This title was first published in 2002. While capitalism continues to convert former communal land into private property, communal ownership still exists throughout the world. By examining the agricultural communities of Chile's semi-arid Norte Chico region where the land commons are predominant, Gloria Gallardo Fernandez investigates the historical origins, emergence, socio-economic context and current development of this form of land tenure. The case study is contrasted with communal land areas in Mexico, South Africa, Switzerland and the UK, whose distinct historical and socio-politcal developments are also explored. This investigation documents almost four centuries, stemming from colonial archival sources, and thus fills the theoretical and empirical gap in the literature about this form of commons.

The agricultural communities (communidades agr icolas) of Chile's Norte Chico are dynamic systems of indivisible communal land, inherited use rights, democratic decision-making, and diverse economic strategies closely linked to changing environmental conditions. In this semi-arid region where drought is chronic and poverty is widespread, families reproduce their livelihood and comunero culture through a variety of integrated economic, subsistence, and social practices. Based on fieldwork spanning years of extreme climate changes, this vividly detailed ethnography of daily life in a peasant community explores the full range of income-generating and resource management strategies and forms of cooperative mutual assistance that are available to these households. One family's story is highlighted to illustrate the extraordinary resiliency of these communities despite the harsh ecological and, at times, social and political environments in which they are situated. The book places these descriptions within the political economy of development in Chile's current transition to democracy. While the state is more attentive to rural poverty in the post-dictatorship era, some programs and policies informed by a discourse of modernization and standardization limit these traditionally flexible livelihood options.