting contemporary rural transformations while contributing substantively to both academic debates and critical reflection on the social and political conditions shaping rural life under contemporary capitalism.
Lisandro Cañón is a Marxist historian and a professor in Contemporary History at the University of Oviedo. He specializes in the contemporary history of South America and the Caribbean. His main line of research focuses on the cycle of coups d’état and state terrorism in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century. Since 2018, he has coordinated the International Network of Studies on States of Exception and State Terrorism (REDET).
Alba Díaz Geada is a social historian. She is currently a Ramón y Cajal researcher in Contemporary History at the University of Santiago de Compostela, in the Faculty of Humanities on the Lugo Campus. Her main line of research focuses on peasant mobilization and communitarian transformation in contemporary rural societies. Since 2021, she coordinates the COREGAL project (Community, conflict and revolt in rural Galiza in the 20th century).
