The concept of ?peasant? has been constructed from residual images of pre-industrial European and colonial rural society. Spurred by Romantic sensibilities and modern nationalist imaginations, the images the word peasant brings to mind are anachronisms that do not reflect the ways in which rural people live today. In this path-breaking book, Michael Kearney shows how the concept has been outdistanced by contemporary history. He situates the peasantry within the current social context of the transnational and post?Cold War nation-state and clears the way for alternative theoretical views.Reconceptualizing the Peasantry looks at rural society in general and considers the problematic distinction between rural and urban. Most definitions of and debates about peasants have focused on their presumed social, economic, cultural, and political characteristics, but Kearney articulates the way in which peasants define themselves in a rapidly changing world. In the process, he develops ethnographic and political forms of representation that correspond to contemporary postpeasant identities. Moving beyond a reconsideration of peasantry, the book situates anthropology in global context, showing how the discipline reconstructs itself and its subjects according to changing circumstances.

Im Spannungsfeld einer Abwendung von herkoemmlichen Raumauffassungen in Zeiten der Globalisierung sowie einer gleichzeitigen 'Ruckkehr' des Raumes in Form einer Sehnsucht nach (Selbst)Verortung lasst sich in der deutschsprachigen Literatur der letzten Jahrzehnte eine Hinwendung zu komplexen Gestaltungen literarischer Raume beobachten. Der Raum ist nicht nur Ausdruck von (geschlechtsspezifischen) Machtverhaltnissen und Lebensentwurfen, sondern wirkt auch selbst auf die Handlung ein. Auf der Basis verschiedener Raumtheorien, die im Zuge des spatial turn in den Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften verstarkt Beachtung fanden, untersucht die Autorin Texte von Schriftstellerinnen, die mit dem umstrittenen Etikett "literarisches Frauleinwunder" versehen wurden, aus raumkonstruktivistischer Perspektive.

Rural issues have gained national prominence in Britain in recent years. The future of hunting, the Foot and Mouth outbreak, farm income and agricultural reform and housing development have all claimed political and media attention, promoted by a vocal rural lobby and headline-grabbing protests and demonstrations. Combining detailed empirical research and case studies with theoretically informed critical analysis, this book provides an overview of the contemporary politics of the British countryside. It explores how and why rural issues have suddenly achieved such political prominence, by examining the changing politics and governance of rural Britain from the local to the national scale over the past century. It investigates the social, economic and institutional restructuring of rural communities and argues that we are witnessing not so much a rural politics, but a 'politics of the rural' in which the definition and representation of rurality itself has become the key focus of conflict.

For seven years in the 1970s, the author lived in a village in northeast China as an ordinary farmer. In 1989, he returned to the village as an anthropologist to begin the unparalleled span of eleven years' fieldwork that has resulted in this book-a comprehensive, vivid, and nuanced account of family change and the transformation of private life in rural China from 1949 to 1999. The author's focus on the personal and the emotional sets this book apart from most studies of the Chinese family. Yan explores private lives to examine areas of family life that have been largely overlooked, such as emotion, desire, intimacy, privacy, conjugality, and individuality. He concludes that the past five decades have witnessed a dual transformation of private life: the rise of the private family, within which the private lives of individual women and men are thriving.

The brand-new instalment in Fenella J. Miller's bestselling Goodwill House series.August 1940 As Autumn approaches, Lady Joanna Harcourt is preparing for new guests at Goodwill House - land girls, Sally, Daphne and Charlie. Sally, a feisty blonde from the East End, has never seen a cow before, but she's desperate to escape London and her horrible ex, Dennis. And although the hours are long and the work hard, Sal quickly becomes good friends with the other girls Daphne and Charlie and enjoys life at Goodwill House. Until Dennis reappears threatening to drag her back to London. Sal fears her life as a land girl is over, just as she finally felt worthy. But Lady Joanna has other ideas and a plan to keep Sal safe and doing the job she loves. Don't miss the next heart-breaking instalment in Fenella J. Miller's beautiful Goodwill House series. Praise for Fenella J. Miller: 'Curl up in a chair with Fenella J Miller's characters and lose yourself in another time and another place.' Lizzie Lane 'Engaging characters and setting which whisks you back to the home front of wartime Britain. A fabulous series!' Jean Fullerton

This book explores gender dynamics in the indigenous villages (also known as walled villages) in post-handover Hong Kong. It looks at how Hong Kong's reunification with China has impacted the walled villagers, in particular the women, and how the walled villages' current gender dynamics in return reflects the changes that have happened in Hong Kong after the reunification with China. It traces the historical development of the walled villages, outlines the nature of walled-village society, and explores the changes currently at work including the erosion of the rural/urban divide, the increasing participation of indigenous women in Hong Kong society more widely and the breakdown of traditional social norms, especially patriarchy.

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.

The rural tourism sector has become a key driver for social and economic growth and a major source of income for developing and low-income countries in many parts of Asia. Rural tourism is progressively viewed as a solution, increasing the economic viability of marginalised areas, stimulating social regeneration and improving the living conditions of rural communities. Responsible rural tourism promotes conservation of the natural environment, protects the authenticity of culture, and offers socioeconomic opportunities and benefits for local communities. This book encompasses case studies from a range of Asian countries and examines both successful and failed attempts in developing responsible rural tourism, and the learnings that we can adopt and adapt for future responsible rural tourism in the region. It will be of interest to students, researchers, stakeholders and policymakers in tourism.

This classic, bestselling study of the Kung San, foragers of the Dobe area of the Kalahari Desert describes a people's reactions to the forces of modernization, detailing relatively recent changes to Kung rituals, beliefs, social structure, marriage and kinship system. It documents their determination to take hold of their own destiny, despite exploitation of their habitat and relentless development to assert their political rights and revitalize their communities. Use of the name Ju/'hoansi (meaning "real people") acknowledges their new sense of empowerment. Since the publication of the Third Edition in 2003, Richard Lee has made eight further trips to the Kalahari, the most recent in 2010 and 2011. The Dobe and Nyae Nyae Areas have continued to transform and the people have had to respond and adapt to the pressures of capitalist economics and bureaucratic governance of the Namibian and Botswana states. This Fourth Edition chronicles and bears witness to these evolving social conditions and their impacts on lives of the Ju/'hoansi.

Shocked by a five-month arson spree that left a Virginia county reeling, reporter Monica Hesse drove to Accomack to cover the trial of Charlie Smith who pled guilty to 67 counts of arson. But Smith wasn't lighting fires alone: his crimes were galvanised by a twisted love story. Hesse uncovered the motives of this troubled addict and his accomplice, Tonya Bundick. In depicting the dangerous shift in their passionate relationship, Hesse brings to life the once-thriving coastal community and its distressed inhabitants, decimated by a punishing economy and increasingly terrified by a string of fires they could not explain. Incorporating this drama into the history of arson in the US, American Fire re-creates the anguished nights of this quiet county lit up in flames, evoking a microcosm of rural America-a land gutted before the fires began.

Webs of Power offers a fresh perspective on women in Southeast Asia. Focusing on one rural Minangkabau village, the book provides vital insights into the gendered processes of post-coloniality. The Minangkabau living in West Sumatra are the largest matrilineal group in the world. They have intrigued generations of scholars because they are matrilineal and Islamic. By exploring the contestations and accommodations women and men make with state and Islamic ideologies, Webs of Power discloses the processes at the heart of globalization as well as the complexities of kinship and power in a rural agricultural community. The book challenges conventional thinking about matriliny, showing the prominence of senior women in all aspects of village life.

Urbanormativity explores a cultural ideology that posits that urban is normal and desirable while rural is deviant, exotic, or undesirable. This work examines the relevance and meaning of this phenomenon in three parts: reality, which discusses the urbanization of the planet and the inherent conflict that emerges from the condition of urban dependency; representations, which discusses the cultural dynamics of urbanormativity; and everyday life, which focuses on the outcomes of urbanormativity in terms of the legal and political landscape, emphasizing the role of spatial inequality in creating urban-rural disparities. The book then examines life in rural communities amid urbanormativity, highlighting such processes as rural gentrification as well as the transformation of the character and tradition of rural communities through the process of place structuration. This book conclude by developing a new rural justice ethic that advocates for the incorporation of Sen's notion of capability maximization along with a concerted effort to revalue the rural-socially, culturally, politically, and economically.

Community planner Susan Guyette presents the first field-tested model of development planning that addresses the special concerns of Native American and rural communities. In Guyette's model, revitalizing cultural traditions becomes the central focus of the economic planning process. The author demonstrates, step by step, how community planning works, using the creation of the Poeh Center at Pojoaque Pueblo in northern New Mexico as a case study. She offers practical, detailed guidelines on how to develop a strategic plan, assess and document needs, ensure community participation, support business and tourism, and generate funding for community projects. This book provides a unique opportunity to see rural development in action.

Finalist for the National Book Award An intimate reckoning with aquifer depletion in America's heartland The Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. The imminent depletion of the Ogallala and other aquifers around the world is a defining planetary crisis of our times. Running Out offers a uniquely personal account of aquifer depletion and the deeper layers through which it gains meaning and force. Anthropologist Lucas Bessire journeyed back to western Kansas, where five generations of his family lived as irrigation farmers and ranchers, to try to make sense of this vital resource and its loss. His search for water across the drying High Plains brings the reader face to face with the stark realities of industrial agriculture, eroding democratic norms, and surreal interpretations of a looming disaster. Yet the destination is far from predictable, as the book seeks to move beyond the words and genres through which destruction is often known. Instead, this journey into the morass of eradication offers a series of unexpected discoveries about what it means to inherit the troubled legacies of the past and how we can take responsibility for a more inclusive, sustainable future. An urgent and unsettling meditation on environmental change, Running Out is a revelatory account of family, complicity, loss, and what it means to find your way back home.

Joan Thirsk was the leading English agrarian historian of the late 20th century. Perhaps best known for her research into regional farming, she also wrote much about rural industry, changing tastes and fashions, and innovations in the rural economy. This book is based on a conference held in her honor (following her death in 2013) that was intended not to look back but rather to identify Joan Thirsk's relevance for historians now, and to present new work that has been influenced and inspired by her.

How prisons became economic development strategies for rural Appalachian communities As the United States began the project of mass incarceration, rural communities turned to building prisons as a strategy for economic development. More than 350 prisons have been built in the U.S. since 1980, with certain regions of the country accounting for large shares of this dramatic growth. Central Appalachia is one such region; there are eight prisons alone in Eastern Kentucky. If Kentucky were its own country, it would have the seventh highest incarceration rate in the world. In Coal, Cages, Crisis, Judah Schept takes a closer look at this stunning phenomenon, providing insight into prison growth, jail expansion and rising incarceration rates in America's hinterlands. Drawing on interviews, site visits, and archival research, Schept traces recent prison growth in the region to the rapid decline of its coal industry. He takes us inside this startling transformation occurring in the coalfields, where prisons are often built on top of old coalmines, including mountaintop removal sites, and built into community planning approaches to crises of unemployment, population loss, and declining revenues. By linking prison growth to other sites in this landscape-coal mines, coal waste, landfills, and incinerators-Schept shows that the prison boom has less to do with crime and punishment and much more with the overall extraction, depletion, and waste disposal processes that characterize dominant development strategies for the region. Schept argues that the future of this area now hangs in the balance, detailing recent efforts to oppose its carceral growth. Coal, Cages, Crisis offers invaluable insight into the complex dynamics of mass incarceration that continue to shape Appalachia and the broader United States.

Crime is often perceived as an urban issue rather than a problem that occurs in rural areas, but how far is this view tenable? This book explores the relationship between crime and community in rural areas and addresses the notion of safety as part of the community dynamics in such areas. Rural Crime and Community Safety makes a significant contribution to crime science and integrates a range of theories to understand patterns of crime and perceived safety in rural contexts. Based on a wealth of original research, Ceccato combines spatial methods with qualitative analysis to examine, in detail, farm and wildlife crime, youth related crimes and gendered violence in rural settings. Making the most of the expanding field of Criminology and of the growing professional inquiry into crime and crime prevention in rural areas; rural development; and the social sustainability of rural areas, this book builds a bridge by connecting Criminology and Human Geography. This book will be suitable for academics, students and practitioners in the fields of criminology, community safety, rural studies, rural development and gender studies.

This book focuses on the transition of hundreds of rural households in ten villages in Zhejiang from 1986 to 2002, based on the theme of rural household sustainable development. Drawing on a large amount of first-hand data collected from fixed observation sites for 17 consecutive years, this book has depicted the changes in household behaviour in rural Zhejiang, and analysed the origins of such changes. The contents of the book contain examinations at household and village level. Chapters One to Seven describe the changes in rural behaviour at the household level from different aspects, such as land transfer, saving and borrowing, and rural tax burden. Chapters Eight to Ten analyse the transition concerning household behaviour based on the village level data. This book will help readers with a better understanding of rural China from the micro perspective of household behaviour. This book won the Monograph Award (ranked 1st out of 6 winners in total) in the Third China Rural Development Research Award (2008). It was also awarded theSecond Class Excellent Research Achievement in Humanities and Social Sciences by the Ministry of Education (2009). With the help of rich and detailed first-hand data collected from fixed observation sites in ten villages in Zhejiang for 17 consecutive years, this book gives a panoramic analysis of Chinese rural society in transition from the viewpoint of rural household behaviour. It starts the examination from individual rural households, before develops the investigation to the whole villages, so that the study could be carried out in a coherent, reliable and systematic way. Viewing the countryside from its micro perspective under the national political economy framework, the book steps out of the traditional way of inspecting exclusively the rural households and therefore is able to generalise its conclusion at a macro level. The award selection panel in 2008 believed it a unique monography for understanding the macro transition of the Chinese "agriculture, countryside and peasant ( )" issues from the micro aspect of household behaviour.

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

You hear a lot these days about "innovation and entrepreneurship" and about how "good jobs" in tech will save our cities. Yet these common tropes hide a stunning reality: local lives and fortunes are tied to global capital. You see this clearly in metropolises such as San Francisco and New York that have emerged as "superstar cities." In these cities, startups bloom, jobs of the future multiply, and a meritocracy trained in digital technology, backed by investors who control deep pools of capital, forms a new class: the tech-financial elite. In The Innovation Complex, the eminent urbanist Sharon Zukin shows the way these forces shape the new urban economy through a rich and illuminating account of the rise of the tech sector in New York City. Drawing from original interviews with venture capitalists, tech evangelists, and economic development officials, she shows how the ecosystem forms and reshapes the city from the ground up. Zukin explores the people and plans that have literally rooted digital technology in the city. That in turn has shaped a workforce, molded a mindset, and generated an archipelago of tech spaces, which in combination have produced a now-hegemonic "innovation" culture and geography. She begins with the subculture of hackathons and meetups, introduces startup founders and venture capitalists, and explores the transformation of the Brooklyn waterfront from industrial wasteland to "innovation coastline." She shows how, far beyond Silicon Valley, cities like New York are shaped by an influential "triple helix" of business, government, and university leaders-an alliance that joins C. Wright Mills's "power elite," real estate developers, and ambitious avatars of "academic capitalism." As a result, cities around the world are caught between the demands of the tech economy and communities' desires for growth-a massive and often-insurmountable challenge for those who hope to reap the rewards of innovation's success.

A challenge to prevailing ideas about innovation and a guide to identifying the best growth strategy for your community. Across the world, cities and regions have wasted trillions of dollars on blindly copying the Silicon Valley model of growth creation. Since the early years of the information age, we've been told that economic growth derives from harnessing technological innovation. To do this, places must create good education systems, partner with local research universities, and attract innovative hi-tech firms. We have lived with this system for decades, and the result is clear: a small number of regions and cities at the top of the high-tech industry but many more fighting a losing battle to retain economic dynamism. But are there other models that don't rely on a flourishing high-tech industry? In Innovation in Real Places, Dan Breznitz argues that there are. The purveyors of the dominant ideas on innovation have a feeble understanding of the big picture on global production and innovation. They conflate innovation with invention and suffer from techno-fetishism. In their devotion to start-ups, they refuse to admit that the real obstacle to growth for most cities is the overwhelming power of the real hubs, which siphon up vast amounts of talent and money. Communities waste time, money, and energy pursuing this road to nowhere. Breznitz proposes that communities instead focus on where they fit in the four stages in the global production process. Some are at the highest end, and that is where the Clevelands, Sheffields, and Baltimores are being pushed toward. But that is bad advice. Success lies in understanding the changed structure of the global system of production and then using those insights to enable communities to recognize their own advantages, which in turn allows to them to foster surprising forms of specialized innovation. As he stresses, all localities have certain advantages relative to at least one stage of the global production process, and the trick is in recognizing it. Leaders might think the answer lies in high-tech or high-end manufacturing, but more often than not, they're wrong. Innovation in Real Places is an essential corrective to a mythology of innovation and growth that too many places have bought into in recent years. Best of all, it has the potential to prod local leaders into pursuing realistic and regionally appropriate models for growth and innovation.

Contemporary discussions of Africa's recent growth have largely interpreted such growth in terms of structural transformation, based mainly on national- and sectoral-level data. However, the micro-level processes driving this transformation are still unclear and remain the subject of debate. This collection provides a micro economic foundation for understanding the particular growth processes at work within the region's rural areas, and in so doing provides important insights for policy action. The book provides valuable household- and farm-level evidence about the drivers of rural labour productivity, improvements in access to markets, investment in food value chains, and indeed the role of rural economic growth in Africa's ongoing rural transformation processes. Some of the features of Africa's ongoing rural transformation are similar to those of agricultural transformation as experienced in Asia and elsewhere. However, other features of Africa's rural transformation are unique, and pose important challenges for development policy and planning. Together, the studies compiled in this volume provide an updated, evidence-based, and policy-relevant understanding of where African countries are in their developmental trajectories and the region's prospects for achieving inclusive forms of development over the next several decades. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Development Studies.

With a Preface reviewing some of the debates prompted by the earlier edition of this book. The first edition of this book was hailed as a major reinterpretation of South African history. It criticised the prevailing view that African agriculture was primitive or backward, and attacked the notion that poverty and lack ofdevelopment were a result of 'traditionalism'. Bundy's work introduced the idea that by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century capitalist development in South Africa was increasingly hostile to peasant producers and a massive onslaught was launched against them - the understanding of this was vital to an understanding of both the South African past and present.

A debut historical novel based on the true story of a young woman in 1920s Virginia fighting to reclaim the daughter she was forced to give up, a case that culminated in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision. Virginia, 1924. Ruth Ann Riley is 17 years old when she gives birth to a baby girl. Unwed and under-educated, she's deemed "feeble-minded" -- just like her own mother -- and sent to live in a state-run institution where the doctors decide she must be sterilized "for the greater good." But Ruth Ann won't give up her baby Annabel or the hope of future children without a fight, even though her hardscrabble life and sixth-grade education have in no way prepared her to take on the Supreme Court of the United States. As Ruth Ann comes of age in a daunting world and struggles with secrets and scandals in her past, she finds unexpected allies, friendship and the possibility of love in the most unlikely of places. K.D. Alden weaves a harrowing and ultimately uplifting story based on a true American court case that had global ramifications. A reading group guide includes discussion questions, an author essay, and text from the actual historical documents of the case.

Resourcing Rural Ministry offers an in-depth exploration of the key aspects, challenges and opportunities of mission in a rural church. Relevant for ordained and lay leaders alike, the book covers subjects ranging from encouraging evangelism in a multi-church group to making best use of church buildings. Containing a wealth of real-life case studies and suggestions for follow-up, this ecumenical publication draws on the expertise and resources of the Arthur Rank Centre (ARC), which has served the spiritual and practical needs of the rural Christian community for over 40 years. This book contributes to ARC's Germinate programme of training, development and support for rural multi-church groups of all denominations. Resourcing Rural Ministry was first developed by Simon Martin as Training and Resources Officer at the ARC. Additional chapters have been contributed by the Revd Caroline Hewlett, Rona Orme and Becky Payne and the final text has been prepared and edited by Jill Hopkinson. 'This book is packed with helpful resources and background theology that will aid the rural church to be a vibrant and relevant presence in today's society.' Revd Peter Ball, Mission and Training Officer, Eastern Synod of the URC 'Read these contributions and you'll be excited by a wealth of experience, insight and resource.' Rt Revd James Bell, Bishop of Ripon