Abstract

At once a social history and anthropological study of the world’s oldest voluntary collective farms, All or None is a story of how landless laborers joined together in Ravenna, Italy to acquire land, sometimes by occupying private land in what they called a “strike in reverse,” and how they developed sophisticated land use plans, based not only on the goal of profit, but on the human value of providing work where none was available. It addresses the question of the viability of cooperative enterprise as a potential solution for displaced workers, and as a more humane alternative to capitalist agribusiness.

Alison Sánchez Hall attended the University of California at Santa Barbara, receiving her Ph.D. in 1977. After a career as a museum anthropologist and university lecturer, she retired from the University of Central Arkansas in 2014, but is still engaged in her lifelong pursuit as a political and community activist.