Peasants are a majority of the world's poor. Despite this, there has been little effort to bridge the fields of peasant and poverty studies. Peasant Poverty and Persistence in the Twenty-first Century provides a much-needed critical perspective linking three central questions: Why has peasantry, unlike other areas of non-capitalist production, persisted? Why are the vast majority of peasants poor? And how are these two questions related?

Interweaving contributions from various disciplines, the book provides a range of responses, offering new theoretical, historical and policy perspectives on this peasant 'world drama'. Scholars from both South and North argue that, in order to find the policy paths required to overcome peasants' misery, we need a seismic transformation in social thought, to which they make important contributions. They are convinced that we must build upon the peasant economy's advantages over agricultural capitalism in meeting the challenges of feeding the growing world population while sustaining the environment.

Structured to encourage debate among authors and mutual learning, Peasant Poverty and Persistence takes the reader on an intellectual journey toward understanding the peasantry.

Julio Boltvinik has spent over three decades studying and fighting poverty. He is a professor and researcher at the Centre for Sociological Studies, El Colegio de México, and has been a visiting professor in the UK and Mexico, as well as holding government positions, working for the United Nations Development Programme and being member of the Scientific Committee of CROP. As well as one hundred and fifty articles and book chapters, he has published books including Social Progress Index: A proposal (with A. Sen and M. Desai, 1991), Poverty and Social Stratification in Mexico (1994), Poverty and Income Distribution in Mexico (co-authored with E. Hernández-Laos, 1999), Poverty in Mexico and the World (co-edited with A. Damián, 2004), Broadening Our Look: A new approach to poverty and human flourishing (forthcoming) and To Understand the Current Capitalist Crisis (2010). He also writes the weekly column 'Moral economy' in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, for which he received the Citizen National Journalism Award in 2001.

Susan A. Mann was professor of sociology and former director of women's and gender studies at the University of New Orleans in Louisiana. She also served as a former chair of the Race, Class and Gender Section of the American Sociological Association. Her books include Reading Feminist Theory: From modernity to postmodernity (2015), Doing Feminist Theory: From modernity to postmodernity (2012) and Agrarian capitalism in theory and practice (1990).