The importance of community-based and participatory approaches to rural development in developing countries has long been emphasized. Local Societies and Rural Development demonstrates how rural people, who are economically and politically weak as individuals, can only participate in development projects when they are collectively organized. With the input of expert collaborators in the field, this book identifies the local social mechanisms that motivate and control people's self-organizing activities.Through their use of typology and case studies the contributors identify the mechanisms through which rural people can best organize themselves to meet their development requirements. With the understanding that social context matters, the authors propose a method that both researchers and practitioners of rural society can apply to their work. Providing a unique and enlightening perspective on rural development, this book will be of value to academics interested in development, regional and rural studies, particularly those who are interested in researching collective action in community-based societies. It will also appeal to practitioners in the field including planners and front-line workers. Contributors: A. Hayama, M. Iwai, I. Okamoto, S. Shigetomi, M. Shimagami, A. Venkateswarlu, N. Yamada

In this insightful book, the contributors focus on the impact of contextual factors on social movements in the developing world, pushing major existing theories beyond their traditional focus. With wide coverage of the developing world, leading academics explore a variety of forms and mechanisms of social movement. They present discussions on resource and institutional endowment for mobilization in Colombia and Thailand, and explore the structure behind political opportunities in Argentina, China and South Africa. The history and reality of identity-making in India, Mexico and Nigeria are also examined. Presenting novel analytical frameworks to study social movements in developing countries, this book will be warmly welcomed by academics and researchers with an interest in sociology, development and political science. It will also strongly appeal to social movement activists.

In many traditional societies, certain resources are held in common, with their use and disposition controlled by the community collectively. Such common-pool resources have come to play a significant element in programs of environmental preservation in Asia, and for this reason historical changes in arrangements for controlling them are of considerable importance. Through case studies from Japan, Korea, Thailand, India and Bhutan, this volume examines attitudes toward common-pool resources in different local contexts, with a particular emphasis on forests and policies relating to environmental conservation. The authors are specialists on the regions they study who use historical documents in local languages along with data collected during long-term fieldwork. Their conclusions raise questions about understandings of natural property resources based on dichotomous frameworks like "modern versus traditional societies", "state versus community" and "commercialization versus subsistence economies". The case studies indicate that in pre-modern and early modern Asia natural resources were frequently under free-access regimes, and that where systems of control existed, subsequent institutional changes involved a variety of sequences that cannot be summarized readily within a simple modernist framework.