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&#160;Adding to the fast-growing literature on understanding themultidimensional nature of commodities and crops is this welcomecontribution by Dalhousie University anthropologist ElizabethFitting. _The Struggle for Maize_ is a deeply researched work, bothon broad transnational and local levels, that seeks to show "a few ofthe ways that corn--as both a food and a crop--is fraught withmultiple layers of meaning, and how it has been portrayed by statepolicy, bureaucrats, activists, academics, and local actors" (p.232). More specifically, Fitting focuses on the three main elementsof central Mexican production: water, labor, and corn itself, and howthose work together, or have been affected by, the "neoliberal cornregime" (p. 4). Thus, _The Struggle for Maize_ reveals and studiesthe tension between small-scale agricultural producers, and theiruncertainties in trying to survive, and the larger globalized cornmarkets and commodities regimes that have intensified pressures tochange under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) andother neoliberal economic policies. A huge dimension of those changeshas been the introduction from abroad of genetically modified (GMO)maize varieties that have not only polluted the gene pool in the veryplace where corn developed centuries ago, but that have also wreakedhavoc with local production and consumption patterns in Mexico.Fitting's goal, then, for such a project as this was not only toprovide the background and larger story to this whole scenario, butalso to provide a case study of how the changes have affected onelocal area in south central Mexico, the Tehuecán Valley in the stateof Puebla, and specifically the village of San José Miahuatlánthere.Anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers will perhaps find thiscase study more useful than historians and political scientists, whowill value more from the broader analyses of the neoliberal changesassociated with maize in Mexico. The author lived in San JoséMiahuatlán for a significant period of time, conducting interviewsand placing the neoliberal changes in a very local perspective.Fitting's style is also more reflective of anthropologists' andsociologists': social science formatting with parentheticalcitations, and heavy use of jargony buzz terms (this reviewer noticedan almost endless string of terms like "market liberalization,""agricultural efficiency," "politics of food," "food regimes," and"food sovereignty"--not that any of those are not important forreaders to be aware of, they are; they were just overused in thenarrative). Some of the chapters were also too long and repetitive,causing one to wonder about the editorial skills at Duke UniversityPress.These style points, while unfortunately making the book less readableand marketable to a wider audience than it could have been, however,should not distract too heavily from its important content andmessages. There is exceptionally useful data and analysis here on thenational and local impact of GMO corn, there are chapters about howneoliberal economic policies have accelerated Mexican immigration tothe United States (something that policymakers who support NAFTA butthen complain about the problem of "illegal" aliens and vote forthings like border walls should be far more aware of!), and analysisof agricultural modernization and its impacts on rural communities.Along the way, Fitting touches on the role of _maquiladora_industries in Mexico and how they have been an option for rural womenseeking work in areas negatively impacted by the force of imported(often GMO) corn that has replaced local agriculture. She briefly,but importantly, discusses some of the environmental results of cornmonoculture (reduction of intercropping, dependence on chemicals,salinization from increased irrigation, etc.). And she frames all ofthis material with an analysis of globalization, the transnationalnature of "the neoliberal corn regime."All of this is important for scholars of Mexican agriculture,environment, economics, and society, as well as for those interestedin the transnational connections and impacts of neoliberalism.Fitting's conclusions from her research are well told in the finalchapter, and she does not back away from enumerating the harms ofNAFTA that she has observed and documented. To her credit, she takesan important stand based on what the book shows are the social andagricultural ills of GMO corn imports into Mexico. But this scenariodoes not cast the _campesinos_ of the Tehuecán Valley as totalvictims in a larger world plot nor does it glorify an "Indian way"versus contemporary times. Fitting eschews "peasantessentialism"--romanticizing peasants' and indigenous peoples'"cultural alterity, or overemphasizing the similarity of experiencesacross time and space" (pp. 233-234). Instead, _The Struggle forMaize_ deals with the resilience of corn as a crop and commodity_and_ as a cultural practice, despite the challenges presented by aglobalized economy that has introduced GMO corn varieties intoMexico. Depending on one's point of view, GMO may have accrued someeconomic benefits here and there in the country (but certainly not inSan José Miahuatlán), but the agricultural, social, andenvironmental harms it has presented, Fitting argues, outweigh thosebenefits. And her book is successful in showing that, and thus is animportant contribution to that ongoing debate.Citation: Sterling Evans. Review of Fitting, Elizabeth M., _TheStruggle for Maize: Campesinos, Workers, and Transgenic Corn in theMexican Countryside_. H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. August, 2011.URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=32442