The Postsocialist Agrarian Question

Property provides a useful window through which to understand postsocialist change, because the virtues of private property have been given so much attention by the new governments and the international bodies on which they depend. Collective farms have been broken up, but the economic outcomes and the social insecurity now experienced by many rural inhabitants highlight the need for a broader anthropological analysis of property relations. A century after Kautsky addressed 'The Agrarian Question' in Germany, it is therefore necessary to address a postsocialist Agrarian Question, from the eastern parts of Germany throughout Eastern Europe, Russia and China. The studies collected here derive from the first cycle of projects carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. They are prefaced by a substantial Introduction by Chris Hann, a Founding Director of the Institute.