Provides one of the most thorough accounts of Central Oaxaca’s modern political and economic system. Cook skillfully weaves together archaeological, historical, and his own ethnographic data. . . . Although it will be required reading for any scholar of Oaxaca, Cook’s comprehensive work is an invaluable contribution to the study of the social relations embedded in Mexican and Latin American rural economies. (Journal of Anthropological Research) This volume is a testimony to the lasting influences of social practices that anchor households to a territory that is historically and culturally constituted as a single entity, even when repeatedly crisscrossed by migration flows, contested national policies, and neoliberal reforms. . . . This book will be an illuminating experience for advanced undergraduate and professional readers interested in peasant survival strategies, agrarian struggles, and the social and economic anthropology of Meixco and Latin America. (American Anthropologist)