In twenty-first-century China, socialist educational traditions have given way to practices that increasingly emphasize the individual. This volume investigates that trend, drawing on Hansen's fieldwork in a rural high school in Zhejiang where students, teachers, and officials of different generations, genders, and social backgrounds form what is essentially a miniature version of Chinese society. Hansen paints a complex picture of the emerging "neosocialist" educational system and shows how individualization of students both challenges and reinforces state control of society.

In this exciting book, Ronald Suleski introduces daily life for the common people of China in the century from 1850 to 1950. They were semi-literate, yet they have left us written accounts of their hopes, fears, and values. They have left us the hand-written manuscripts (chaoben ) now flooding the antiques markets in China. These documents represent a new and heretofore overlooked category of historical sources. Suleski gives a detailed explanation of the interaction of chaoben with the lives of the people. He offers examples of why they were so important to the poor laboring masses: people wanted horoscopes predicting their future, information about the ghosts causing them headaches, a few written words to help them trade in the rural markets, and many more examples are given. The book contains a special appendix giving the first complete translation into English of a chaoben describing the ghosts and goblins that bedeviled the poor working classes.

Rural areas are often viewed as isolated and stagnating areas and urban areas as their opposites. Against such a backdrop, this book seeks to unveil a set of dynamics that view rural areas as 'translocal' in the sense that they are 'changing' and 'interconnected'. Social transformations take place in rural areas as the result of intense exchanges between different people, settings and geographies. Accordingly, rural-urban but also rural-rural interrelations on international and national scales are strongly contributing to rural change. Translocal ruralism is exemplified through the analysis of local and global migratory flows, the activities of rural firms in national and global arenas, the spread of different forms of transportation and dislocation, and the growing information society, which enables rural spaces to be connected to the world and improves new ways of interconnection and sociability practices.

The book is structured into two parts, which intertwine the dynamics of rural spaces. The first part, '"Linking nodes: people and networks connecting places"', is concerned with mobilities such as migration and commuting, and the establishment of national and global networks. The second part, '"International mobilities: a tension between scales'," analyses the dynamics of international migration and mobilities in rural areas.

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England has a housing crisis. We need to build many more new homes to house our growing population, but house building is controversial, particularly when it involves the loss of countryside. Addressing both sides of this critical debate, Shaun Spiers argues that to drive house building on the scale needed, government must strike a contract with civil society: in return for public support and acceptance of the loss of some countryside, it must guarantee high quality, affordable developments, in the right locations. Simply imposing development, as recent governments of all political persuasions have attempted, will not work. Focusing on house building and conservation politics in England, Spiers uses his considerable experience and extensive research to demonstrate why the current model doesn't work, and why there needs to be both planning reform and a more active role for the state, including local government.

Anything is paws-ible with this furry matchmaker! Boutique owner Sophie Daniels certainly isn't looking to adopt a dog the day veterinarian Chase Lewis convinces her to take in Comet. A rambunctious puppy with a broken leg may not be the best choice for a first-time pet owner. And house calls from the handsome doctor - her high school sweetheart who's just moved back to Sweetwater Springs- m ay not be the best choice for her heart either. Chase has come home to help his nephew but finds that he's forgotten just how much he enjoys small-town life. However, sooner or later, he's going to have to face the past and his unresolved feelings for Sophie. Now that Comet needs both their help, Chase is going to let the four-legged matchmaker work his canine magic. Then Chase will prove to Sophie that first love is even better the second time around. Includes the bonus novella A Wedding on Lavender Hill!

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.

This new work from Thomas Gallant provides a highly original analysis of the ancient Greek domestic economy. The nature of their environment together with only rudimentary technology caused the Greek peasants to develop an extensive but delicate web of risk-management strategies. The author details these strategies alongside the key adaptive measures by which the ancient Greeks coped with major fluctuations in food production and supply. As a whole, the book makes a major contribution to the perennial debate about how peasants secure the basic conditions of material subsistence.

This book debates the emergent proprieties of rural and peri-urban South Africa since land and agrarian reforms were initiated after the transition to democracy in 1994. It explores how these reforms have broadened options for the use of land and natural resources. Reform-minded policies in South Africa have assumed that if access to land and other natural resources is less problematic, the use of these resources would be intensified which in turn would alter the structure and dynamic of rural and urban poverty. Reforming Land and Resource Use in South Africa examines in detail, and from several disciplinary perspectives, whether and how this has occurred, and if not, why not. A key argument that this collection pursues is whether land reform has resulted in transformed use of natural (i.e. land, crops, cattle, rangeland, wild products etc.) and other strategic resources (labour, knowledge, institutions, networks etc.), and the value communities and household place on them. The contributions explore a combination of new or alternative meanings of land, including a look beyond crops and cattle per se to include the collection and selling of wild products, as well as a discussion of how land for agriculture has become redefined by land reform beneficiaries as urban land, for settlement and urban employment opportunities, in addition to urban-based agricultural activities. Unlike most analyses and commentaries on land reform, this book pursues an analysis of land reform dynamics at various levels of aggregation. National and regional level analyses of poverty and the ramifications of the property clause are combined with analyses at disaggregate levels such as the land reform project or village. The book will be of interest to both researchers and policy makers with an interest in rural development and social change.

This book charts a remarkable woman’s engagement with deep rural communities in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province – and in particular with the high numbers of brain-damaged children left stranded in huts all over the foothills of the great Drakensberg Mountains. Esther Alm arrived in Bulwer in 1980 and finally left 30 years later. In that time, she won several awards for her work, a recognition that culminated in her Honorary community builder of the decade award in 2000, a distinction she shared with several others, including ex-President Nelson Mandela. Esther began a project called Hlanganani Nogothando which is isiZulu for ‘coming together with love’. The fortunes of HNO, as described here, reveal a woman of courage and tenacity whose motivations emanated from her deep Christian faith, and in particular Christ’s injunction to heal the broken hearted and to set at liberty those who are bruised. Esther’s life and work reveals a deep synthesis between faith and social involvement that constantly enriches those around her.

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.

Rural development is linked crucially with rural structure, though the latter is often difficult to analyse. This book analyses rural classes and the diverse relations between producers in order to understand the relationship between Third World farmers and the international economy, and the significance of this for development and underdevelopment. The author introduces a number of theoretical distinctions and devises a systematic framework which is applied to the analysis of a range of rural producers. The book assesses a number of strategies employed in planned development in the light of their implications for rural social structure, and thus for development in the Third World. This book provides an intensive and original conceptual and practical discussion of the possibilities for development under capitalism, and will be of interest to economists, political scientists and sociologists, as well as those working in development studies.

Modern Europe has rural roots. Even today, as much as 90 per cent of Europe (EU25) consists of rural areas in which half of the population lives. While different rural areas often face different challenges, the shift from agricultural production towards a multifunctional landscape and the increasing value assigned to environmental values affect all rural areas.

The ambition to develop a more diversified rural economy, as well as the bottom-up approach and local focus of many rural policies, require a clear knowledge of the current socio-economic function of towns and town-hinterland linkages. Therefore, the aim of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the current function of towns in Europe in general and in the Netherlands more specifically. By using both micro- and macro-approaches, the multifaceted relationships between town-hinterland and the rural economy are explored at different spatial levels and for different actors, in particular for households, farms and firms.

These reflective essays about Deon's life and experiences in the west of Ireland describe the colourful and varied personalities that the French novelist has come across since he and his family moved there in the mid 1970s. From his friendship with John McGahern and Ulick O'Connor to Tim, the sturdy old postman who prefers his wind-blown country round to retirement in sunny California, Horseman, Pass By! is peopled with fascinating characters and encounters. Taking its title from Yeats, this work is an affectionate portrait of the Irish and a lament for a fading country that has been changed by new wealth and altered values. Deon's Horseman, Pass By! is an elegant memoir about a beautiful landscape and its inhabitants and forms a touching and amusing tribute to his adopted country.

A revealing look at the intersection of wealth, philanthropy, and conservation Billionaire Wilderness takes you inside the exclusive world of the ultra-wealthy, showing how today's richest people are using the natural environment to solve the existential dilemmas they face. Justin Farrell spent five years in Teton County, Wyoming, the richest county in the United States, and a community where income inequality is the worst in the nation. He conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews, gaining unprecedented access to tech CEOs, Wall Street financiers, oil magnates, and other prominent figures in business and politics. He also talked with the rural poor who live among the ultra-wealthy and often work for them. The result is a penetrating account of the far-reaching consequences of the massive accrual of wealth, and an eye-opening and sometimes troubling portrait of a changing American West where romanticizing rural poverty and conserving nature can be lucrative-socially as well as financially. Weaving unforgettable storytelling with thought-provoking analysis, Billionaire Wilderness reveals how the ultra-wealthy are buying up the land and leveraging one of the most pristine ecosystems in the world to climb even higher on the socioeconomic ladder. The affluent of Teton County are people burdened by stigmas, guilt, and status anxiety-and they appropriate nature and rural people to create more virtuous and deserving versions of themselves. Incisive and compelling, Billionaire Wilderness reveals the hidden connections between wealth concentration and the environment, two of the most pressing and contentious issues of our time.

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.

Geir Honneland discusses some of the big questions in social science: What is identity? What is the role of identity and narrative in the study of international relations? The location is the Kola Peninsula, the most heavily militarized area of the world during the Cold War, now set to become Europe's next big oil playground.

This book examines the transformations of rural society and economy in the UK and US during the last half-century, and explores the significance of these trends and changes for community sustainability, quality of life and the environment. While both the UK and US are highly urbanised, rural people and communities continue to contribute to national identity, economic development and social solidarity, as well as to environmental quality. Contributors explore the degree to which rural people exhibit agency and autonomy, rather than being merely passive in the face of exogenous forces of change in a globalised world. They also illuminate very different policy approaches to rural policy in two advanced capitalist societies often thought to be similar, and show how fundamental differences in rural policy approaches of the US and the UK are based on different social ideologies and values that shape policies relating to rural areas. This book will help to stimulate transatlantic dialogue on rural scholarship and rural policy analysis, while also contributing to theory and policy development. It will be of interest to researchers, students and everyone involved in the policy and practice of rural development.

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.

Table of Contents

Foreword Robert Chambers 1. Seasonality, rural livelihoods and development: Editorial introduction Stephen Devereux, Rachel Sabates-Wheeler, Richard Longhurst Section 1 Seasonal lives A rainy day Dee Jupp 2. What happened to the seasons? Farmers’ perceptions and meteorological observations of changing seasonality John Magrath, Steve Jennings 3. Month of birth and children’s health in India Michael Lokshin, Sergiy Radyakin 4. Seasonal hunger, famine and the dynamics of HIV in Malawi Michael Loevinsohn 5. Seasonal poverty: Integrated, overlooked and therefore opportunity Robert Chambers Section 2 Seasonal livelihoods Dreading the monsoon Anirudh Krishna 6. Investigating seasonality and poverty: The 2004/05 Malawi Integrated Household Survey Ephraim W. Chirwa, Andrew Dorward, Marcella Vigneri 7. The stabilizing effect of irrigation on seasonal expenditure: Evidence from rural Andhra Pradesh Edoardo Masset 8. Seasonal dimensions of household wellbeing and labour migration in rural southern China Shijun Ding, Haitao Wu, Yuping Chen 9. Off-farm work in the Peruvian Altiplano: Seasonal and geographic considerations for agricultural and development policies Cecilia Turin, Corinne Valdivia Section 3 Seasonal awareness Ode to the Seasons conference (1978) Robert Chambers Sonnet for the Seasonality Revisited conference (2009) Robert Chambers 10. Food affordability: Dealing with seasonal variation of purchasing power Helene Berton, Jennie Hilton, Anna Taylor 11. Modelling seasonality in household income using the Household Economy Approach Charles Rethman 12. Re-tooling for seasonality: Seasonally sensitive disaster risk assessment in Ethiopia Tanya Boudreau, Mark Lawrence 13. Water-bound geographies of seasonality: Investigating seasonality, water and wealth in Ethiopia through the Water Economy for Livelihoods (WELS) approach Lorraine Coulter, Zemede Abeba, Seifu Kebede, Eva Ludi, Belay Zeleke Section 4 Seasonal policies Stabilising food prices in the hungry season Stephen Devereux 14. How planning for seasonality can reduce extreme poverty: Lessons from the Chars Livelihoods Programme (2004–2010), Bangladesh Kate Conroy, Catherine Vignon 15. Conceptualizing seasonal financial market failures in rural household models Andrew Dorward 16. Seasonality and access to education in sub-Saharan Africa Sierd Hadley 17. From seasonal lives towards a-seasonal living: Building seasonality into risk management response Rachel Sabates-Wheeler, Stephen Devereux

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.

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.

The division of 'rural' and 'urban' is one of the oldest ideas in Geography and is deeply engrained in our culture. Throughout history, the rural has been attributed with many meanings: as a source of food and energy; as a pristine wilderness, or as a bucolic idyll; as a playground, or a place of escape; as a fragile space of nature, in need of protection; and as a primitive place, in need of modernization. But is the idea of the rural still relevant today? Rural provides an advanced introduction to the study of rural places and processes in Geography and related disciplines. Drawing extensively on the latest research in rural geography, this book explores the diverse meanings that have been attached to the rural, examines how ideas of the rural have been produced and reproduced, and investigates the influence of different ideas in shaping the social and economic structure of rural localities and the everyday lives of people who live, work or play in rural areas. This authoritative book contains case studies drawn from both the developed and developing world to introduce and illustrate conceptual ideas and approaches, as well as suggested further reading. Written in an engaging and lively style, Rural challenges the reader to think differently about the rural.

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.

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.

Throughout the world's hinterland regions, people are growing old in resource-dependent communities that were neither originally designed nor presently equipped to support an ageing population. This book provides cutting edge theoretical and empirical insights into the new phenomenon resource frontier ageing, to understand the diverse experiences of and responses to rural population ageing in the early 21st century. The book explores the resource hinterland as a new frontier of rural ageing and examines three central themes of rural population change, community development and voluntarism that characterize ageing resource communities. By investigating the links among these three themes, the book provides the conceptual and empirical foundations for the future agenda of rural ageing research. This timely contribution contains 15 original chapters by leading international experts from Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, UK, Ireland and Norway.