ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to provide an analytical guide to the analysis of peasant alternatives to neoliberalism. It situates the discussion about peasant alternatives under neoliberalism within a longer debate on the peasantry within capitalist development and provides a definition of the peasantry based on four general characteristics. It argues that a key feature of peasant struggles is the collective struggle for land and territory and that access to land provides peasants with greater control over their labour. In certain cases, this is reinforced by the reproduction of non-capitalist practices, such as solidarity, reciprocity, and redistribution, which can be oriented to progressive or conservative ends. The chapter identifies three major peasant strategies in relation to the market: market avoidance, market integration, and market creation, which are often combined. It also highlights four different political strategies that contemporary peasant movements have adopted with respect to state power: building of alliances outside the state, the deployment of actions to pressure the state, decisions to take on state positions, and building a transnational network to coordinate campaigns. The chapter concludes by underlining the fragmented and contradictory nature of the peasantry but argues that its process of class formation is often about transcending this fragmentation politically.
