Reactions to the Market: Small Farmers in the Economic Reshaping of Nicaragua, Cuba, Russia and China (review)

Enríquez's Reactions to the Market is a solid analysis of the determinants of small farmer well-being in post-socialist societies. Enríquez contrasts the immiseration of small farmers in Nicaragua and Russia, with their relative prosperity in Cuba and China. The analysis is rich and nuanced. But behind the details a very simple story emerges: when states support small farmers, small farmers prosper. When small farmers are sacrificed to the cause of neoliberal reduction of agricultural support programs or to the support of large capital intensive agricultural exporters, small farmers suffer. This is a standard argument in the literature on agriculture. However, sometimes truth involves showing that the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west.

The methodological innovation involves contrasting four post-socialist societies and showing the similarity of outcomes in countries where small farmers were essentially ignored (Nicaragua and Russia), with societies in which the well-being of small farmers was integral to the national development plan (Cuba and China). The farmers were abandoned in a very different way in Nicaragua than in Russia, and they were supported in a different way in Cuba than they were in China. That said, differences in style made a difference only at the margins. Both sets of supported farmers did better than ignored farmers.

The casework is reasonable in all four countries-but there is far more to admire in the work on Nicaragua and Cuba. Enríquez is an established authority on Nicaragua and Cuba. She has written extensively on both nations. She did fresh fieldwork in both settings for this book. The work in Russia and China is a stretch for her and is heavily dependent on well-known authorities. If you have read Jean Oi, for example, you can pretty much skip the chapter on China. This said, it is certainly reasonable for a reader to ask if Enríquez's conclusions concerning her Latin American cases would be supported by parallel developments in the rest of the world. Enríquez's review of Russia and China shows that she does have such cross-case affirmation.

The work on Cuba is particularly welcome and will be of special interest to macrosociologists. In contrast, the Nicaraguan story of a neoliberal state instituting painful structural adjustment programs and suffering poor people is more familiar to most sociologists.

The Cuba case, in contrast, is an eye opener. There is very little readily available material on Cuba's semi-successful attempt to reduce the damage caused by the loss of Soviet support. State reactions to this challenge both under Fidel and under Raul were clever and often well conceived. Agricultural credit to small holders was made available in such quantities that many farmers had more credit lines than they could use. Tourism was linked to a 100 percent domestic input program to provide a market chain between local farms and food eaten by foreign visitors. Unemployed urban workers were voluntarily relocated back to the countryside with generous access to land, capital and technical assistance. Urban-rural relocation plans in other nations usually crash and burn on the lack of these critical inputs.

Reviews are considered namby-pamby unless they complain-and there are things one can complain about even in this good manuscript. The theory section is horrifically written-using the format of listing famous books rather than famous ideas, and refusing to settle on a dependent variable. Of greater significance however, is the question of whether Enríquez has made gotten the greatest theoretical mileage out of her findings. The book places a great emphasis on Polyani and the effect of transformation to a market society. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and in the early days of the implementation of the Washington Consensus, questions about whether "planned" or "market" economies were better, and what effect a transition between the two would...