| | This book is an important contribution, at both a theoretical and an empirical level, to the field of social and economic change in rural communities in Africa. It is the result of a long term study of a settled farming population living in Maiurno, a settlement largely composed of migrants from Northern Nigeria in the North of the Sudan. Duffield's study of Maiurno from colonial times through post-war rural development and transformation is not of a community in isolation. Rather Maiurno's history is situated by the author within the larger context of the development and reproduction of capitalism in the Sudan. Duffield uses his empirical data well in the exploration of such key issues as the nature of peasant agriculture, labour migration, capital accumulation and class formation in rural areas. |
