Coming of Age in Times of Crisis is an anthropological study of the intersecting roles of gender and schooling in the lives of rural Venezuelan youth as they make the transition to adulthood during times of national political and economic crisis. Strongly grounded in local detail while speaking to larger comparative issues and the crises that surround globalization, the study enables us to see how gender roles and social class are reproduced in a culture experiencing profound upheaval, and to see how rural Venezuelans have managed to reproduce and change their culture in these circumstances. This book is based on two-and-a-half years of ethnographic field research Hurtig conducted in the Andean region of Venezuela between 1991 and 1993, and again briefly in 1996.

Fliegel overviews and summarizes research on the spread of innovations through rural populations. The volume begins with a look at the discovery of diffusion as a patterned process in the 1940s and examines the creation of the classical model to explain diffusion as a transfer of information. Fliegel then notes how the classical model changed to accommodate the particular socioeconomic condition when the model was applied to developing countries after 1945. He concludes by commenting on the revival of interest in diffusion research, the further development and refinement of the classical model, and the modern emphasis on conservation-oriented innovations rather than on innovations that enhance production. Fliegel overviews and summarizes research on the spread of innovations through rural populations. The volume gives detailed attention to the development and utilization of diffusion research from the 1940s to 1970 and traces the creation of the classical model for explaining the spread of innovations. Because the classical model seemed inadequate when applied to the diffusion of innovations in lesser-developed countries after World War II, the model changed to accommodate new research. The book notes the role of diffusion research in developing countries after the second world war, the change of the classical model to include socioeconomic conditions peculiar to these countries, and the growth and development of diffusion research to the present day. The first part of the book provides an historical survey of diffusion research through 1970. The chapters in this section discuss the discovery of diffusion as a patterned process, the development of the classical model to explain diffusion as an information transfer, and the implementation of diffusion research in developing countries after 1945. The second part, devoted to recent trends, includes chapters on the further development and refinement of the classical model, the revival of interest in diffusion research, and the modern emphasis on conservation-oriented innovations rather than on ones that enhance production. An extensive bibliography concludes this comprehensive study.

'Poignant ... A meditation on life, love and the importance of nature' IRISH TIMES Thirty-four years ago, when they were in their twenties, Niall Williams and Christine Breen made the impulsive decision to leave their lives in New York City and move to Christine's ancestral home in the town of Kiltumper in rural Ireland. In the decades that followed, the pair dedicated themselves to writing, gardening and living a life that followed the rhythms of the earth. In 2019, with Christine in the final stages of recovery from cancer and the land itself threatened by the arrival of turbines just one farm over, Niall and Christine decided to document a year of living in their garden and in their small corner of a rapidly changing world. Proceeding month by month through the year, this is the story of a garden in all its many splendours, and a couple who have made their life observing its wonders.

This book draws on preeminent planning theorist Patsy Healey's personal experiences as a resident of a small rural town in England, to explore what place and community mean in a particular context, and how different initiatives struggle to get a stake in the wider governance relations while maintaining their own focus and ways of working. Throughout the book, Healey assesses the public value generated by community initiatives and the impact of such activity on wider governance dynamics. Healey explores the power which small communities are able to mobilise through self-organisation and grassroots activism. Through the lens of Wooler and Glendale as a micro-society, the book centres on a community experiencing an economic and demographic transition. It focuses on three initiatives developed and led by local people - a small community development trust, an informal attentionmobilising network, and a Neighbourhood Plan project which uses an opportunity provided within the formal planning system. It examines how, in such civil society activism, people came together to promote local development in a place and community neglected by the dominant political economy. The book details the power and force of community initiative and its potential for transforming both the future possibilities for the place and community itself, as well as wider governance relations. Overall, it seeks to enrich academic and policy discussion about how the relations between formal government and civil society energy could evolve in more productive and progressive directions.

Since 1957, more than 45 African countries have received aid from China, yet until recently little has been known about the effectiveness or impact of this assistance. Brautigam provides the first authoritative account of China's experience as an aid donor in rural Africa. In a detailed and highly readable analysis, the author draws on anthropology, economics, organization theory and political science to explain how China's domestic agenda shaped the design of its aid, and how domestic politics in African countries influenced its outcome.

Dr. Hossen carried out an exceptional program of research in Bangladesh which focused on water governance in relation to human rights, international water law and environmental sustainability. His major argument is that eco-agricultural system encounters major disruptions due to a number of factors including regional hydropolitics and neoliberal and highly centralized approaches to water resource management that follow the principles of "ecocracy." In this context, Dr. Hossen explores three major questions: (i) How can local ecological knowledge be incorporated into national water policy? (ii) What strategies and reforms are required at the international watershed governance level? and (iii) How can human rights principles, including the principle of water as a human right, be used to formulate more effective water policy and governance principles? To answer these questions, Dr. Hossen explores the effects of regional hydropolitics on water management, focusing on three large engineering projects, the Farakka Barrage built by India on the Ganges River, and the Ganges-Kobodak (GK) and Gorai River Restoration (GRR) Projects in Bangladesh. This analysis is based on his research into local knowledge and farming practices during a year of fieldwork in 2011-12, focus group discussions, in-depth case studies and social survey methods. In addition to this primary data, he looks at extensive secondary documents from the government of Bangladesh pertaining to water management, agricultural modernization and institutional structures. The arguments herein are applicable particularly to the Ganges-Brahmaputra Basin countries in South Asia but also to the river basins of other parts of the world.

The debate on the origins of modern gender norms continues unabated across the academic disciplines. This book adds an important and hitherto neglected dimension. Focusing on rural life and its values, the author argues that the modern ideal of separate spheres originated in the era of the Enlightenment. Prior to the eighteenth century, cultural norms prescribed active, interdependent economic roles for both women and men. Enlightenment economists transformed these gender paradigms as they postulated a market exchange system directed exclusively by men. By the early nineteenth century, the emerging bourgeois value system affirmed the new civil society and the market place as exclusively male realms. These standards defined women's options largely as marriage and motherhood.

This book builds upon the ground-breaking work already undertaken by the author filling the absence of research into the significance, character and value of creative industries beyond major urban centres. What has emerged in this work is the specific centrality of place, time and the natural environment to the creative practice of those who have chosen or found themselves operating outside the mainstream of urban creative milieus. Unlike any existing book in the market, Locating Cultural Work uniquely examines creative workers in terms of three interlinked concerns: the wider history of creativity and place in the UK since the Industrial Revolution (in particular the Romantics and the Arts and Craft Movement, especially as manifest in the Lake District and Cotswolds); the emotional-affective-drivers of creativity and place; and, the relationship between rural and regional cultural industries, tourism and environmental awareness.

In compiling this collection of previously unpublished essays, Seroka was prompted by several concerns about current administrative responses and opportunities for change in rural areas. Specfically, these concerns were that the rural renaissance has placed administrative offices and officials in affected governmental units under severe and unanticipated stress; that rural policy programs require specific considerations which are divided from urban-based programs; and that rural governmental units must be studied flexibly, and not as a single monolithic block. Particular subjects discussed include the theory of rural administrative change, rural administration in the township, administration under "boom and bust" circumstances, policy variations in rural areas, the impact of intergovernmental fundings on rural policymaking, and policy limitations and constraints on rural public administration. The volume is divided into four distinct units. In the first, alternate models for rural public administration are introduced. In the second, the rural administrative environment is defined and described. The third examines particular rural administrative responses to immediate and specific problems. In the fourth part the editor offers an overall assessment of rural public administration research.

Margaret Spufford has written as detailed an account of the lives and activities of the chapmen as there is likely to be, given the widely-spread and fragmented evidence. She shows where and when they were active, and in particular their rise in the seventeenth century, their ranks and their typical careers, the variety of the cloths and other wares they carried, and the attitude of authority towards them.

The debate on the origins of modern gender norms continues unabated across the academic disciplines. This book adds an important and hitherto neglected dimension. Focusing on rural life and its values, the author argues that the modern ideal of separate spheres originated in the era of the Enlightenment. Prior to the eighteenth century, cultural norms prescribed active, interdependent economic roles for both women and men. Enlightenment economists transformed these gender paradigms as they postulated a market exchange system directed exclusively by men. By the early nineteenth century, the emerging bourgeois value system affirmed the new civil society and the market place as exclusively male realms. These standards defined women's options largely as marriage and motherhood.

WINNER OF A SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD 2021 A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE A SUNDAY TIMES AND FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Marks the birth of a new star of non-fiction' William Dalrymple 'A beautiful account of immersion in an alien world' Philip Marsden, Guardian There is the Cornwall Lamorna Ash knew as a child - the idyllic, folklore-rich place where she spent her summer holidays. Then there is the Cornwall she discovers when, feeling increasingly dislocated in London, she moves to Newlyn, a fishing town near Land's End. This Cornwall is messier and harder; it doesn't seem like a place that would welcome strangers. But before long, Lamorna finds herself on a week-long trawler trip with a crew of local fishermen, afforded a rare glimpse into their world, their warmth and their humour. Out on the water, miles from the coast, she learns how fishing requires you to confront who you are and what it is that tethers you to the land. Dark, Salt, Clear is a bracing journey of discovery and a captivating portrait of a community sustained and defined by the sea for centuries.

Rapid and uneven change to the fabric of rural life is widespread in modern Middle Eastern countries. Modernisation, usually in the Western model, has often brought major improvements in agricultural technology, education and public health but has also had the effect of weakening the traditional rural economy of many villages and encouraging their growing dependence on external sources of income, most notably oil remittances. This collection of research on the Middle Eastern village looks at the impact on rural life and environment of such factors as the mass exodus of labour to urban centres, emigration, immigration, environmental change and the changing role of women in rural communities - particularly the wives of migrant workers who have to fill a new role in the family structure. State-sponsored agrarian policies have weakened the power of traditional landed interests and together with labour migration have provoked new tension and inequalities in rural society. The book makes clear that the pattern of change has been highly uneven and has served to heterogenise the countryside. As the oil states enter a period of recession and the likelihood of substantial return migration increases, rural communities will need to make further major adjustments and the book examines the tensions this new development is likely to produce. First published in 1987.

In Arctic and northern communities, livelihoods and land use depend heavily on natural resources. Decision-making processes around the use of natural resources are often contested and given their importance to these communities the participation of local stakeholders is vital. This timely book presents practices that have been developed with key stakeholders to improve the collection and utilization of locally relevant knowledge in land use planning. Chapters illustrate how indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) can be made spatially explicit by using, for example, participatory GIS. Focusing on countries including Greenland, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Ireland, Finland, Norway and Sweden, this book pays particular attention to the recognized challenges of these regions, including the relationships between local and national actors and indigenous and other local populations.Sharing Knowledge for Land Use Management will be a key resource for students and researchers of geography, planning, regional and tourism studies as well as planning authorities and consultants, offering new ideas and tools for the inclusion of local knowledge in decision making processes.

This book shares and analyses the stories of Opal, a senior Alyawarra woman. Through her stories the reader glimpses the harsh colonial realities which many Aboriginal Australians have faced, highlighting the cultural embeddedness of autobiographical memory from a philosophical, psychological and anthropological perspective.

This sixth volume in the series covers a variety of topics in research in rural sociology and development.

Formal justice systems have not served the human rights of native and aboriginal groups well and have led to growing natural and international pressure for equal treatment and increased political and legal autonomy. Indigenous activities in areas of community healing have created a fervor of interest as native peoples have shared experiences with programs that reduce addiction, family violence, child abuse, and sociocultural disintegration of traditional communities. Through ethnographic and indigenous contributions this volume penetrates the psychosocial aspects of the indigenous movement in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It analyzes community-based reforms and shows how years of experience in adversity, peacemaking, and community preservation have equipped native peoples with skills they now wish to share for spiritual world healing.

This book analyses the key forces affecting the affordability of rural homes in Britain and the changing shape of housing markets. It takes as its starting point, demographic trends impacting upon rural communities and upon market dynamics. From this point, it explores consequent patterns of housing affordability, examining changing opportunities in the rental and sale markets, at different spatial scales. The book also focuses on how markets are analysed, and how data are selectively used to demonstrate low levels of affordability, or a lack of need for additional housing in small village locations. Building on the demographic theme, the book considers the housing implications of an aging population, before the focus finally shifts to community initiative in the face of housing undersupply and planning's future role in delivering and procuring a more constant and predictable supply of affordable homes. In a speculative conclusion, the book ends by examining the current political trajectory in England, and the prospects for housing in the countryside in the context of localism and neighbourhood planning at a village level. This book was published as a special issue of Planning Practice and Research.

With an annual output, Research in Rural Sociology and Development, publishes scholarly content at the cutting edge of rural sociology. Addressing issues such as rural development and growth, globalization, labour relations, agrarian dynamics, and social and personal implications of rural and agricultural change, this series provides in-depth and up to date research on the local and global systems affecting rural dynamics.

Thirty years have passed since the beginning of the reform era in China which saw important changes in agriculture and rural organizations, but it is clear that certain entrenched legacies from pre-reform China still linger on even after WTO accession, most importantly the key role played by state actors and politics in the development of markets in rural China. Although increasingly diversified markets have emerged for major agricultural inputs and products, their development cannot be understood without taking this role into account. Against this backdrop, the contributors to this book offer a fresh account of rural politics and markets, consciously linking these two realms and highlighting their interconnectedness. The book is organized in three parts addressing respectively markets for agricultural inputs and outputs as well as current policies in rural development. The perspectives adopted link macro- and micro-level analysis in each chapter and thus contribute substantially to our understanding of existing markets. As an original account of rural politics and markets in China this book will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese politics, economics, development studies and political economy. Bj rn Alpermann is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Chinese Studies at W rzburg University, Germany.