ABSTRACT
Agricultural markets, state interventions, agrarian relations, infrastructure and technology and their relationship to development have been widely discussed in development theories over the past five decades. Neoclassical, neo-Marxist and new institutional approaches have suggested particular concepts of market exchange and models of agricultural development or stagnation. These development theories have concentrated on different aspects of agricultural markets, and have generated various hypotheses about their influence on socioeconomic development that, if reinterpreted in the concepts of social practice and real markets, are relevant for this study. In order to facilitate this theoretical discussion, this chapter first explains the characteristics of agricultural practice and of agricultural markets in developing countries.
