This book investigates what a case study of a northern market town and its rural hinterland can tell us about village differentiation, exploring how and why rural communities developed in what was chiefly an industrial region and, notably, how the relationship between town and country influenced rural communities. It looks at six villages close to Doncaster - Sprotbrough, Warmsworth, Rossington, Fishlake, Stainforth and Braithwell - chosen to represent the diversity of landownership and land type of the Doncaster district. Rural communities, and more specifically the development of English villages, have proved fertile ground for historians. This book makes an original contribution to these debates. In particular, it engages with existing models of village typology, suggesting that not only are they too restrictive to account for nuanced differences, but also that they fail to acknowledge the importance of the relationships between rural communities and between town and country. Following Sarah Holland's detailed research into different aspects of rural communities, the book offers new perspectives on how rural communities in close proximity developed, often differently, during the mid nineteenth century. Themes looked at in detail include living and working conditions, agriculture and industry, religion and education, and through these Holland considers existing theories of village typology, before setting out her ideas regarding social hierarchies, spheres of influence and agency, which combine to create complex patterns of differentiation. Communities in Contrast will appeal to all those interested in rural life and economy in the nineteenth century, the relationship between town and country, as well as the history of Yorkshire.

A new structure of local government, the contemporary village panchayat, has emerged in rural India as a consequence of the Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act, 1992. This new statistical domain requires databases for the development functions that have been allocated to it. This book is a study of panchayat-level databases and their potential use in local-level administration, planning, and policy implementation. It examines the overall status of local-level data available in two contrasting village panchayats: Raina gram panchayat, Barddhaman district, West Bengal; and Warwat Khanderao gram panchayat, Buldhana district, Maharashtra, drawing on interviews on the process of record-keeping and use of accumulated data with officials. The study attempts to understand the current and potential use of such records in decentralized development planning, the periodicity at which the records are updated, and the reliability and accuracy of such records. A specific and unique aspect of the book is its attempt to evaluate the accuracy of certain panchayat-level databases.

The local doctor occupies a privileged position in society. Pillars of the community and privy to the most intimate details of people's lives, we often imbue them with superhuman qualities and expect them to have all the answers. Rarely do we get to see the person behind the ever-calm, professional exterior and experience how they handle the weight of responsibility that comes with the role. Step into the surgery of Dr. Lucia Gannon. Arriving in the small village of Killenaule, Co. Tipperary 20 years ago - husband Liam (also a GP) and children in tow - Gannon was a blow-in determined to build a practice that would provide solace for the sick, worried and confused. Journey with her as she builds a life in this tight-knit community, and discover what it means to be the one people bring their problems to - problems that are not always medical, but which still require discretion, kindness and the willingness to provide a listening ear to those on the tricky journey of life.

Born in 1943, Richard Pottinger grew up in and around the small rural villages near Cirencester, Gloucestershire. His engaging childhood reminiscences reveal the charm of living a simple country life within a small and friendly community, but also the instability experienced by many families due to the transient nature of employment for farm workers at that time. It meant a childhood spent moving from place to place with friendships gained and lost and a precarious existence which impacted upon the whole family. Each time his father uttered the words We're shiftin Richard, his mother and three brothers would all have to up sticks and move at short notice to where there was work with a tied cottage or accommodation - good or bad, they didn't know until they arrived!

There has been dispute amongst social historians about whether only the more prosperous in village society were involved in religious practice. In this 1995 book, a group of historians working under Dr Spufford's direction have produced a factual solution to this dispute by examining the taxation records of large groups of dissenters and churchwardens, and have established that both late Lollard and post-Restoration dissenting belief crossed the whole taxable spectrum. We can no longer speak of religion as being the prerogative of either 'weavers and threshers' or, on the other hand, of village elites. In her own substantial chapter Dr Spufford draws together the mosaic constructed by the contributors, adds radical ideas of her own, and disagrees with much of the prevailing wisdom on the function of religion in the late seventeenth century. Professor Patrick Collinson has contributed a critical conclusion to the volume.

Research documents that rural elders are poorer, live in less adequate housing, and have far fewer health and service options available to them than their urban counterparts, yet there is a critical lack of current and detailed information on the problems facing rural elders and on the professional practices that serve this population. This text fills this gap by introducing readers to rural areas and their residents and discussing the issues, programs, and policies designed to meet their needs. Through a multidisciplinary lens, it examines and defines specific competencies required for successful work with older adults and their families in these communities.

The text presents a research-driven, competency-based approach for the health and human service professionals who work with older rural residents. It discusses both the problems facing older adults and their families and evidence-based solutions regarding policy and best practices. Key issues examined include health and wellness, transportation, housing, long-term care, income, employment, and retirement, along with the needs of special populations (ethnic minorities, immigrants, and the LGBT population). Case examples reinforce an interdisciplinary model that addresses practice with rural elders that encompasses professional competencies, values and ethics, and the roles of a spectrum of health and human service professionals. The text also examines current policies affecting health and social services to rural elders and recommendations for policy change to build an effective health and human service workforce in rural communities. Links to Podcast interviews with scholars and respected professionals working in the field and "Spotlight" excerpts from the text reinforce information. In addition, the text provides discussion questions, PowerPoint slides, a test question bank, and suggested activities and exercises.

Key Features: Fills a vacuum regarding information on health and social services for rural elders Provides current and comprehensive knowledge about issues besetting this population and programs and policies designed to meet their needs Examines and defines specific competencies required for effective health and social services Based on a research-driven, competency-based, interdisciplinary approach to policy and best practice Includes links to Podcast interviews with scholars and respected professionals in the field

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.

PEGGY O'BRIEN grew up in western Massachusetts, where she now lives with her husband. She teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. After graduating from Mount Holyoke College, she moved to Ireland and studied at University College Dublin and Trinity College, where she taught for the better part of twenty years. Her poems have appeared in publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Yale Review, The Southwest Review and Poetry Ireland Review. As well as being the editor of The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women's Poetry 1967-2000, she is the author of Writing Lough Derg: from Carleton to Heaney. She travels often in Ireland, where she has a daughter and three granddaughters.

The growth of rural industry in China since 1978 has been explosive. Much of the existing literature explains its growth in terms of changes in economic policy. By means of a combination of privatization, liberalization and fiscal decentralization, it is argued, rural industrialization has taken off. This book takes issue with such claims. Using a newly constructed dataset covering all of China's 2000 plus counties and complemented by a detailed econometric study of county-level industrialization in the provinces of Sichuan, Guangdong and Jiangsu, the author demonstrates that history mattered. More precisely, it is argued that the development of rural industry in the Maoist period set in motion a process of learning-by-doing whereby China's rural workforce gradually acquired an array of skills and competencies. As a result, rural industrialization was accelerating well before the 1978 climacteric. The growth of the 1980s and 1990s is therefore likely to be a continuation of this process. Without prior Maoist development of skills, the growth of the post-1978 era would have been much slower, and perhaps would not have occurred at all - as has been the case in countries such as India and Vietnam. This is not to say that the Maoist legacy was without flaw. Many of the rural industries created under Mao were geared towards meeting defence-related objectives resulting in inefficiencies, and there can be no question that post-1978 policy changes facilitated the growth process. But without the Maoist inheritance, rural industrialization across China would have been unsuccessful.

Rural India Facing the 21st Century is a unique study of rural development in South India, conducted over a twenty-year period. Set against the context of international, national and state policies, the book focuses on a number of villages in South India. It examines a wide number of themes, including the stagnation of the "green revolution," growing differentiation and inequality, the ecological crisis, resistance to reform, corruption and the enduring need for state intervention for rural development.Written by an international team of young scholars under the direction of Professor Harriss-White, Rural India Facing the 21st Century draws together a profound analysis of a broad range of issues to provide a masterly overview of overall rural development. Its highly original methodology and findings will be of considerable interest for development policy. The book includes contributions from Diego Colatei, Susan Erb, Lisa Gold, D Jayaraj, Paul Nillesen, Ruhi Saith and M V Srinivasan.

How a fraying social fabric is fueling the outrage of rural Americans What is fueling rural America's outrage toward the federal government? Why did rural Americans vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump? And, beyond economic and demographic decline, is there a more nuanced explanation for the growing rural-urban divide? Drawing on more than a decade of research and hundreds of interviews, Robert Wuthnow brings us into America's small towns, farms, and rural communities to paint a rich portrait of the moral order--the interactions, loyalties, obligations, and identities-underpinning this critical segment of the nation. Wuthnow demonstrates that to truly understand rural Americans' anger, their culture must be explored more fully. We hear from farmers who want government out of their business, factory workers who believe in working hard to support their families, town managers who find the federal government unresponsive to their communities' needs, and clergy who say the moral climate is being undermined. Wuthnow argues that rural America's fury stems less from specific economic concerns than from the perception that Washington is distant from and yet threatening to the social fabric of small towns. Rural dwellers are especially troubled by Washington's seeming lack of empathy for such small-town norms as personal responsibility, frugality, cooperation, and common sense. Wuthnow also shows that while these communities may not be as discriminatory as critics claim, racism and misogyny remain embedded in rural patterns of life. Moving beyond simplistic depictions of the residents of America's heartland, The Left Behind offers a clearer picture of how this important population will influence the nation's political future.

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.

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.

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.

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, ahs been known for two centuries as the "Garden Spot of America," a quintessentially rural place. Walbert considers what it means to be the Garden Spot in a culture that associates rurality with the past and asks whether or not a truly rural future is possible for such communities.

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, ahs been known for two centuries as the "Garden Spot of America," a quintessentially rural place. Walbert considers what it means to be the Garden Spot in a culture that associates rurality with the past and asks whether or not a truly rural future is possible for such communities.

Between the frequently recounted events of the Gold Rush and the Great Depression stretches a period of California history that is equally crucial but less often acknowledged. In his fresh, synthetic consideration of these in-between years, George L. Henderson points specifically to the take-off of California's rural juggernaut between the 1880s and middle 1920s--the upward spiral of city bids for country dollars and rural bids for urban investments. These decades were salve for mining's risky finances yet groundwork for the chaotic 1930s. Moreover, Henderson argues that much like the two important periods which framed it, this era produced a cultural and literary apparatus that attempted to grapple with capital's machinations, if only to legitimate them in the end.
Central to California and the Fictions of Capital is a theory of how the circulation of capital wove itself into agriculture. The book asks why it mattered to capital that agriculture was based in Nature, and then explores the procedures through which images of Nature became central to capitalism's story of itself. What unique possibilities did Nature offer to circuits of capital and what was their role in suturing the urban and rural together? How did boom and bust intervene and set the pace for regional change? How was capital linked to the racializing of working bodies? And why was the capitalist imperative expressed in landscape alterations like irrigation? Such are the key questions informing this bold, far-reaching volume.
Beyond political economy, the book also looks to the rural juggernaut's cultural and literary work, which was stamped by celebratory, if fretful, ruminations. In all sorts of texts--but especially in novels by Frank Norris, Mary Austin, Harold Bell Wright, and many other writers--difficult questions surfaced. Capital was seen in terms of its spillage into rural frontiers, just as rural frontiers were seen in terms of movements of capital. Capital was the new geography of money. But for whom did it work? Which identities did it favor? In mapping the real and imaginary realms that capital occupied, Henderson locates the banker-, land developer-, and engineer-heroes of California fiction as well as the fictionalized "new woman" of the capitalist, agrarian West. He unravels the colliding representations of race, gender, and class, while linking their treatment to the naturalizing rhetoric of capital's agrarian turn.
In part a tour of California as a virtual laboratory for refining the circulation of capital, and in part an investigation of how the state's literati, with rare exception, reconceived economy in the name of class, gender, and racial privilege, this study will appeal to all students and scholars of California's--and the American West's--economic, environmental, and cultural past.

Family is what you make it - but is Hannah brave enough to take the chance?A freelance travel writer, Hannah rarely stays in one place long enough to call it home. After a childhood of moving between foster homes, her nomadic lifestyle means no lasting connections, keeping her fears of losing loved ones at bay. So when Hannah's work takes her to Cariad Cove, it's just another job. Will loves being a dad. It's just him and his wilful six-year-old, Beti, but their family of two has love enough to keep them happy. When Will meets Hannah, attraction ignites, but one woman has already left Beti behind - he can't have it happen again. Hannah will soon be moving on, meaning there's no future for her and Will despite their sizzling chemistry. It will take a leap of faith for them to believe in each other. Could one summer at Cariad Cove change their lives forever? A gorgeously uplifting and romantic story for fans of Suzanne Snow, Phillipa Ashley and Heidi Swain. Praise for Starting Over in Cariad Cove 'What a lovely story... I read it one sitting and just escaped. A lovely ending not too cliche. Perfect.' Reader review 'First time reading this author and I wasn't disappointed. A light hearted and funny read, loved the characters and a lovely storyline set in beautiful Wales. Wonderful writing.' Reader review 'Traumatic pasts lead to a happily ever after. Such a sweet read that would be great for the summer.' Reader review 'A gem of a book. An easy read with a gentle storyline about two people with difficult pasts. An excellent holiday read.' Reader review 'What a lovely story. This was a quick, feel-good read that made me smile, which is exactly what I was looking for.' Reader review

Welcome to Halesmere House, where romance might be just around the corner...After years of living in the past, Ella is ready to start building a future. The perfect opportunity presents itself when she is offered a short-term role at Halesmere House in the Lake District, and tasked with kick-starting its artists' residence. She can't wait to start and explore a new career in an inspiring location. But when Ella arrives at Halesmere, she wonders if she's made a huge mistake after she clashes with Max, the new owner. Max has his own reasons to be unsettled by her presence, but despite his misgivings it seems everyone else loves having Ella around. As a single dad, it's his children's attachment to her that bothers him most. Who will pick up the pieces when Ella leaves? What Max doesn't know is that Ella is falling for more than just the Lake District and the community around her. Can her temporary job lead to a permanent happy ending? A tender and uplifting Christmas romance for fans of Heidi Swain, Karen Swan and Sue Moorcroft. Praise for Snowfall Over Halesmere House 'Warmth, community and romance all wrapped up in a sumptuous setting - this is everything I want from a Christmas book!' Donna Ashcroft 'Suzanne's writing flows beautifully and her characters are real and vibrant. I thoroughly enjoyed the story carrying me along until was quite desperate for Ella and Max to find a way to be together.' Sue Moorcroft