How Lives Change

How Lives Change PDF Author: Himanshu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192529072
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
Development economics is about understanding how and why lives change. How Lives Change: Palanpur, India, and Development Economics studies a single village in a crucially important country to illuminate the drivers of these changes, why some people do better or worse than others, and what influences mobility and inequality. How Lives Change draws on seven decades of detailed data collection by a team of dedicated development economists to describe the evolution of Palanpur's economy, its society, and its politics. The emerging story of integration of the village economy with the outside world is placed against the backdrop of a rapidly transforming India and, in turn, helps to understand the transformation. It puts development economics into practice to assess its performance and potential in a unique and powerful way to show how the development of one village since India's independence can be set in the context of the entire country's story. How Lives Change sets out the role of, and scope for, public policy in shaping the lives of individuals. It describes how changes in Palanpur's economy since the late 1950s were initially driven by the advance of agriculture through land reforms, the expansion of irrigation and the introduction of "green revolution" technologies. Since the mid-1980s, newly emerging off-farm opportunities in nearby towns and outside agriculture became the key driver of growth and change, profoundly influencing poverty, income mobility, and inequality in Palanpur. Village institutions are shown to have evolved in subtle but clear ways over time, both shaping and being shaped by economic change. Individual entrepreneurship and initiative is found to play a critical role in driving and responding to the forces of change; and yet, against a backdrop of real economic growth and structural transformation, this book shows that human development outcomes have shown only weak progress and remain stubbornly resistant to change.

How Lives Change

How Lives Change PDF Author: Himanshu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192529072
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 469

Get Book Here

Book Description
Development economics is about understanding how and why lives change. How Lives Change: Palanpur, India, and Development Economics studies a single village in a crucially important country to illuminate the drivers of these changes, why some people do better or worse than others, and what influences mobility and inequality. How Lives Change draws on seven decades of detailed data collection by a team of dedicated development economists to describe the evolution of Palanpur's economy, its society, and its politics. The emerging story of integration of the village economy with the outside world is placed against the backdrop of a rapidly transforming India and, in turn, helps to understand the transformation. It puts development economics into practice to assess its performance and potential in a unique and powerful way to show how the development of one village since India's independence can be set in the context of the entire country's story. How Lives Change sets out the role of, and scope for, public policy in shaping the lives of individuals. It describes how changes in Palanpur's economy since the late 1950s were initially driven by the advance of agriculture through land reforms, the expansion of irrigation and the introduction of "green revolution" technologies. Since the mid-1980s, newly emerging off-farm opportunities in nearby towns and outside agriculture became the key driver of growth and change, profoundly influencing poverty, income mobility, and inequality in Palanpur. Village institutions are shown to have evolved in subtle but clear ways over time, both shaping and being shaped by economic change. Individual entrepreneurship and initiative is found to play a critical role in driving and responding to the forces of change; and yet, against a backdrop of real economic growth and structural transformation, this book shows that human development outcomes have shown only weak progress and remain stubbornly resistant to change.

Studies in Agrarian Social Structure

Studies in Agrarian Social Structure PDF Author: André Béteille
Publisher: Delhi ; New York : Oxford University Press
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The Author`S Main Concern In This Work Is With Patterns Of Inequality And Conflict As These Arise From The Ownership, Control And Use Of Land-A Subject Of Crucial Importance To An Understanding Of Conditions In India.

Tilling the Hateful Earth

Tilling the Hateful Earth PDF Author: Michael Decker
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 9780199565283
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
A study of the agrarian landscape and economy of the late-antique eastern Mediterranean. Michael Decker describes the ways in which Roman farmers succeeded in producing food surpluses, fuelling a surge in population and a flowering of cultural expression and economic prosperity in the century before the arrival of Islam.

Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change

Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change PDF Author: Henry Bernstein
Publisher: Kumarian Press
ISBN: 1565493567
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Henry Bernstein argues that class dynamics should be the starting point of any analysis of agrarian change. Providing an accessible introduction to agrarian political economy, he shows clearly how the argument for "bringing class back in" provides an alternative to inherited conceptions of the agrarian question. He also ably illustrates what is at stake in different ways of thinking about class dynamics and the effects of agrarian change in today's globalized world. CONTENTS: Introduction: The Political Economy of Agrarian Change. Production and Productivity. Origins of Early Development of Capitalism. Colonialism and Capitalism. Farming and Agriculture, Local and Global. Neoliberal Globalization and World Agriculture. Capitalist Agriculture and Non-Capitalist Farmers? Class Formation in the Countryside. Complexities of Class.

A Dictionary of Agriculture and Land Management

A Dictionary of Agriculture and Land Management PDF Author: Will Manley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191059633
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 569

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Book Description
This brand new Dictionary of Agriculture and Land Management addresses the increasing overlap between agricultural sectors and the demands of the management of rural land and property. It covers the main areas of agricultural management, husbandry, environment, estate management, rural recreation, woodland and forestry, as well as general terms such as organizations, policies, and legislation. In over 2,000 clear and concise A to Z entries, it offers authoritative and up-to-date information, and the content is enhanced by entry-level web links that are listed on a dedicated companion website. Useful tables and line drawings complement the entries, and make this volume an excellent point of reference for anyone who needs a guide to agricultural terminology. The most up-to-date dictionary of its kind, it is a must-have for students of agriculture and land management, as well as for professionals in the agricultural and land-management sectors.

The Development of Agrarian Capitalism

The Development of Agrarian Capitalism PDF Author: Jane Whittle
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780198208426
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
'Rigorously intelligent... impressive detailed reconstruction of the material circumstances of the rural poor... This is a bold work that represents economic history at its best.' -The Agricultural History Review'Jane Whittle's excellent monograph manages to combine a detailed knowledge of local society and a mastery of a range of difficult primary sources with an awareness of wider theoretical issues and historiographical debates about the transition to capitalism... A model of logical structure and clarity of argument.' -Sixteenth Century Journal'Whittle maintains a commendable hold on both her arguments and the evidence which she elucidates. There are separate thematic introductions, interim summaries, and straightforward conclusions to each section. The unsophisticated reader (and reviewer) is seldom lost and the book in fact provides and excellent guide, not merely to its own theme but to the ways in which real research can be done on the big questions.' -Philip Morgan, H-AlbionThis is an important new scholarly study of the roots of capitalism. Dr Whittle intelligently relates ideas of peasant society and capitalism to a local study of north-east Norfolk, a county that was to become one of the crucibles of the so-called agrarian revolution. She uses the rich variety of historical sources produced by this precocious commercialized locality to examine a wide range of topics and draw some significant conclusions.

Africa's Land Rush

Africa's Land Rush PDF Author: Ruth Hall
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1847011306
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Interrogates the narratives of land grabbing and agricultural investment through detailed local studies that illuminate how these are experienced on the ground and the implications for Africa's land and agricultural economy.

Living Under Contract

Living Under Contract PDF Author: Peter D. Little
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299140649
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Wracked by poverty, famine, and drought, Africa is typically represented as agriculturally stagnant, backward, and crisis-prone. Living Under Contract, however, highlights the dynamic, changing character of sub-Saharan agrarian systems by focusing on contract farming. A relatively new and increasingly widespread way of organizing peasant agriculture, contract farming promotes production of a wide variety of crops--from flowers to cocoa, from fresh vegetables to rice--under contract to agribusinesses, exporters, and processers. The proliferation of African growers producing under contract is in fact part of broader changes in the global agro-food system. In this examination of agricultural restructuring and its effect upon various African societies, editors Peter Little and Michael Watts bring together anthropologists, economists, geographers, political scientists, and sociologists to explore the origins, forms, and consequences of contract production in several African countries, particularly Kenya, the Gambia, Zimbabwe, and the Ivory Coast. Documenting how contract production links farmers, agribusiness, and the state, the contributors examine problematic aspects of this method of agrarian reform. Their case studies, based on long-term field work and analysis on the village and household level, chart the complex effects of contract production on the organization of work and the labor process, rural inequality, gender relations, labor markets, local accumulation strategies, and regional development. Living Under Contract reveals that contract farming represents a distinctive form in which African growers are incorporated into national and world markets. Contract production, which has been a central feature of the agricultural landscape in the advanced capitalist states, is an emerging strategy for "capturing peasants" and for confronting the agrarian question in the late twentieth century.

Agricultural Enlightenment

Agricultural Enlightenment PDF Author: Peter Jones
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198716079
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Agricultural Enlightenment explores the modernization of the rural economy in Europe through the lens of the Enlightenment. It focuses on the second half of the eighteenth century and emphasizes the role of useful knowledge in the process of agrarian change and agricultural development. As such it invites economic historians to respond to the challenge issued by Joel Mokyr to look beyond quantitative data and to take seriously the argument that cultural factors, broadly understood, may have aided or hindered the evolution of agriculture in the early modern period ("what people knew and believed" had a direct bearing on their economic behavior Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy]). Evidence in support of the idea that a readily accessible supply of agricultural knowledge helps to explain the trajectory of the rural economy is drawn from all of the countries of Europe. The book includes two cases studies of rapid rural modernization in Scotland and Denmark where Agricultural Enlightenment was swiftly followed by full-scale Agricultural Revolution.

Alternative Agriculture: A History

Alternative Agriculture: A History PDF Author: Joan Thirsk
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191586811
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
People like to believe in a past golden age of traditional English countryside, before large farms, machinery, and the destruction of hedgerows changed the landscape forever. However, that countryside may have looked both more and less familiar than we imagine. Take todays startling yellow fields of rapeseed, seemingly more suited to the landscape of Van Gogh than Constable. They were, in fact, thoroughly familiar to fieldworkers in seventeenth-century England. At the same time, some features that would have gone unremarked in the past now seem like oddities. In the fifteenth century, rabbit warrens were specially guarded to rear rabbits as a luxury food for rich mens tables; whilst houses had moats not only to defend them but to provide a source of fresh fish. In the 1500s we find Catherine of Aragon introducing the concept of a fresh salad to the court of Henry VIII; and in the 1600s, artichoke gardens became a fashion of the gentry in their hope of producing more male heirs. The common tomato, suspected of being poisonous in 1837, was transformed into a household vegetable by the end of the nineteenth century, thanks to cheaper glass-making methods and the resulting increase in glasshouses. In addition to these images of past lives, Joan Thirsk reveals how the forces which drive our current interest in alternative forms of agriculture a glut of meat and cereal crops, changing dietary habits, the needs of medicine have striking parallels with earlier periods in our history. She warns us that todays decisions should not be made in a historical vacuum: we can find solutions to our current problems in the experience of people in the past.