"Issues of rural development and women s empowerment receive critical attention in various debates. Trends and patterns of agricultural development in recent years have not always been favourable to women, especially rural women, who face marginalisation. Some of the essays make us rethink the relationship between employment and empowerment in a more nuanced way. An attempt has, therefore, been made in this book, to take stock of the contemporary challenges in rural women s empowerment in India and suggest viable solutions through a process of networking and dialogue to evolve a coherent perspective for the region as a whole. It is towards this end that the book would serve as a launching pad for further discussions."

A Cotswold Village - Or Country Life And Pursuits In Gloucestershire By J. Arthur Gibbs. Originally published in 1898. 452 pages. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Home Farm Books are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents include: Flying westwards - A Cotswolds village - Village characters - The language of the Cotswolds with some ancient songs and legends - On the Wolds - A Gallop over the walls - A Cotswold trout stream - When the may fly is up - Burford: A Cotswold town - A stroll through the Cotswolds - Cotswold pastimes - The Cotswolds three hundred years ago - Cirencester - Spring in the Cotswolds - The promise of May - Summer days on the Cotswolds - Autumn - When the sun goes down - George Ridler's oven

This book assesses the capacity of the rural populace in terms of their ability to perceive a change in climatic variables and, if so, how they react to these changes in order to minimize the adverse effect of climate change. It evaluates the role of education and exposure to change in physiological variables like temperature, precipitation, etc., in forming the right perception of climate change. While analysing livelihood diversification as a strategy to cope with climate change concerns across geography (districts), caste, education and the primary occupation of the households, the book also considers factors affecting diversification. One important aspect of well-being is consumption; thus, by focusing on consumption changes over time and relating it to livelihood diversification, the book makes an in-depth analysis of the coping mechanisms. Diversification adopted in the face of compulsion and in a situation of stagnancy may result in a range of low productivity activities, whereas diversification as an attempt to explore newer pathways in a vibrant context to reduce income risks and smooth consumption can be highly beneficial. The book, thus, focuses on job profile and occupational diversification of the sample households, the extent of instability in occupations and the distribution of households in terms of consumption pattern, the inter-temporal changes in it and the determinants. The book is useful for researchers, students in environmental studies, policy-makers, NGOs and also the common reader who wants to understand climate change, its effects on livelihoods and ways to overcome the shocks. It reflects on effective policies which can create awareness and empower people to explore opportunities for livelihood creation so that the overall is sustained if not improved.

This work documents the history of change during the colonial period in the Abakaliki division and town of south-eastern Igbo Nigeria over four main historical periods: pre- British Abakaliki; the beginnings of colonialism from the early twentieth century until the 1920s; the 1920s until the 2nd World War; and the post-war period through to independence in 1960. Within the context of rapid urbanisation and urban sprawl in Africa, the study focuses on one Nigerian town and its rural environs. It is the story of successful rural farmers and of an emerging town in their midst; and a study of ethnic interrelationships, integration and conflict between the town and the rural areas. It is a study in colonial history within the framework of British control and conquest; and also a story of African responses to colonialism: resistance, accommodation and innovation. The author characterises his work as more descriptive than theoretical, and as having regard for both anthropological and historical approaches and the positive and negative aspects of colonialism, without being overtly ideological.

Multiple caretaking arrangements exist in non-western societies with other members of the household and the community assisting the mother in child care. These others include the children's older siblings especially in subsistence based horticultural and or pastoral societies where sibling caretaking comprises a large portion of children's daily activities. During these caretaking sessions, older siblings may intentionally or unintentionally transmit culture to the younger children. Caretaking of small children thus implies transmitting cultural values to the children in everyday context during everyday activities. As very little research has been conducted in the area of sibling teaching, this study sets out to investigate sibling teaching among the Agikuyu of Kenya by means of video recording. It looks at the different teaching abilities and strategies of the children according to age and social status. It also pays attention to the cultural context, in which the teaching occurs, as well as to the reflection of social relationships found in the children's interaction. The author points out, that and in what way children can be important socialization tools to their younger siblings.

This book highlights some of the main areas of debate around the subject of agricultural policy in Eastern Africa. Its major aim is to introduce the reader to different issues of economic and social change arising from agricultural development and to provide an understanding of some of the major difficulties faced by African countries in pursuing an agricultural policy.

The assembled stable of writers has produced a highly readable - and nostalgic - volume. Some will make you laugh; some may bring tears. Any one is worth the price of the book.

prestigious and significant volume offering theological relection on a wide range of issues relating to the countryside, the rural economy and rural life. At a time when it has been officially recognised that British society is deeply uninformed about rural matters, this is a critical contribution from the Church to the wider debate taking place. Chapters focus on: Cultural Diversity, Agriculture, Globalisation and Local Economy, Food Production, Biodiversity, Isolated Communities, Spiritual Refreshment for an Urban Population and more. Rowan Williams distils this shared wisdom in a theological afterword. Contributors include Graham James-Norwich, John Saxbee-Lincoln, John Oliver-Hereford, John Davies-St Asaph, Richard Clarke- Meath & Kildare, Anthony Russell- Ely, Bruce Cameron- Aberdeen & Orkney.

Bill Kauffman, a self-proclaimed "placeist" who believes that things urban are homogenizing our national scene, returned to his roots after a bumpy ride on the D.C. fast track. Rarely has he ventured forth since. Here he illuminates the place he loves, traveling from Batavia's scenic vistas to the very seams of its grimy semi-industrial pockets, from its architecturally insignificant new mall to the pastoral grounds of its internationally known School for the Blind. Not one to shy from controversy, Kauffman also investigates his town's efforts to devastate its landmarks through urban renewal, the passions simmering inside its clogged political machinery, and the sagging fortunes of its baseball heroes, the legendary Muckdogs.

In most countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the fall of communism opened up the possibility for individuals to acquire land. Based on Katherine Verdery's extensive fieldwork between 1990 and 2001, The Vanishing Hectare explores the importance of land and land ownership to the people of one Transylvanian community, Aurel Vlaicu. Verdery traces how collectivized land was transformed into private property, how land was valued, what the new owners were able to do with it, and what it signified to each of the different groups vying for land rights.

Verdery tells this story about transforming socialist property forms in a global context, showing the fruitfulness of conceptualizing property as a political symbol, as a complex of social relations among people and things, and as a process of assigning value. This book is a window on rural life after socialism but it also provides a framework for assessing the neo-liberal economic policies that have prevailed elsewhere, such as in Latin America. Verdery shows how the trajectory of property after socialism was deeply conditioned by the forms property took in socialism itself; this is in contrast to the image of a "tabula rasa" that governed much thinking about post-socialist property reform.

No one has done more to emphasise the significance of the land in early modern England that Joan Thirsk, whose writings are both an important contribution to its history and point the way for future research. The subjects of this collection include the origin and nature of the common fields, Tudor enclosures, the Commonwealth confiscation of Royalist land and its subsequent return after the Restoration, inheritance customs, and the role of industries in the rural economy, among them stocking knitting.

Doing Fieldwork in Japan taps the expertise of North American and European specialists on the practicalities of conducting longterm research in the social sciences and cultural studies. In lively first-person accounts, they discuss their successes and failures doing fieldwork across rural and urban Japan in a wide range of settings: among religious pilgrims and adolescent consumers; on factory assembly lines and in high schools and wholesale seafood markets; with bureaucrats in charge of defense, foreign aid, and social welfare policy; inside radical political movements; among adherents of "New Religions"; inside a prosecutor's office and the JET Program for foreign English teachers; with journalists in the NHK newsroom; while researching race, ethnicity, and migration; and amidst fans and consumers of contemporary popular culture.

Folklife along the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River records the history, lore, and lifeways of people who once occupied the land that became the Big South Fork national River and Recreation Area. The National park Service sponsored the research in1979, just as former residents were being displaced from their homes . Through oral history interviews and historical records, ethnographic study, old-time-traditions, this book recounts what life was like in the Big South Fork during the first half of the twentieth-century, when the region's agrarian economy was transformed by the timber and coal industries. Howell has added a new introduction and postscript.
Visitors to the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area will find this a useful introduction t the area's rich history and culture, while genealogists will discover a wealth of information about the region's historic settlements. Social scientists will recover valuable insights into the cultural dimensions of environmental impact assessment, along with a counter to conventional wisdom that tends to explain Appalachian culture in terms of either psychocultural or environmental determinism.
The Author: Benita J. Howell is professor of anthropology and chair of the America Studies Program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is the editor of Culture, Environment, and conservation in the Appalachian South and author of book chapters on cultural heritage conservation and articles that have appeared in the Journal of East Tennessee History and the Journal of Appalachian Studies.

The world confronts major challenges in rural development as it enters the 21st century. Most of the world's poverty is in rural areas, and will remain so, yet there is a pro-urban bias in most countries' development strategies, and in their allocation of public investment funds. Rural people, and ethnic minorities, in particular, have little political clout to influence public policy to attract more public investment in rural areas. This document outlines a holistic and spatial approach that tackles some tough and long-ignored issues and also addresses old issues in new ways. The revised action-oriented strategy provides guidelines and focal points for enhancing the effectiveness of the World Bank's rural development efforts.

This collection of cutting-edge articles focuses on recent shifts in thinking about land rights, particularly as they relate to women. Leading feminist scholars in the field provide searching treatment of the long-neglected subject of gender and access to land.

The articles are introduced and contextualized by Shahra Razavi. She weaves together the findings and arguments of contributions which look at the implications of the current neoliberal policy agenda for a number of specific regions. Topics covered range from policy discussions about women's land rights in sub-Saharan Africa to land tenure reforms and women's interests in Tanzania; and from new prospects with respect to gender and land rights in India, to agrarian reform to rural social movements and women's land rights in Brazil.

This is a timely collection, in which careful empirical analysis is presented with analytical power and clarity. The papers are provocative, refreshingly original and richly informative.

From 1900 to 1960, the introduction and development of four so-called urbanizing technologies-the telephone, automobile, radio, and electric light and power-transformed the rural United States. But did these new technologies revolutionize rural life in the ways modernizers predicted? And how exactly-and with what levels of resistance and acceptance-did this change take place? In "Consumers in the Country" Ronald R. Kline, avoiding the trap of technological determinism, explores the changing relationships among the Country Life professionals, government agencies, sales people, and others who promoted these technologies and the farm families who largely succeeded in adapting them to rural culture.

In "Cultivating California," David Vaught shows how fruit and nut growers were neither industrialists nor agrarians. From the very outset, he explains, these "horticulturists" saw themselves as guardians of California's unique culture-raising crops for market while self-consciously building healthy and prosperous communities. Every grower was not, in fact, like every other, Vaught argues, whether one examines their labor systems, recruiting methods, harvest needs, marketing strategies, farm size, or their relationships with their communities, unions, and the state. The hard work, foresight, and devotion to detail required to nurture an orchard or vineyard made them, they insisted, cultivators of a better society. Over time, however, labor relations, market imperatives, and changing political conditions undermined the growers' horticultural ideal.

For twenty-five years, Kathryn S. March has collected the life stories of the women of a Buddhist Tamang farming community in Nepal. In If Each Comes Halfway, she shows the process by which she and Tamang women reached across their cultural differences to find common ground. March allows the women's own words to paint a vivid portrait of their highland home. Because Tamang women frequently told their stories by singing poetic songs in the middle of their conversations with March, each book includes a CD of traditional songs not recorded elsewhere. Striking photographs of the Tamang people accent the book's written accounts and the CD's musical examples. In conversation and song, the Tamang open their sem their "hearts-and-minds" as they address a broad range of topics: life in extended households, women's property issues, wage employment and out-migration, sexism, and troubled relations with other ethnic groups. Young women reflect on uncertainties. Middle-aged women discuss obligations. Older women speak poignantly, and bluntly, about weariness and waiting to die. The goal of March's approach to ethnography is to place Tamang women in control of how their stories are told and allow an unusually intimate glimpse into their world."

Southern Seed, Northern Soil captures the exceptional history of the Beech and Roberts settlements, two African-American and mixed-race farming communities on the Indiana frontier in the 1830s. Stephen Vincent analyzes the founders backgrounds as a distinctive free people of color from the Old South. He traces the migration that culminated in the founding of the two communities. He follows the settlements transformations through the pioneer and Civil War eras, and their gradual transition to commercial farming in the late 19th century. The Beech and Roberts story is at once part of and distinct from mainstream African-American history. Like other black Americans, the residents of these two communities had to struggle constantly to achieve freedom, autonomy, and economic well-being, yet they were able to defy the odds and thrive over several generations. Building on their advantages as late-18th-century landowners, they took root on the frontier and ultimately paved the way for their descendants climb into the urban middle class."

Over a period of ten years, William Sax studied the inhabitants of the former kingdom of Garhwal, located in north India. These people are deeply devoted to the great Indian national epic, the Mahabharata. Sax attended and participated in dozens of performances of the pandav lila - a ritual reenactment of scenes from the Mahabharata in dance - and observed in context in village life. He also discovered and documented a bizarre and fascinating cult whose existence was only previously rumoured, which worships and exalts the villains of the epic and reviles the usual heroes. This book not only opens a window on a fascinating (and threatened) aspect of rural Indian life and Hinduism as a living religion, but provides an accessible introduction to the Mahabharata itself, including lively translations of many songs and poems based on the epic, and a prologue containing a concise and readable summary of the entire story.

The Catholic Rural Life Movement of the mid-twentieth century worked to safeguard the future of both farming and faith as its "motor missions" traveled to the heartland, adapting liturgical traditions to rural conditions. The Catholic missionaries joined with other groups, both religious and secular, to improve American farming practices after the "dust bowl" crisis. Simultaneously responding to a perceived crisis of belief, they worked to save the faith from modernist doctrines and to gain rural converts to a religious practice that was associated mainly with urban immigrants. "Saving the Heartland" explores the process by which rural Catholicism finally won recognition as a religious subculture in need of its own devotions, celebrations, and publications.