New Directions in the Political Economy of Agriculture

Recent tendencies in the literature on the sociology and political economy of agriculture in advanced industrial societies are analyzed with respect to their adequacy for guiding future research and their implications for sociology at large. We argue that the emergent tradition of agrarian political economy, while it has been productive in many respects, has tended to have two limitations. First, agriculture has typically been reified by being conceptualized as a distinct and autonomous sector when, in fact, modern agriculture is increasingly characterized by a decline in its sectoral and national identities. Second, major contending theories, despite their apparent differences, have been rooted in common deductivist approaches that fail to recognize the contingent character of agricultural organization. Two theoretical strategies with particular promise for transcending these limitations are then discussed.