Smallholders and the Non-Farm Transition in Latin America explores the drivers of agricultural displacement in Latin America and argues that government support is essential to help small farmers gain the skills, financial capital, and opportunities needed to transition to a profitable alternative in the non-farm sector.

This book explores learning outcomes for low-income rural and township youth at five South African universities. The book is framed as a contribution to southern and Africa-centred scholarship, adapting Amartya Sen’s capability approach and a framework of key concepts: capabilities, functionings, context, conversion factors, poverty and agency to investigate opportunities and obstacles to achieved student outcomes. This approach allows a reimagining of ‘inclusive learning outcomes’ to encompass the multi-dimensional value of a university education and a plurality of valued cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes for students from low-income backgrounds whose experiences are strongly shaped by hardship.

Based on capability theorising and student voices, the book proposes for policy and practice a set of contextual higher education capability domains and corresponding functionings orientated to more justice and more equality for each person to have the opportunities to be and to do what they have reason to value. The book concludes that sufficient material resources are necessary to get into university and flourish while there; the benefits of a university education should be rich and multi-dimensional so that they can result in functionings in all areas of life as well as work and future study; the inequalities and exclusion of the labour market and pathways to further study must be addressed by wider economic and social policies for ‘inclusive learning outcomes’ to be meaningful; and that universities ought to be doing more to enable black working-class students to participate and succeed.

Low-Income Students, Human Development and Higher Education in South Africa makes an original contribution to capabilitarian scholarship: conceptually in theorising a South-based multi-dimensional student well-being higher education matrix and a rich reconceptualisation of learning outcomes, as well as empirically by conducting rigorous, longitudinal in-depth mixed-methods research on students’ lives and experiences in higher education in South Africa. The audience for the book includes higher education researchers, international capabilitarian scholars, practitioners and policy-makers.

This interdisciplinary study applies human rights theory to the problems of rural poverty in the Third World. Considering the interdependence of minimal food and health security with minimal assurance of basic freedoms, political scientist Alan G. Smith traces the linkage to the need of the food-insecure to seek "clientelistic dependencies" on better-off neighbors--relationships that often operate to restrict freedom of choice. In contrast to conventional rural development aid, which can introduce new client dependency if pursued alone, Smith stresses the need to find other forms of aid that would provide the option of assured minimal survival while avoiding the constraints imposed by dependency. Arguing for bolstering bottom-up human rights momentum, he suggests the transfer of appropriate tools into the hands of the target group. Recipients would make use of them to enhance autonomous food-crop production, thereby making client dependency a matter of choice rather than necessity. Smith illustrates the Third World predicament of food insecurity leading to infringement of rights by drawing together empirical evidence from Bangladesh, Botswana, and Tanzania. He further argues that respect for human rights involves a duty on the part of advantaged nations to address the Third World predicament with practical measures fully consistent with human rights, and for each of these three country cases, Smith recommends direct locally specific minimalist aid. His model, its practical illustration, and recommendations should be valuable to academics and students in the fields of rural sociology, anthropology, and political science--especially those focusing on human rights, poverty, and Third Worlddevelopment--as well as bureaucrats and consultants in the development aid field.

A wave of innovation driven by the convergence of digital and molecular technologies is transforming food production and ways of eating in the US, Western Europe and Australasia. This book explores a range of contemporary agri-food issues, such as the digitalisation of farm production, aka Precision Agriculture, farmer independence, gene editing, alternative proteins and the rise of app-based home food deliveries. This is the first book to provide a systemic analysis of technological innovation and its socio-economic consequences in modern food systems, including the ‘hollowing out’ of rural communities and pronounced industrial concentration. The food system is under growing public pressure to respond to global climate change, but this book finds little evidence of transition to sustainable low-carbon trajectories.

During the past decade, life in post-socialist states has been fraught with instability and conflict. This book focuses on changing rural-urban relations - and growing divisions between them - in the context of the reforms. Contributions to this volume explore responses to capitalist-oriented policies and reasons for rural disenfranchisement. The work takes an ethnographic approach to exploring how 'global' processes engage with local, rural concerns in the post-socialist world.

In Serowe:Village of the Rain Wind, Bessie Head blends her skills as a novelist with the actual words of nearly one hundred inhabitants of a Botswanan village called Serowe to present a clear picture of the village community and its history. Serowe is one of the best-known villages in Africa, the capital of the people ruled by the Khamas, of whom Tshekedi and Seretse are the most famous. This collection of writings also tells of a remarkable transition between the setting up and the dismantling of white colonialism in Botswana.

Currently, the research community lacks the capacity to provide accurate, up-to-date information about conditions and trends in rural areas. Bringing together some of the best known rural development researchers, this volume begins to build an information base that can serve as a foundation for rural development policy. It deals with four components of development--education, entrepreneurship, physical infrastructure, and social infrastructure. The opening chapters address two aspects of each component--the use of the component to achieve rural development and measuring the impact of its use. The volume then applies specific analytic methods of measuring impact to each component.

The opening chapters address two aspects of each component--the concept of using that component to achieve rural development and the concept of measuring its impact. The volume then examines analytic methods of measuring impact. Following an overview of analytic methods, chapters apply a different analytic technique to each of the components. The techniques considered include econometric models, computable general equilibrium models, input-output analysis, and the case-study method.

Sociological investigation of modernity, society and everyday life often centre on a predominately urban experience. The research in this book focuses on two areas of growing importance: masculinity as a socially-constructed gender, and the impact of place or space on identity, but considers young men living in areas that are not densely populated--rural or agricultural areas, coastal areas, lowly populated or un-developed areas--and how the characteristics of these places have impacted on their relationships, activities and identities. Examining both representations in film, print and media and ethnographic research methods, the reader is provided with evidence "straight from the horses mouth" and may reflect on the differences between popular representation and imagination and the everyday reality of existing on the physical margins of modern life.

This book presents an extensive study on India's agricultural and nonfarm sectors, examining prices, investments and policies, and suggesting various essential technological changes. It offers appropriate financial, institutional, and policy frameworks that can help to sustain agricultural growth and augment farmers' incomes across geographical locations. Further, it addresses agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction through multiple pathways that also tackle varied geographical locations, making it a highly useful guide to understanding the changing contours in agriculture and rural areas across the country and among rural households with various social and economic backgrounds.

Teaching is the most popular career choice of Mexican women who pursue advanced education, and the majority of teachers in Mexico are women. Mexican maestras (women teachers) became a ubiquitous presence in the countryside following the Mexican Revolution and continue to make valuable contributions to their students. In the mountainous and largely rural state of Oaxaca, courageous maestras may spend years living away from their homes and families while teaching in isolated communities. These dedicated and courageous maestras pursued teaching so that they could defenderme, or take care of themselves and their loved ones. Through analysis of a dozen maestras' narratives, this ethnographic study explores ways that acquisition of schooling and employment has empowered maestras to make informed decisions about marriage, supporting themselves, helping their parents and siblings as needed, and provide education and opportunities to their own children. These maestras have served as role models for their students, relatives and neighbours. Moreover, by "planting seeds" through their labor, have played contributed to cultural changes, including the expansion of women's roles in a patriarchal society.

A collection of 11 papers on issues of representation, power and identity within the British countryside. Researchers in this area have looked beyond the ideas of tradition, power, order and conformity, to groups who feel themselves to be marginalized or excluded from the dominant ideologies in the countryside, such as New Age travellers, road protestors, anti-hunt groups, smallholders and low-income groups. These papers highlight the initial fruits of this research and attempt to reveal other "rural others" - different ideas about the countryside, different uses of rural space, and transgressions of and challenges to notions of mainstream rural lifestyles.

This book explains farmer suicides in India in the backdrop of rural politics as a determining factor. By bringing in politics as a variable the research presented in the book reveals that there are non-farm factors playing critical role in prompting behavioral change amongst the peasantry but haven't received much academic attention. The book argues that the changing nature of public spaces has significantly altered the perception of self in the rural society of India. It presents indicators of this rural change and how the state policy and political parties led political mobilization that changed the character of community relations in the rural areas. The book shows that other possible manifestations of the large-scale behavioral change in the rural areas and increasing rural distress, those are equally serious but haven't received much attention, are rising cases of drug-addiction, agrarian riots, or other forms of collective violence. The increasing number of farmers protests also need to be understood in this context.

This book focuses on the critical area of delivering mental health services in rural settings. It is designed as a practical guide to the technological provision of timely, effective, evidence-based care, helpful to the novice and the experienced practitioner alike. The benefits of this approach are: Improved access to and improved quality of care Technical support for providers and administrators A means of providing missing specialty care An ability to maximize scarce resources and significant flexibility for health service delivery. The book will cover how to adjust therapeutic skills to patients' needs, models of care and the particular technology used. It shows how rudimentary design of workflow can assist in integrating care, and highlights the importance of allowing for cultural needs (both rural geography and ethnic/race). Administrative issues are also addressed (e.g., privacy, reimbursement). The chapters are short and designed for maximum practicality, including learning objectives, cases and summaries emphasizing "what to do and how to do it."

1. There is a market for this book across rural criminology, rural sociology and human geography. 2. Whereas most victimological literature focuses on the urban, this book sheds light on rural victimisation.

Learn the skills you need to work with geriatric populations in rural areas! Gerontological Social Work in Rural Towns and Communities provides a range of intervention and community skills aimed precisely at the needs of rural elders. This book fills a gap in the literature by focusing on the specific practice concerns for social workers assisting older adults in rural areas, including the aging experience, social worker skills, professional functions, working with special populations, and health and long-term care concerns. This valuable resource will benefit social workers, gerontologists, allied health professionals in rural areas, health and human services administrators and managers. Gerontological Social Work in Rural Towns and Communities explores the challenges social workers need to overcome when working with the elder community in rural areas. This book's significance to social workers will only increase as more adults choose to live and grow old away from the cities. Experts in the field suggest strategies to overcome barriers in planning and providing services such as: a longer distance for the elderly to travel to use social service centers a narrower range of available services in the local area increased poverty levels for the elderly a stronger dependency by elderly on family rather than public assistance This book is divided into five sections: Rurality and Agingintroduces the concept of rurality and examines the demographics of aging from a rural perspective Practice Dimensions of Social Work with Rural Eldersincludes clinical practice models, intervention and advocacy techniques, program planning, and marketing approaches Special Populationsgives attention to four special population groups: indigenous elders, African-American older adults, elderly Latinos, and disabled elders Special Issues Pertaining to Rural Elderscovers five essential issues for rural gerontological social workers: health promotion, older workers and retirement preparation, aging in place, specialized housing, and ethical practice Training and Policy Recommendationsfuture training and education recommendations for social workers are explored, as well as service capacity building, the aging network, and the future of long-term care While a variety of theoretical perspectives are explored in Gerontological Social Work in Rural Towns and Communities, the book's empowerment orientation and strengths-based approach will enhance your abilities to improve quality of life for elderly individuals in rural communities. Each chapter contains a comprehensive review of the literature on the subject it addresses, and several chapters include tables and graphs to further establish their revealing empirical findings. An appendix provides additional sources to turn to for more information.

Rural Poverty moves beyond the highly visual forms of poverty characteristic of the city, to explore the nature of poverty in rural spaces of Britain and America. The book sets out the key features of poverty in rural areas and highlights the important processes that act to hide key components of rural poverty.
The book seeks to challenge dominant assumptions about the spatialities of poverty and the nature of rural spaces in Britain and America. Drawing on a broad range of new research material, it provides a comprehensive and critical review of the nature of poverty in rural spaces. Particular attention is given to the scale, profile and causes of poverty in rural areas; the spatial unevenness and local geographies of rural poverty; the experiences of different forms of poverty in rural spaces; and the shifting governance of rural welfare at central and local spatial scales.
Case-study material used in the book has been drawn from a wide range of locations, including Wiltshire, Northumberland and Hampshire in the UK and New England in the US.

All over Southeast Asia, rural communities are in transition to a sustainable status. This book explores how an environmentally fragile upland community in rural Philippines coped with and responded to economic and environmental tensions brought about by a globalized economy and decentralization. This in turn gave rise to local power especially in the management of natural resources.

This book shows the impact of the current economic reform on the income development of peasant households in the People's Republic of China. The research was based on detailed information derived from book-keeping records of the sample households of a few selected regions in central China, the national statistical network, local statistics and chronicles. Moreover, the basic tools of economic analysis were applied to the main problems of Chinese rural economy: marketing and pricing of agricultural input and output goods; structural adjustment; labour productivity and outmigration; income distribution; farmer's decision on investment and consuption. This will lead to a better understanding about current development of China.

A discussion of the process by which some ethnic groups manipulate values, myths, symbols and ceremonials from their traditional culture in order to develop an informal political organisation. This organisation is then used as a weapon in the struggle for power and privilege within contemporary society.

This volume examines the effects of rural depopulation as a process on the structure of family and kinship within one small rural area, analysing the spatial relationships of social and economic change. Part One documents these relationships in the context of family farming; the second part is largely devoted to the effects of demographic change on the structure of family and kinship within one small community.

San material culture has been a subject of study for many researchers and archaeologists but rarely has the documented material been seen through the eyes of the people themselves. San Elders Speak: Ancestral Knowledge of the Kalahari San is the first attempt to document indigenous knowledge through the voices of four San elders from the Kalahari. Over a period of seven days, the authors presented the four San elders, leaders in their community and custodians of ancient knowledge, with of the largest collection of KhoiSan ethnographica collected by Dr Louis Fourie at the beginning of the 19th century.

The San elders rediscovered objects last seen in their childhood and shared stories inspired by their handling of the objects. They provide the correct traditional names and explain how items were made, from what material, who used them, why and when. In a number of instances the elders changed the identification given by Louis Fourie. The knowledge they shared over those several days at Museum Africa in Johannesburg provide an enriching account that links the past and present in San life in illuminating ways. The text is accompanied by a rich visual record of the artefacts and how the San elders portray their use.

Aimed at scholars and students of archaeology, human evolution, anthropology, material culture studies, conservation, museology, and African studies, San Elders Speak is a captivating record into all aspects of this ancient and vanishing world of indigenous knowlegde, and represents a unique heritage for the people of descendant San communities.

There are many facets of housing pressure in rural areas, not all of which are the consequences of economic or market forces. Changing demographics and migration; cultural and societal attitudes towards rural and urban living and property acquisition; land use planning regulatory controls; the difficulty of securing affordable housing provision; a desirability for urban containment and countryside protection; the decline of traditional rural employment; the closure or absence of rural services; community uncertainty and social exclusion; and the constant environmental and social pressure placed on rural areas by tourism and economic development, will each affect the prosperity of rural dwellers and affect rural space and residential property. Many of these issues will be evident in most countries; other countries may experience one set of pressure problems.
Housing in the European Countryside provides an overview of the housing pressures and policy challenges facing Europe, while highlighting critical differences. By drawing on contemporary research work of leading authors in the fields of housing studies, rural geography and planning, the book offers an introduction to housing issues across the European countryside for those who have hitherto been unexposed to such concerns, and who wish to gain some basic insight.
This in-depth review of housing pressure in the European countryside will reveal both the form, nature and variety of problems now being experienced in different parts of Europe, in addition to outlining policy solutions that are being provided by member states and other agencies in meeting the rural housing challenge at this time and in the years ahead.

Contents:
Introduction 1. Peasant Women, the Rural World and the Fasci Femminili 2. Ladies in the Field: Women's Farm Education, the Unione delle Massaie della Campagna and Domus Rustica 3. "An Extraordinary Thing " The National Fascist Federation of Massaie Rurali 4. "Going to the People" The Massaie Rurali Section of the Fasci Femminili 5. "Into Every Farmhouse and Cottage": Propaganda in Print 6. "Women with a Hundred Arms" The Training Programme 7. At the Gates of Rome: the Sant'Alessio Training College 8. A Dopolavoro for Rural Women? Radio, Film and Folklore 9. Recruiting for the Nation. Why did Three Million Join the Massaie Rurali?

This book presents the patient management challenges that rural health centers face, and establishes the criteria for the type of medical imaging services that should be available in such facilities. To make the work of the center's health practitioners more effective and efficient, the book assesses what health conditions may require medical attention in those centers. Information is provided on how to use basic imaging modalities, such as radiography and ultrasound, emphasizing the need for thoughtful service planning, careful equipment and imaging protocol selection, continuous staff training, and the implementation of quality control programs. The book is also a valuable resource for those physicians, medical physicists and service engineers who provide virtual and physical consultations to meet these needs. Rural health centers are established to prevent patients from being forced to travel to distant urban medical facilities. To manage patients properly, rural health centers should be part of regional and more complete systems of medical health care installations in the country on the basis of a referral and counter-referral program. Thus, the centers should have the infrastructure needed to transport patients to urban hospitals when they need more complex health care. The coordination of all the activities is possible only if rural health centers are led by strong and dedicated managers.