Cultures of the Countryside examines the relationship between the museum and the micro-cultures of the countryside. Offering an exploration of museums and heritage projects in the UK that have attempted to introduce new ways of engagement between localities, objects, and people, this book considers how museums, heritage initiatives, and art projects have dealt with pressing local and global socio-political issues relating to the environment and rural life, including changing demographics and rural practices, local environmental concerns, and global climate activism. Providing a thorough examination of the representation of competing histories, visions and politics, Sekules asks whether museums and heritage projects can engage actively in shaping cultures, as well as reflecting them. At the core of the analysis is an examination of the findings from a project in the UK's East Anglia, 'The Culture of the Countryside', from which emerged themes closely bound to different countryside landscapes, peoples and heritage. Aimed at practitioners and students alike, Cultures of the Countryside provides a unique insight into the roles of the museum and heritage projects in rural and environmental issues in the recent past, whilst also offering perspectives and recommendations for the future.

After Ross Benes left Nebraska for New York, he witnessed his polite home state become synonymous with 'Trump country.' Long dismissed as 'flyover' land, the area where he was born and raised suddenly became the subject of TV features and frequent opinion columns. With the rural-urban divide overtaking the national conversation, Benes knew what he had to do: go home. In Rural Rebellion, Benes explores Nebraska's shifting political landscape to better understand what's plaguing America. He clarifies how Nebraska defies red-state stereotypes while offering readers insights into how a frontier state with a tradition of nonpartisanship succumbed to the hardened right. Extensive interviews with US senators, representatives, governors, state lawmakers, and other power brokers illustrate how local disputes over health-care coverage and education funding became microcosms for our current national crisis. Rural Rebellion is also the story of one man coming to terms with both his past and present. Benes writes about the dissonance of moving from the most rural and conservative region of the country to its most liberal and urban centers as they grow further apart at a critical moment in history. He seeks to bridge America's current political divides by contrasting the conservative values he learned growing up in a town of three hundred with those of his liberal acquaintances in New York City, where he now lives. At a time when social and political differences are too often portrayed in stark binary terms, and people in the Trump-supporting heartland are depicted in reductive, one-dimensional ways, Benes tells real-life stories to add depth and nuance to our understanding of rural Americans' attitudes about abortion, immigration, big government, and other contentious issues. His argument and conclusion are simple but powerful: that Americans in disparate places would be less hostile to one another if they just knew each other a little better. Part memoir, journalism, and social science, Rural Rebellion is a book for our times.

Social, economic, and technological changes disrupt many Indigenous, ethnic, and rural communities even when offering progress. Under these conditions, social and psychological dysfunctions are likely to emerge. This book provides insights regarding how to anticipate, prevent, and, when necessary, provide mitigation strategies to communities and individuals who suffer as a result. This book, the first of its kind, provides an overview of strategic and policy issues involving the relationship between change and dysfunction, enabling the reader to more effectively deal with potentially hurtful influences in proactive, equitable, and culturally sensitive ways. After providing a theoretical overview, methods for anticipating the hurtful impacts of change are discussed, along with techniques for mitigating its negative effects upon communities and individuals. Learning objectives and discussion questions are included with each chapter, and the book can serve as a text for courses on indigenous economic development, Native studies, culturally appropriate business, and culturally competent therapy. It can also be used as a professional handbook for practitioners working with communities affected by these issues.

This book is a compilation of papers examining women's role in rural production systems in India. The book is divided into six sections; the first section explores conceptual, theoretical, and methodological issues with respect to understanding women's work. The second, third, and fourth sections present evidence from primary and secondary data on women's work in agriculture and nonagricultural activities, and include a discussion of the nature of work among Dalit and Adivasi women. The fifth and sixth sections provide a brief historical perspective of rural women's employment in the colonial period and analyze women's access to banking.

An historian of the Annales school, Lucette Valensi blends the methods of history and anthropology to portray the Tunisian countryside in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which has been previously little-studied. She analyses the nomadic tribes and the sedentary peasants, discussing their social organisation, their economic activity, and their cultural practices. She also explores the changes that affected both the peasantry and the Tunisian state in the nineteenth century, showing how the country's incorporation into the capitalist world economy led to social unrest, and eventually to the general rebellion of 1864 that precipitated the establishment of a French protectorate, thus placing Tunisia in a role of dependence and heralding underdevelopment.

Originally published in 1970, this is a collection of studies of indigenous economies in Ghana and Nigeria by an author with an unusual interdisciplinary approach. In the opening section it is contended that most economists interested in underdeveloped countries have neglected the detailed study of economic organization and mechanism in the field, especially in rural areas, and that, as a result, there has been little testing of many conventional implicit assumptions that happen to be invalid. The subsequent chapters of the book are both a vigorous corrective to socio-economic generalisations based on too little data and a demonstration of the possibilities of a research method that owes more to the example of social anthropologists than to that of economists. The sophistication of the picture of certain sectors of rural life that emerges from the whole book will surprise many readers.

Most Russian peasants in the mid-1920s held their land as members of a commune (or mir), the old Russian form of land-holding. The revolution had brought a revival in the fortunes of the institution. This was not a welcome development to the Bolsheviks and the Soviet government unsuccessfully attempted to supplant the commune as the focus of rural affairs, by instituting the rural Soviets. The debate on land-holding in the mid-twenties bore fruit only in encouraging peasants to modify the worst inefficiencies of strip farming.

Mining the future is about a resilient people and their visionary leadership - a remarkable story of how Bafokeng people acquired and held onto their land and heritage through 150 years of political upheaval in South Africa. It also tells the story of what the Royal Bafokeng Nation is doing with the platinum wealth it currently enjoys, including serving as the only rural community ever to host world cup soccer in the history of FIFA. This illustrated volume features the vivid voices of members of the Bafokeng community, both past and present, as well as those who played a major role in shaping Bafokeng society, including Paul Kruger, Hans Merensky, and Christoph Penzhorn from the German Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission. The history and lineage of the 40 recorded Bafokeng dikgosi (kings) is presented, leading up to the present day leader of the Royal Bafokeng Nation, Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi. Culture, economic development, environmental management, and generational change are some of the themes addressed in the title, which is written for a general audience.

Rural Development is a textbook that critically examines economic, social and cultural aspects of rural development efforts both in the global north and in the global south. By consistently using examples from the north and the south the book highlights similarities of processes as well as differences in contexts. The authors' knowledge of Afghanistan and Sweden respectively creates a core for the discussions which are complemented with a wide range of other empirical examples. Rural Development is divided into nine chapters, each with a thematic focus, ranging from concepts and theories through rural livelihoods and natural resources to discussions on policy and processes of change. The book sees rural development as a multi-level, multi-actor and multi-faceted subject area that needs multidisciplinary perspectives both to support it and to analyse it. Throughout the book examples of rural development interventions are discussed using analytical concepts such as power, discourse, consequences and context to grasp rural development as practices that are more than what is presented in policy documents. The book is written in a way that makes it accessible for undergraduates while at the same time caters for the kind of deeper reading used by master students and Ph.D.'s. Every chapter is linked to discussion questions as well as suggested further readings and useful websites.

Examines the fundamental issue of how citizens get government officials to provide them with the roads, schools, and other public services they need by studying communities in rural China. In authoritarian and transitional systems, formal institutions for holding government officials accountable are often weak. The state often lacks sufficient resources to monitor its officials closely, and citizens are limited in their power to elect officials they believe will perform well and to remove them when they do not. The answer, Lily L. Tsai found, lies in a community's social institutions. Even when formal democratic and bureaucratic institutions of accountability are weak, government officials can still be subject to informal rules and norms created by community solidary groups that have earned high moral standing in the community.

In this exploration of the meaning of home, Annie Zaidi reflects on the places in India from which she derives her sense of identity. She looks back on the now renamed city of her birth and the impossibility of belonging in the industrial township where she grew up. From her ancestral village, in a region notorious for its gangsters, to the mega-city where she now lives, Zaidi provides a nuanced perspective on forging a sense of belonging as a minority and a migrant in places where other communities consider you an outsider, and of the fragility of home left behind and changed beyond recognition. Zaidi is the 2019/ 2020 winner of the Nine Dots Prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary social issues. This title is also available as Open Access.

Seasonality is a severe constraint to sustainable rural livelihoods and a driver of poverty and hunger, particularly in the tropics. Many poor people in developing countries are ill equipped to cope with seasonal variations which can lead to drought or flood and consequences for agriculture, employment, food supply and the spread of disease. The subject has assumed increasing importance as climate change and other forms of development disrupt established seasonal patterns and variations. This book is the first systematic study of seasonality for over twenty years, and it aims to revive academic interest and policy awareness of this crucial but neglected issue. Thematic chapters explore recent shifts with profound implications for seasonality, including climate change, HIV/AIDS, and social protection. Case study chapters explore seasonal dimensions of livelihoods in Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi), Asia (Bangladesh, China, India), and Latin America (Peru). Others assess policy responses to adverse seasonality, for example through irrigation, migration and seasonally-sensitive education. The book also includes innovative tools for monitoring seasonality, which should enable more appropriate responses.

Thousands of surveys on rural livelihoods in developing countries are being done every year. Unfortunately, many suffer from weaknesses in methods and problems in implementation. Quantifying households' dependence on multiple environmental resources (forests, bush, grasslands and rivers) is particularly difficult and often simply ignored in the surveys. The results therefore do not reflect rural realities. In particular, 'the hidden harvest' from natural resources is generally too important to livelihoods for development research, policies and practice to ignore. Fieldwork using state-of-the-art methods, and in particular well-designed household questionnaires, thus becomes an imperative to adequately capture key dimensions of rural welfare. This book describes how to do a better job when designing and implementing household and village surveys for quantitative assessment of rural livelihoods in developing countries. It covers the entire research process from planning to sharing research results. It draws on the experiences from a large global-comparative project, the Poverty Environment Network (PEN), to develop more robust and validated methods, enriched by numerous practical examples from the field. The book will provide an invaluable guide to methods and a practical handbook for students and professionals.

Rural Europe is a highly developed tourism region, representing advanced tourism experience and supposed modern approaches to this industry. That said, it remains highly sensitive and fragile in terms of environmental, social, economic and cultural impacts. This volume focuses on rural Europe as a fascinating example of how tourism development impacts on the communities and the environment of rural regions and offers insights into how long term sustainability could be achieved in this specific region and correspondingly in other rural parts of the world.

Sustainable Tourism in Rural Europe contains contributions from leading international scholars that review and analyse the concept and practice of sustainable tourism in this region through a multidisciplinary approach that embodies the view that sustainable tourism warrants a holistic approach in terms of its impacts and development potential. Divided into three sections: Key Themes and Issues; The State and Development; The Local Community and Development, this book addresses contentious and vital issues through theory, detailed research and case studies, offering real world approaches to sustainable development, showing problems including local politics which challenge abstract models. It introduces cutting edge research dealing with contemporary developments throughout Europe and consequential lessons/implications for other rural parts of the world.

This volume will be of interest to students, researchers and academics in the areas of Tourism, Geography and Environmental Studies.

The economic and political rise of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and Middle-Income Countries (MICs) have important implications for global agrarian transformation.These emerging economies are undergoing profound changes as key sites of the production, circulation, and consumption of agricultural commodities; hosts to abundant cheap labour and natural resources; and home to growing numbers of both poor but also, increasingly, affluent consumers. Separately and together these countries are shaping international development agendas both as partners in and potential alternatives to the development paradigms promoted by the established hubs of global capital in the North Atlantic and by dominant international financial institutions. Collectively, the chapters in this book show the significance of BRICS countries in reshaping agro-food systems at the national and regional level as well as their global significance. As they export their own farming and production systems across different contexts, though, the outcomes are contingent and success is not assured. At the same time, BRICS may represent a continuation rather than an alternative to the development paradigms of the Global North. The chapters were originally published in a special issue of Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal.

Agrarian transformations within and across countries have been significantly and dynamically altered during the past few decades compared to previous eras, provoking a variety of reactions from rural poor communities worldwide. The recent convergence of various crises - financial, food, energy and environmental - has put the nexus between 'rural development' and 'development in general' back onto the center stage of theoretical, policy and political agendas in the world today. Confronting these issues will require (re)engaging with critical theories, taking politics seriously, and utilizing rigorous and appropriate research methodologies. These are the common messages and implications of the various contributions to this collection in the context of a scholarship that is critical in two senses: questioning prescriptions from mainstream perspectives and interrogating popular conventions in radical thinking.

This book focuses on key perspectives, frameworks and methodologies in agrarian change and peasant studies. The contributors are leading scholars in the field of rural development studies: Henry Bernstein, Terence J. Byres, Saturnino M. Borras Jr, Marc Edelman, Cristobal Kay, Benedict Kerkvliet, Philip McMichael, Shahra Razavi, Ian Scoones and Teodor Shanin.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies.

The individualism of the French peasantry during the nineteenth century has frequently been asserted as one of its most striking characteristics. In this 1999 book, Alan Baker challenges this orthodox view and demonstrates the extent to which peasants continued with traditional, and developed new, forms of collective action. He examines representations of the peasantry and discusses the discourse of fraternity in nineteenth-century France in general before considering specifically the historical development, geographical diffusion and changing functions of fraternal voluntary associations in Loir-et-Cher between 1815 and 1914. Alan Baker focuses principally upon associations aimed at reducing risk and uncertainty and upon associations intended to provide agricultural protection. A wide range of new voluntary associations were established in Loir-et-Cher - and indeed throughout rural France - during the nineteenth century. Their historical geography throws new light upon the sociability, upon the changing mentalites, of French peasants, and upon the role of fraternal associations in their struggle for survival.

In the 1970s, John Seymour's book, The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency was a huge, international best-seller, inspiring a new generation to "down-shift" to a new way of life. The book has remained in print ever since. But years earlier, Seymour had written and published The Fat of the Land, telling of how he and his family settled in Suffolk and began a life entirely separate from the modern world. This was a seminal book, published the year before Silent Spring, and offers a personal, practical and optimistic vision of a less-mechanized and less polluting world, one that works in harmony with nature, rather than against it. He goes on to document their life and struggles on the land in chapters on cows, pigs, vegetables and wild food in charming prose. More than fifty years on, The Fat of the Land remains an important and inspiring book, one which retains its power to make us think carefully about our own lives. This new edition comes complete with Sally Seymour's original illustrations, a foreword by Anne Seymour and a new introduction by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

This 1996 book, based upon a vast range of documentary and secondary sources, shatters the disproven but persistent myth of the closed immobile village in the early modern period. It demonstrates that even in traditionalist Castile, pre-industrial village society was highly dynamic, with continuous inter-village, inter-regional, and rural-urban migration. The book is rich in human detail, with many vignettes of everyday life. Professor Vassberg examines such topics as fairs and markets, the transportation infrastructure, rural artisans and craftsmen, relations with the state, and life-cycle service. The approach is interdisciplinary, and pays special attention to how rural families dealt with economic and social problems. The rural Castile that emerges is a complex society that defies easy generalizations, but one which is unquestionably part of the general European reality.

A richly detailed history of Ashdown Forest -- home of Winnie-the-Pooh. The seeming tranquility of many rural landscapes can hide a combative history. This biography of one such landscape, Ashdown Forest in the Weald of Sussex, exemplifies the evolving conflicts that have taken place over many centuries. Wealth and poverty, power and exclusion, have all characterised this landscape through the ages. When a thirteenth-century boundary was erected to form a hunting park it was imposed upon a landscape which for centuries had provided sustenance for peasant families, for swine herds, for itinerant groups, all of whom had developed grazing and collecting rights and customary ties with the area. Conflict between manorial lords and commoners, "turbulent foresters", was born, and the evolution of this conflict over succeeding centuries is the recurring motif of this book. We move through the exploitation of iron ore and timber during the Tudor period, learn of the real threats of enclosure, of military occupation, to be followed by a landscape aesthetic bringing wealthy incomers, attracted by scenery easily reachable from London by train. All sides felt that the Forest was theirs by right. Victorian law-suits, twentieth-century protective legislation and a growing environmental consciousness have all left their mark. And the struggle for Ashdown continues amid ongoing development pressures. This book demonstrates that multi-layered conflict has been a characteristic feature of what still miraculously remains the largest area of internationally recognised heath in the South-East of England.

Although one of the acknowledged achievements of the British Raj was the extensive construction of irrigation works, their effects have to date been little studied by historians. In this book Dr Stone has undertaken the first full-scale study of the qualitative and quantitative effects on local economics of these irrigation schemes. Focusing upon the region of western Uttar Pradesh in the nineteenth century, the author examines in detail the response of the peasant economy to this important and pervasive form of technological change. In particular, he is concerned with the impact on crop choices, on the organisation and techniques of production, on protection from famine and on the ecological balance, on social and economic relations, and on differential economic performance. An integral part of his study is his examination of the technical features and administration of the systems.

In this ethnographic study of the rural idyll, Broadlands explores rurality and the pace of rural life. In sharp contrast to the urban analytical emphasis upon speed, it gives careful thought to stasis, as rural places offer everyday opportunities for very different social situations and behavioural interactions. Based on new and extensive RCUK-funded primary research, Sam Hillyard generates an original, rigorous and thoughtful understanding of everyday rural life in the 21st century. Taking the principles of dramaturgy and rural studies scholarship, Broadlands provides a toolkit to make sense of rural change. It uses ethnography to enhance interactionist dramaturgy via cross-references with new theoretical orientations that emphasise the temporal dynamics of space in a 'knowing capitalism'. Where early dramaturgy stressed formal organisations in shaping roles and identity, Broadlands expands these concepts to include informal and transient organisations and associations. Ultimately, the book advances a new model for grasping the complexity of the rural. For researchers and students ofrural and urban sociology, this is an engaging text that reframes our understanding of rurality.

Witty, bawdy, and vicious, Yusuf al-Shirbini's Brains Confounded pits the "coarse" rural masses against the "refined" urban population. In Volume One, al-Shirbini describes the three rural "types"-peasant cultivator, village man-of-religion, and rural dervish-offering anecdotes testifying to the ignorance, dirtiness, and criminality of each. In Volume Two, he presents a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of his day, with a 47-line poem supposedly written by a peasant named Abu Shaduf, who charts the rise and fall of his fortunes. Wielding the scholarly tools of elite literature, al-Shirbini responds to the poem with derision and ridicule, dotting his satire with digressions into love, food, and flatulence. Volume Two of Brains Confounded is followed by Risible Rhymes, a concise text that includes a comic disquisition on "rural" verse, mocking the pretensions of uneducated poets from Egypt's countryside. Risible Rhymes also examines various kinds of puzzle poems, which were another popular genre of the day, and presents a debate between scholars over a line of verse by the fourth/tenth-century poet al-Mutanabbi. Together, Brains Confounded and Risible Rhymes offer intriguing insight into the intellectual concerns of Ottoman Egypt, showcasing the intense preoccupation with wordplay, grammar, and stylistics and shedding light on the literature of the era. An English-only edition.

Witty, bawdy, and vicious, Yusuf al-Shirbini's Brains Confounded pits the "coarse" rural masses against the "refined" urban population. In Volume One, al-Shirbini describes the three rural "types"-peasant cultivator, village man-of-religion, and rural dervish-offering anecdotes testifying to the ignorance, dirtiness, and criminality of each. In Volume Two, he presents a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of his day, with a 47-line poem supposedly written by a peasant named Abu Shaduf, who charts the rise and fall of his fortunes. Wielding the scholarly tools of elite literature, al-Shirbini responds to the poem with derision and ridicule, dotting his satire with digressions into love, food, and flatulence. Volume Two of Brains Confounded is followed by Risible Rhymes, a concise text that includes a comic disquisition on "rural" verse, mocking the pretensions of uneducated poets from Egypt's countryside. Risible Rhymes also examines various kinds of puzzle poems, which were another popular genre of the day, and presents a debate between scholars over a line of verse by the fourth/tenth-century poet al-Mutanabbi. Together, Brains Confounded and Risible Rhymes offer intriguing insight into the intellectual concerns of Ottoman Egypt, showcasing the intense preoccupation with wordplay, grammar, and stylistics and shedding light on the literature of the era. An English-only edition.

Written by leading academics and practitioners in the field, Smart Villages in the EU and Beyond offers a detailed insight into issues and developments that shape the debate on smart villages, together with concepts, developments and policymaking initiatives including the EU Action for Smart Villages. This book derives from the realization that the implications of the increasing depopulation of rural areas across the EU is a pending disaster. This edited collection establishes a framework for action today, which will lead to sustainable revitalization of rural areas tomorrow. Using country-specific case studies, the chapters examine how integrated and ICT-conscious strategies and policy actions focused on wellbeing, sustainability and solidarity could provide a long-term solution in the revitalization of villages across the EU and elsewhere. Best practices pertinent to precision farming, energy diversification, tourism, entrepreneurship are discussed in detail. As an in-depth exploration of the Smart Village on a multinational scale, this book will serve as an indispensable resource for students, researchers and policy leaders in the fields of politics, strategic management and urban and rural studies.