This book is about social conflict and economic restructuring, and the play of political forces in the relationship between the two. The purpose of the book is to engage and develop social theory through the causal analysis of a particular case, but to increase under-standing of a fascinating and little-known world.

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This book exemplifies salutary trends in anthropology: practice theory, respect for ethnography in the face of the inadequacy of one-dimensional theoretical abstraction, and the importance of time depth. You may learn more than you ever wanted to about strawberries in California, but you will understand it and that will help you understand other phenomena.