Harvesting Coffee, Bargaining Wages offers an insightful scrutiny of rural market behavior and a convincing explanation of why farmers fail sometimes to manage their laborers in ways predicted by market models--and how power imbalances and social conditions can impair the ability of laborers to attain a fair market contract during lax labor market periods. This empirical study, based on interviews with both farmers and laborers, covers a fifteen-year period characterized by the modernizati...

This book examines the life and historical background of the Paez peasants of Colombia and their relationship with the land, including issues of tenure, inheritance and the allocation of resources.

This excellent new volume in the series from the Society for Economic Anthropology focuses on the role of labor in contrasting world economies. The contributors offer a diverse collection of case studies, illustrating labor processes in a wide range of contexts in both western and nonwestern societies. The volume presents a detailed portrait of how the mobilization of labor changes dramatically with variations in social, political and economic conditions, as well as location and time perio...