ARTICLE IN PRESSBook reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 22 (2006) 493–502500

isation of world trade in wheat has been ‘inscribed’ into thebodies of the Egyptian urban poor, Vellema’s (chapter 9)use of Mary Douglas’ grid-group theory to deconstruct thenotion of ‘contract farming’, Hughes’ (chapter 10) discus-sion of how corporate managers deal with ethical foodregulatory initiatives, and Neilson’s (chapter 14) discussionof ‘place-informed’ identities for food and how these arecontrolled and manipulated within supply chains, whichyields a challenging revisiting of the idea of the ‘localembeddedness’ in relation to foods.

I have only two complaints about the book, both ofwhich are diminished by its actual achievements. Oneconcerns consumption: can this, or how can this, beincorporated into the study of cross-continental foodsupply chains? Do we have to be content with what somecontributors call ‘perceived signals’ from consumers, or‘near-consumer demands’—that is, with consumptionpatterns and practices as these are fed through thecommercial focus of large retailers? As mentioned above,only one chapter (Dixon and Jamieson) tries to develop aglobal approach which treats food consumers themselvesas significant agents with their own food practices;otherwise, consumers are represented only as aggregated

‘demand’ (in the ‘North’) or as dependent sufferers fromsupply system structures (in the ‘South’). My second isabout the geographical focus of the book: one of the key‘regional blocs’ which has emerged in world agri-foodtrade, and indeed in the politics of global food trade, is theEU, and it gets only little attention here. Much of the bookis focussed, understandably, on cross-continental tradebetween Australia and its neighbours. However, this is lessa weakness in the book than a wake-up call to Europeanagri-food sociologists to produce a similar volume them-selves.

Reference

Buttel, F.H., 2001. Some reflections on late twentieth century agrarian

political economy. Sociologia Ruralis 41 (2), 165–181.

Hilary ToveyDepartment of Sociology,

Trinity College Dublin,

Ireland

E-mail address: htovey@tcd.ie.

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2006.03.002

J. Sumner (Ed.), Sustainability and the Civil Commons:

Rural Communities in the Age of Globalization, University

of Toronto Press, Toronto, ISBN 0802079997, 2005 (179pp.,

US$45.00 or £28.00 hbk).

This short book (6 chapters and 179pp.) deals with thefuture of rural communities, especially in Canada but notexclusively so by any means, from the perspective ofsustainability and in the context of globalization. Manyrural communities are vulnerable to the macro scale forcescontributing to the transformation of the international scene,most countries and, by extension, their rural communities. Inthe face of the forces of globalization, the author asksfundamental questions: Are rural communities unsustain-able? Are the efforts needed to help them survive worth-while? Are their alternatives to the globalization that isimpacting many rural communities? Can we construct acommunity ‘where human potential, not profit maximizationcan be more fully realized?’ (p. 6) The author thus sets out anambitious agenda in the Introduction, and whets ourappetite by announcing the book will focus on a life-valuesperspective as opposed to a money-values perspective.

The book is structured into six chapters. Chapter 1 presentsa short discussion of ‘globalization’ both from a money-values perspective as well as a life-values perspective. Theimportant distinction between ‘corporate globalization’ and‘globalization from the bottom-up’ (community and otherforms of ‘local’ organizations and populations). Corporate

globalization is essentially seen as the source of most of theills facing rural communities, while globalization from thebottom-up contains the seeds of alternative processes andstructures. Chapter 2 summarizes a sub-set of the researchthat has been undertaken on rural communities over the last20 years, and focuses on a series of short discussions on theimpacts of globalization (economic, political, social, environ-mental, gendered and cultural impacts). Chapter 3 introducesthree building blocks for constructing sustainable ruralcommunities: counter-hegemony, communicative action andthe life code of value. In Chapter 4, a review is presented ofthe concept of sustainability from the early 1070s onwards.Chapter 5 represents the core of the book. It deals with the

construction of a new vision of sustainability using the threebuilding blocks introduced in Chapter 3. The author arguesthat these three building blocks represent the cornerstones ofthe ‘civil commons’, a phenomenon constructed by humanagency, focussed on a co-operative mode of operations,as opposed to a competitive mode of operations (p. 12).The civil commons thus represents the re-introduction of the‘values’ of social organization into rural community. Finally,in Chapter 6, the author introduces a number of directionsfor future research.This is an interesting book, written from a perspective of

personal commitment to the search for sustainable ruralcommunities. It is certainly worth reading, but it willundoubtedly raise many questions. First, much of thetreatment is based upon syntheses of different bodies of

ARTICLE IN PRESSBook reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 22 (2006) 493–502 501

literature. For someone who is also committed to sustainable(rural) community development both in teaching and inpractice, it is strange that there is little direct connection of thediscourse to actual communities—they are dealt with at avery general level. We have little insight into the realheterogeneity of rural communities—a brief mention is madeof some rural communities in the urban fields of major cities,but we are not given any insight into how rural communitieshave very different economic bases, very different linkageswith the national and international economy and verydifferent resource bases. All of these variables influence howrural communities are affected by corporate globalization.

Second, while the three building blocks are very reasonable,the author makes no link in the text with the huge literatureon sustainable community development (often associated with‘community economic development’ in its more holistic form),in which non money values are often critical components ofcommunity strategies. The key concepts can be found in thisother literature, but the terminology usually differs. Where is

the discussion of the ‘social economy’ perspective whichconverges with the author’s building blocks, and the conceptof ‘social capital’? Where is the discussion of participativedemocracy and local action? And, in the discussion of thechanging role of the state as regulator and provider of safetynets, where is the discussion of the state and its agents as aneducator and an adviser in accompanying local actors andcommunities in their processes to build more sustainablecommunities, a phenomenon that has been gradually emer-ging in a number of jurisdictions over the past 20 years.Having said that, the book makes for interesting reading.

It will force the reader to think and try to assess his or herown perspectives of rural communities in the light of whatthe author argues.

Christopher BryantDepartment of Geography, University of Montreal,

CP 6128, Succ. centre-ville, Montreal, Canada H3C 3J7

E-mail address: bryan94@attglobal.net.

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2006.03.003

S.S. Batie, E.D. Horan, The Economics of Agri-Environ-

ment Policy, 2 volumes, Aldershot, Ashgate, ISBN 0-7546-

2324-6, 2004 (626pp., +416pp., £210, US$400, Hbk).

This substantial two-volume collection of 74 previouslypublished papers is a major contributor to Ashgate’sInternational Library of Environmental Economics andPolicy. Organised into seven thematic sections, with a briefeditorial introduction, it addresses economic theory,methods, and issues relating to agri-environmental policy(AEP) in the United States and Western Europe, drawingon papers published between 1982 and 2002, the majoritycoming from the 1990s. Despite its bulk (1042 pages), somepotential topics are omitted, e.g. farmland preservation,non-federal AEPs and non-market valuation methods.However, several elements of agricultural, conservation,environmental and trade policy are included provided theyare related to economic analysis.

Twenty-eight different journals are represented in thevarious papers, with the American Journal of Agricultural

Economics (22 papers) and the Journal of Environmental

Economics and Management (9 papers) being the mostpopular providers of material, an indication of theprincipal focus upon the US (there are two papers fromJournal of Rural Studies).

Part 1 contains just four papers ‘framing the issues’.These focus on policy and highlight contrasts between theUS and Europe in terms of the types of agri-environmentalproblem considered and the mechanisms for addressingthem. Hence there is a contrast between the Americanconcern with agri-pollution, soil erosion and market-basedapproaches, and the greater diversity within the multi-member European Union where reforms to the Common

Agricultural Policy have been pursued through develop-ment of agricultural multifunctionality, encouraging farm-ers to produce ‘countryside’ alongside some pollutionprevention and maintaining marginal agricultural activitiesin peripheral areas.Parts 2 and 3 have a theoretical focus, looking at how

agri-environmental problems have been theorised, and atthe theory underlying the design of AEP instruments. Theproblematising is essentially American—and hence theemphasis is on groundwater contamination and soilconservation, together with much broader concerns, suchas how general economic and ecological paradigms can co-exist within policy regimes. The selection on policyinstruments includes regulation of non-point-source pollu-tion, liability for groundwater contamination, regulation oflivestock waste, and the environmental economics ofgenetically modified crops. However, there is also theoris-ing of much broader environmental concerns relating toambient taxes, liability, uncertainty and imperfect informa-tion.The last fifteen papers in volume one are a set of

empirical case studies on the topic of involuntary agri-environmental pollution policies. Here there are severalEuropean examples to complement the American focus,including work on cost-effective nutrient reductions to theBaltic Sea, cost efficient pesticide reductions in Sweden andefficient compliance with agricultural nitrate pollutionstandards in the United Kingdom (UK).Volume Two comprises 32 case studies in three parts:

voluntary agri-environmental pollution policies, analysis ofconservation policies and co-ordination of agricultural andenvironmental policy. The range of topics addressed in thefirst of these sections is noteworthy, with papers on carbon