Peasants Against the State: The Politics of Market Control in Bugisu, Uganda, 1900-1983

Buttressed by interviews, this painstakingly detailed account of political activity among a group of small coffee farmers in Uganda should be of real value to scholars of rural development. The author's argument-that African smallholders gain bargaining power with the government through their ability to withdraw from cash crop production into subsistence-seems demonstrated in this case: the book would be even more interesting, however, if the author had placed his case within the larger context of African agricultural development since independence, of which it has seemed, for the most part, atypical.