Search

The edited book has been prepared through collection of precious research articles from eminent Extension scientists, which have contributed papers on Institutional arrangements for technology delivery, innovative Extension approaches, break through methodologies in Extension research, the reach and effectiveness of ICT tools in technology delivery, youth and gender inclusive extension strategies and Extension strategies for changing scenario of Agriculture. Papers in this book would definitely make an impact among Extension scientists and post graduate scholars of Extension in Agriculture, Veterinary and Fishery Sciences.The inputs that this book offers will be of much helpful to the researchers, administrators and policy makers. From the research findings of the selected research papers of this book, the Extension researchers can sharpen their future research strategies, the Extension administrators and policy makers in the Government can get to know about the impact and constraints of several institutional mechanisms of technology delivery which will facilitate them in evidence based policy making.

Part photo book, part memoir, part oral history project, this volume paints a vivid portrait of queer and trans experiences in rural areas and small towns across the US. In 2013, Rae Garringer embarked on the Country Queers oral history project with a borrowed audio recorder, a flip phone, and a paper atlas in a Subaru Forester with over 160,000 miles on it. Raised on a sheep farm in southeastern West Virginia, they were motivated by an intense frustration with the lack of rural queer stories and the isolation that comes with that absence. “Queers, in all our forms, have always existed,” Garringer writes, “all across this continent since before it was colonized.” After years as a DIY, minimally funded, community-based oral history project, the work now takes a new form in Country Queers: A Love Story—a book of full-color photos and interviews with rural folks from Mississippi to New Mexico and beyond, with Garringer's account as traveler and interviewer woven through the pages. In these intimate conversations, we see how queerness—shaped, as all things are, by race, class, gender, and more—moves in rural and small-town spaces, spotlighting how country queers make sense of their lives through reflections on land, home, community, and belonging. While media-driven myths suggest that big cities are the only places queer folks can find love and community, Country Queers resists that trope by centering rural queer and trans stories of the joys, challenges, monotony, and nuances of their lives, in their own words.

Across the global South, poor women's lives are embedded in their social relationships and governed not just by formal institutions – rules that exist on paper – but by informal norms and practices. Village Ties takes the reader to Bangladesh, a country that has risen from the ashes of war, natural disaster, and decades of resource drain to become a development miracle. The book argues that grassroots women's mobilization programs can empower women to challenge informal institutions when such programs are anti-oppression, deliberative, and embedded in their communities. Qayum dives into the work of Polli Shomaj (PS), a program of the development organization BRAC to show how the women of PS negotiate with state and society to alter the rules of the game, changing how poor people access resources including safety nets, the law, and governing spaces. These women create a complex and rapidly transforming world where multiple overlapping institutions exist – formal and informal, old and new, desirable and undesirable. In actively challenging power structures around them, these women defy stereotypes of poor Muslim women as backward, subservient, oppressed, and in need of saving.

The present paper lays out the specific profiles, risks and vulnerabilities of rural populations and explores options to extend social protection coverage to them.

A New York Times Critics'Top Ten Book of the Year • 2021 Edgar Award Winner Best Fact Crime • A Lit Hub Best Book of The Year From a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail, a “powerful,” (The New York Times) urgent, and heartbreaking account of the corporate greed that pumped millions of pain pills into small Appalachian towns, decimating communities.In a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, 12 million opioid pain pills were distributed in just three years to a town with a population of 382 people. One woman, after losing her brother to overdose, was desperate for justice. Debbie Preece's fight for accountability for her brother's death took her well beyond the Sav-Rite Pharmacy in coal country, ultimately leading to three of the biggest drug wholesalers in the country. She was joined by a crusading lawyer and by local journalist, Eric Eyre, who uncovered a massive opioid pill-dumping scandal that shook the foundation of America's largest drug companies—and won him a Pulitzer Prize. Part Erin Brockovich, part Spotlight, Death in Mud Lick details the clandestine meetings with whistleblowers; a court fight to unseal filings that the drug distributors tried to keep hidden, a push to secure the DEA pill-shipment data, and the fallout after Eyre's local paper, the Gazette-Mail, the smallest newspaper ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, broke the story. Eyre follows the opioid shipments into individual counties, pharmacies, and homes in West Virginia and explains how thousands of Appalachians got hooked on prescription drugs—resulting in the highest overdose rates in the country. But despite the tragedy, there is also hope as citizens banded together to create positive change—and won. “A product of one reporter's sustained outrage [and] a searing spotlight on the scope and human cost of corruption and negligence” (The Washington Post) Eric Eyre's intimate portrayal of a national public health crisis illuminates the shocking pattern of corporate greed and its repercussions for the citizens of West Virginia—and the nation—to this day.

This title was first published in 2000: This work has its origins in the 1995 Congress of the International Federation for Housing and Planning, held in Belfast. The theme was'Accommodating Differences'.'Differences'were defined in broad terms, and included ethnic and social, economic and political differences. However, Frederick W. Boal's own interest in ethnic differences motivated him to invite a number of Congress participants to make available their papers for inclusion in this book of essays. It seeks to offer experience that can be drawn on by housing practitioners who are operating in multi-ethnic contexts. It also provides empirical material that should contribute to the development of more soundly-based theoretical insights in both urban sociology and social geography.

This volume Dreams and Realities of Rural Development in India, contains various problematic issues of rural development in India which has become a familiar subject in the academic arena. The uniqueness of the book lies in presentation of materials in fifteen innovative chapters important to understand different problematic dimensions of rural and tribal development. This book is a collection of research papers presented in various national seminars and reflect sincere effort of author to address different issues like displacement, marginalization, globalization, political and economic movements, environment and women empowerment. This book will be useful to the researchers, master degree students, and faculties in Rural Development, Social Anthropology, Sociology and Social work in understanding problems of development in Rural India and processes of social movements. The volume will also be useful to Policy makers.

Cybercafés play a key role in providing internet access to developing countries. This paper examines the challenges of internet connectivity in rural and remote areas and how cybercafés now serve as a model behind government efforts to set up telecenters to extend internet connectivity to rural communities. Find out why telecenters remain popular as highlighted in two case studies: a government run initiative in the Philippines and a public-private partnership in Sri Lanka.

Reinventing Rural is a collection of original research papers that examine the ways in which rural people and places are changing in the context of an urbanizing world. This includes exploring the role of the environment, the economy, and related issues such as tourism. While traditionally relying on primary sector work in agriculture, mining, natural resources, and the like, rural areas are finding new ways to sustain themselves. This involves a new emphasis on environmental protection, as one important strategy has been to capitalize on natural amenities to attract residents and tourists. Beyond improvements to the economy are general improvements to the quality-of-life in rural communities. Consistent with this, the volume focuses on the two cornerstones of education and health, considering current challenges and offering ideas for reinventing rural quality-of-life.

The Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) have come to stay in India. Time has come to take stock of the experiences gained so far in the working of the PRIs in various states. Have we really achieved the goals set up by the 73rd constitutional Amendment while implementing the programme of'democratic decentralisation'?, if not, what are the impediments in achieving the goals?. How best can we remove them based on our experience so far?. What corrective steps can we take to put the programme on the right track?. Here some of the leading experts on Panchayati Raj in various states examines the achievements and failures of working the PRIs during the past fifteen years. Concrete suggestions are put forth for making the PRIs vibrant institutions for bringing about democratic decentralization in the true-sense of the term. The scholarly papers on the'state of art'of the PRIs in different states in India are presented systematically in this book. The articles broadly bring out the fascinating story of the working of PRIs in different states of India.

A dazzling piece of narrative nonfiction about land lust and the American West, The Crazies tells the story of a wind farm that triggers a 21st century range war between a struggling fifth-generation rancher and the billionaires next door.Most locals in Big Timber, Montana learn to live with the wind. Rick Jarrett sought his fortune in it. Like his pioneer ancestors who staked their claims in the Treasure State, he believed in his right to make a living off the land—and its newest precious resource, million-dollar wind. Trouble was, Jarrett's neighbors were some of the wealthiest and most influential men in America, trophy ranchers who'd come West to enjoy magnificent mountain views, not stare at 500-foot wind turbines. And so began an epic showdown that would pull in an ever-widening cast of larger-than-life characters, including a Texas oil and gas tycoon, a roguish wind prospector, a Crow activist fighting for his tribe's rights to the mountains they hold sacred, and an Olympic athlete-turned-attorney whose path to redemption would lead to Jarrett's wind farm. A wildly entertaining yarn, the brawl over Crazy Mountain Wind would become a fight over the values that define us as Americans—and a window into how this country actually works. All the while, the most coveted rangeland in the West was being threatened by forces more powerful than anything one man could muster: dwindling snowpack, record drought, raging wildfires. The Crazies is a Western for a warming planet, full of cowboys and billionaires and billionaire cowboys. But it's also so much more. It's an exquisitely reported, ruggedly beautiful elegy for a vanishing way of life and a bighearted inquiry into how you can love a place so much you risk destroying it.

This book investigates the range of conflicts over land and other natural resources in contemporary Zimbabwe, considering the different forms these conflicts take, and the ensuing outcomes.Zimbabwe is a country rich in natural resources, including land, wildlife, minerals, and water resources. These resources are integral to the formal and informal livelihoods of most Zimbabweans, as well as supporting many key industries. Wildlife, land, and water resources are also embedded in indigenous knowledge systems, religious beliefs, and rituals in many rural communities, forming an important part of people's identity and sense of belonging. However, this book demonstrates the ways in which rural communities are being denied access to these resources and being displaced by extractive companies and the government. Their response is often to turn to violence to try to reclaim their lands. Drawing on original empirical research from different conflicts across Zimbabwe, the book also considers the issue in the context of problems such as climate change, human-wildlife conflicts, and politico-economic crises.This book will be useful to policy makers, students, conservationists, and academics across the fields of sociology, human geography, development, political science, and environment studies.

This timely collection crosses international boundaries to highlight criminological issues with a rural focus. Using a variety of different perspectives, the contributors offer lessons from research on rural crime, justice and security from the seven continents with a macroscopic perspective on issues of international concern. The book identifies the global context in which rural crime takes place, presenting insights on crime prevention, safety and security to students, researchers, policymakers and practitioners. Chapters 2 and 8 available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Andean communities occupy a special place in the history of anthropology, having given shape to fundamental theories of kinship, peasant economics, Indigenous medical systems, ritual life and others. Yet children have been shortchanged in research and theory building. Care and Agency, based on detailed ethnographies of six towns in the province of Yauyos, restores children to a central research position. Contemporary children's studies emphasize children's agency and autonomy, and these take surprising forms under the conditions of the rural Andes. At the same time, the book incorporates and extends current discussions of caregiving and its organization in human societies. Children in the Andes are involved in the care of each other, of adults, of animals, of the environment. The activities, sociality, and subjective states of children of different ages, genders, and social strata are variable in ways that make it impossible to speak of a single Andean childhood. The future they face is also uncertain, as the Peruvian nation stumbles through cycles of incompetent government whose common thread is the neglect of small-scale family farming and the welfare of rural populations. This book is a fascinating look at Andean childhood for anyone interested in the lives of children.

Monitoring and Evaluation is a critical element in social research, and it is essential for scholars in the social sciences to be proficient in project management. This book comprises 12 units, which have been organized in a logical sequence according to their content.

'The author opens a powerful dialogue between agricultural history on the one hand and environmental history on the other... a brilliant and provocative synthesis of a thousand years of coastal farming.'Tim Soens, University of Antwerp, Belgium.The fascinating story of how the North Sea coast has been farmed is ever changing. Long before the industrial revolution, the inhospitable fens and marshes of the low-lying coastal wetlands on both sides of the Sea had been transformed into one of the most productive agricultural regions in Europe. Agriculture in the coastlands reached its apogee during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as is witnessed by the many impressive farm buildings established then. However, more recently, it has become clear that lowland farming and even the physical existence of the lowlands are in jeopardy, owing to rising sea levels and problems of drainage.This book offers a history of farming and water management on the North Sea coast, assessing the forces driving - and inhibiting - agricultural progress more broadly. It examines the ways in which farmers in the past dealt with the two main constraints on their decision-making: the natural environment and the human environment of institutional rules and customs regulating behaviour. It looks in particular at how setbacks were overcome, and how farming practices were improved which then raised the money with which to finance the maintenance of dykes, canals, and sluices.

Agriculture plays an essential role in the growth of developing economies, as agricultural production is key to food security and is closely intertwined with the livelihoods of many. This book explores the lives of smallholder agricultural farmers in India and the dire challenges that agricultural households face.Focussing on the Lakhpati Farmers initiative, the book examines interventions made by the programme to economically empower farmers and accelerate income growth in the agriculture sector. The programme, initiated by the Collectives for Integrated Livelihood Initiatives (CInI) in the tribal belts of central Indian states, helped farmers earn over INR 100,000 (or one lakh – hence Lakhpati) per annum. The programme engaged with households in 12 districts across 4 states – Jharkhand, Odisha, Maharashtra, and Gujarat – to bring about change through economic empowerment and improve the quality of life of tribal communities. This book documents these initiatives and strategies to meet the aspirations of small and marginal farmers by understanding the ingredients, processes, and challenges involved. The book analyses the programme, examines case studies, and offers ways forward.Part of the Innovations, Practice and the Future of Public Policy in India series, this volume will interest students and researchers of agriculture and rural development, business management, governance, public policy, development studies, and sociology.This book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

India, despite being largely rural, has struggled to maintain an adequate social infrastructure in its rural regions due to insufficient need-based development interventions, low public spending, limited market reach and a lack of individual contributions. Examining recent policy changes that are seeking to tackle these issues, Rural Social Infrastructure Development in India advocates for transformative change against the backdrop of poverty intervention and contemporary development discourse. Delving into a transformative journey focused on inclusive housing development and financial strategies, M Mahadeva celebrates and critically analyses milestones achieved in uplifting marginalised rural populations in India. Dissecting secondary data from official Indian authorities, the author scrutinises housing poverty, amenities deprivation and financial exclusion at both national and regional levels. Focusing on impactful programs like PMAY and PMJDY, chapters illuminate the interplay of public participation, political consensus and economic commitment in shaping rural social infrastructure. Aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and emphasizing the pivotal roles of individuals, public authorities and strategic public investment, Mahadeva underscores the critical role of safe housing, sanitation and financial citizenship in fostering well-being and sustainable human settlements. A compelling call to action for development impact on a global scale, this mission-driven work brings us one step closer to building a more inclusive India.

This book considers how basic income could be used as a mechanism for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in African agrarian societies.African agrarian societies are among those most severely impacted by disasters due to insufficient financial and technological resources to prepare for and respond to crises. This book argues that hazards and environmental disasters are increasingly not isolated occurrences, and the vulnerability of communities is cumulative event after event, with capacities to cope and adapt weakened progressively. With pre- and post-disaster operating as a single continuous process, basic income could provide communities with a stable flow of money, leaving them better able to adapt and respond to crises. To illustrate the theoretical framework, the book uses Mozambique, and more specifically the district of Búzi, as an instrumental case study.This innovative book will be of interest to readers across the fields of global development, African studies and humanitarian and disaster studies.

“Last spring I went to Rocky Crossing again. New green grass was sprouting on the high ridge of the road that led there, and now and then there grew a persimmon shoot, or a small hickory, where a nut had fallen and opened deep in the untrampled earth. But the ruts made long ago by passing wagons were still there, guiding the wheels of our car through the dense forest, around the boulders and between the tall trees. I was like a ghost returning to a place once loved.” These opening lines of Charlie May Simon's Straw in the Sun invite readers on a personal journey of remembrance as Simon recounts her homesteading experiment in Depression-era Arkansas. Years before she established herself as a regional author of national renown, she chose a spot near Cove Creek, now part of Ouachita National Forest, to forge a home from rugged land, meeting both a backbreaking series of challenges and a vivid cast of characters in the process. Nationally popular upon its release in 1945, Simon's lyrical memoir was praised from the outset for its warmth and charm. At once an ethnographic narrative of a hill community and an accessible portrait of Ozarks memories at their most idyllic, Straw in the Sun, offered here with a robust introduction from Simon scholar Aleshia O'Neal, is a classic ready for rediscovery by a new generation of readers.

Bridging the Digital Divide serves as a call to action for policymakers, technologists, entrepreneurs, and changemakers to join forces in creating a gender-just digital future. By fostering collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and sustainable ecosystems (explored in Chapter 16Building Sustainable Ecosystems Fostering Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing), this new book unlock the transformative potential of technology and empower rural women to become agents of positive change in their communities and beyond. This new book is a testament to the resilience, strength, and untapped potential of rural women in India. It celebrates their aspirations and provides a roadmap for harnessing the power of emerging technologies to uplift their lives, foster economic empowerment, and contribute to the nation overall development. This new book will be valuable asset to bridge the digital divide and pave the way for a more equitable and inclusive digital future.

This edited volume provides a holistic compilation of the diverse range of emerging scholarship in critical environmental justice studies in Nepal.This book brings together environmental justice scholarship set within a robust conceptual framework, focusing on a diversity of case studies from Nepal. Its locale-specific contextualization provides a unique analysis of the natural resource-based livelihoods common in the region, together with the health and well-being impacts of urban and industrial developments in its rapidly changing political, economic, social, and ecological environment. Centering contributions from Nepalese scholars and practitioners, this volume spans a wide range of topics, including the origins of environmental justice in Nepal, land and agriculture, conservation, infrastructure and development, Indigenous peoples, climate justice, and health equity. It reflects on the rise and development of social movements and public policy, discusses the further evolution of environmental justice, and highlights how the work of scholars, activists, and practitioners in the Nepalese context can enrich global conversations about social and environmental issues.This book will appeal to scholars, researchers, students, and activists in environmental justice, sustainable development, South Asian, and Himalayan studies.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license

This book intends to initiate a fresh articulation of need-based infrastructure provisions in rural contexts. Departing from the conventional theories and practices of infrastructure planning and development applied in urban settings, the book presents a comprehensive suite of technical and non-technical indicators that rationalise fit-for-purpose planning, development, and operations of rural infrastructure. Drawing from global practices in public and private sectors and research-based evidence, a distinctive argument is put forward for promoting location-specific infrastructure development from effectiveness, practicality, affordability, and sustainability perspectives. The argument encompasses wider social, cultural, and economic contexts that are unique to rural settings and the book highlights a clear roadmap of how the UN's sustainable development goals (SDGs) are at the core of developing rural communities with necessary infrastructure provisions that are purpose-built, affordable, risk averse, and resilient.This book will provide an overview of some of the little-understood and sometimes counter-intuitive best practices on rural infrastructure and value-based priorities that have emerged in uplifting rural communities in developing economies over the last 30 years. Drawing from the global literature and practice-based evidence across a complete spectrum of relevant disciplines, this book will provide readers with a clear articulation of the innovative ideas around harnessing rural potential, and empowering rural communities with added support in growth and progressive development in the context of interconnected infrastructure systems and improved living standards. It is key reading for development, planning, and infrastructure courses as well as professionals and researchers involved in international development, aid, and provision in rural areas.

For decades, the heartland of Myanmar has been configured as a pacified space under military surveillance. A closer look reveals how politics is enacted at distance with the state. Calibrated Engagement weaves together ethnography and history to chronicle the transformation of rural politics in Anya, the dry lands of central Myanmar. The book presents situations as varied as local elections, inheritance transmissions, land conflicts and ceremonies, to show that politics is about how people calibrate the way they engage with each other.

The arts and arts management exist in every corner of the world, from the largest city to the smallest town. However, just as a metropolis and a hamlet bear little resemblance to each other despite similar basic needs, arts organizations in the former frequently bear little resemblance to those in the latter, and many foundational arts management texts give little attention to rural settings. This book combines insights from research and practice to fill that knowledge gap and help readers understand arts administration in rural communities.Focusing on the North American setting but including comparative examples and references from around the world, this book examines how areas of practice familiar to any arts manager work in rural areas, including research and best practices for navigating the paucity of resources frequently encountered in rural communities. Emphasizing a “by rural, for rural” perspective, this book frames the arts as integral components of vibrant rural communities and valuable tools for meeting these communities'needs.Written by arts and nonprofit management professors with backgrounds in rural arts research and practice, this book provides a valuable resource for scholars, advanced students and reflective practitioners at the intersection of the arts and rural studies.

This volume represents the continuation of the initiative and vision of the Agricultural History Society of Ireland (AHSI) in publishing on topics related to rural and agricultural developments in Ireland. It marks their contribution to the Irish national discourse during the Irish ‘decade of commemorations'. Contributors to this volume include established academics and early career researchers.The volume fills many gaps in scholarship in a number of key areas of Irish rural history. In chapters discussing and assessing the divergent political aspirations of rural communities, the refocusing of agricultural education during this period of change, social and political transition of the largely rural population, and analysis of cultural positioning of Ireland pre and post revolution, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in agricultural and rural matters as well as students of Irish history.

In this rare approach to half a century of ethnographic study of a pastoral ethnic community in the hinterland of Iran, the emotional and judgmental reactions local people have to conventions and customs of their own culture is in sharp focus. The book rests on a longitudinal ethnographic study of an agro-pastoral group over five decades in a remote mountain area in Iran. The effects of hard work, poverty, and lifestyle changes over the past decades have moulded people's likes and dislikes, their comforts and pains and what they deem beautiful and ugly. In the aesthetics of everyday life, social structures, traditions and local habits provide many choices for behaviour and experiences, and also for the feelings the various options allow or even provoke. This focus on the cognitive and emotive side of culture affords insights into how rural/transhumant people evaluate their life conditions, their relationships to others, to nature, to time, to religion, and thus to the aesthetic dimension of their lives over half a century of rapid change.

This thought-provoking, accessible book critically examines the dominant food regime on its own terms, by seriously asking whether we can afford cheap food and by exploring what exactly cheap food affords us.The author shows why today's global food system produces just the opposite of what it promises. The food produced under this regime is in fact exceedingly expensive. Many of these costs will be paid for in other ways or by future generations and cheap food today may mean expensive food tomorrow. By systematically assessing these costs the book delves into issues related, but not limited to, the food system, the environment, sustainable development, health, and social justice. In this new edition the author brings all data and citations fully up to date. Increased coverage is given to many topics including climate change, vertical agriculture, global pandemics, geopolitical instability, agriculture 4.0, alternative proteins, and food justice. Detailing the numerous ways that our understanding of food has narrowed, such as its price per ounce, combination of nutrients, yield per acre, or calories, the book argues for a more contextual view of food when debating its affordability. Expanding an innovation introduced in the second edition, concrete case studies of collective mobilization can be found throughout all chapters to support a narrative that balances being critical with being hopeful.This book is essential reading for those interested in critical food studies, food and agriculture, and a sustainable and socially just food system.

Contemporary America is centered around urban society. Most Americans reside in cities or their surrounding suburbs, and both the media and modern American sociology focus disproportionately on urban life. Rural and Small-Town America looks at what we can learn from rural society and confronts common myths and misunderstandings about rural people and places. Tim Slack and Shannon M. Monnat examine social, economic, and demographic changes and how these changes pose both problems and opportunities for rural communities. They assess changes in population size and composition, economies and livelihoods, ethnoracial diversity and inequities, population health and health disparities, and politics and policies. The central focus of this book is that rural America is no paragon of stability. Social change abounds, accompanied by new challenges. Through analysis of empirical evidence, demographic data, and policy debates, readers will glean insights about rural America and the United States as a whole.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1959.

Half a century ago, deindustrialization gutted blue-collar jobs in the American Midwest. But today, these places are not ghost towns. People still call these communities home, even as they struggle with unemployment, poverty, and other social and economic crises. Why do people remain in declining areas through difficult circumstances? What do their choices tell us about rootedness in a time of flux?Through the cases of the former steel manufacturing hub of southeast Chicago and a shuttered mining community in Iron County, Wisconsin, Amanda McMillan Lequieu traces the power and shifting meanings of the notion of home for people who live in troubled places. Building from on-the-ground observations of community life, archival research, and interviews with long-term residents, she shows how inhabitants of deindustrialized communities balance material constraints with deeply felt identities. McMillan Lequieu maps how the concept of home has been constructed and the ways it has been reshaped as these communities have changed. She considers how long-term residents navigate the tensions around belonging and making ends meet long after the departure of their community's founding industry.Who We Are Is Where We Are links the past and the present, rural and urban, to shed new light on life in postindustrial communities. Beyond a story of Midwestern deindustrialization, this timely book provides broader insight into the capacious idea of home—how and where it is made, threatened, and renegotiated in a world fraught with change.

Named a C-SPAN Author Series Most Important Book of 2024 The hidden history of an economic and cultural crisis that is threatening our very food supply—the disappearance of the American farmer. Critically acclaimed with praise from across the political spectrum, Land Rich, Cash Poor reveals the urgent, unflinching truth. “An anthem to the family farm in America.” — AP News “A beautiful book. You won't want to put it down.” — Peter Slevin, contributing writer for The New Yorker “Well worth reading for those who care about what we eat and where it comes from.” — Mike Gousha, Emmy-award-winning journalist and PBS documentarian Taking on this working-class story of heart and hardship, award-winning writer and rural policy expert Brian Reisinger weaves forgotten eras of American history with his own family's four-generation fight for survival in Midwestern farm country. Readers learn the truth about America's most detrimental and unexplained socioeconomic crisis: How the family farms that feed us went from cutting a middle-class path through the Great Depression to barely making ends meet in modern America. Along the way, they'll see what it truly takes to feed our country: accidents that can kill or maim; weather that blesses or threatens; resilience in the face of crushing economic crises, from depressions and recessions to COVID-19; and the tradition that presses down on each generation when you're not just fighting for your job, you're fighting for your heritage. With newly analyzed data, sharp historical analysis, conversations with some of modern farming's most notable champions and critics alike, honest debate on both sides of the aisle and everywhere in between, and personal storytelling, Reisinger reveals how the hollowing out of rural America is affecting every single American dinner table. Food prices soaring far beyond the rate of inflation, a vulnerable food supply chain, environmental and ecological dilemmas, the security of our farmland from foreign adversaries, a mental health crisis that includes farmer suicides and addictions, a deepening urban-rural divide, and more worries than ever about what's for dinner. These are all becoming the hallmarks of a food system that has long stood as a modern miracle. The critically acclaimed Land Rich, Cash Poor offers the truth and what we can do—before it's too late.

Farmers, Indigenous organisations, government and private-sector intermediaries from remote Northern Australia often negotiate with private finance capital to gain funds for agricultural development.The concept of financialisation is used to explore the drivers and effects of agrifood restructuring in the area, while assemblage theory is applied to position local actors as potential sites of power in negotiating connections between local spaces and global finance. This book demonstrates that while financialisation is a useful signifier of patterns of global change, it is assembled by a diverse range of often contradictory work.

Like one of the ancient trees he wrote about so elegantly and perceptively, Oliver Rackham's roots run deep while his influence branches far. He was undoubtedly the leading scholar in landscape history and historical ecology, and his work continues to resonate not just with his peers but with a much wider public audience too. His combination of extensive archival research, meticulous fieldwork and place-name analysis were truly ground-breaking. He not only changed the way we think about the landscape; he in fact altered that landscape in turn – enriching, clarifying, bringing it to life. This book, which honours Rackham's memory, is a unique collection of contributions from leading global authorities on countryside and landscape history. A number of chapters come from individuals who were his friends and collaborators, and they each share a debt to his scholarship and methods. Ranging all over Europe from Białowieża Forest in Poland to the Mediterranean, and across the world from New England to northern Japan, the wealth of perspectives gathered here makes for a diverse and weighty discussion. Collectively, the contributions represent an acknowledgment of Rackham's huge impact and influence at the same time as offering a benchmark for current thinking in countryside history worldwide. This volume will appeal to researchers, postgraduate students, final-year undergraduates, lecturers and scholars on the one hand, but also to anyone who loves the countryside and is fascinated by its complex history. As we lose irreplaceable heritage landscapes to climate change and development, an understanding of what they are and what they mean only becomes more vital.

As the United States transformed itself from an agricultural to an industrial nation, thousands of young people left farm homes for life in the big city. But even by 1920 the nation's heartland remained predominantly rural and most children in the region were still raised on farms. Pamela Riney-Kehrberg retells their stories, offering glimpses—both nostalgic and realistic—of a bygone era.As Riney-Kehrberg shows, the experiences of most farm children continued to reflect the traditions of family life and labor, albeit in an age when middle-class urban Americans were beginning to redefine childhood as a time reserved for education and play. She draws upon a wealth of primary sources—not only memoirs and diaries but also census data—to create a vivid portrait of midwestern farm childhood from the early post-Civil War period through the Progressive Era growing pains of industrialization. Those personal accounts resurrect the essential experience of children's work, play, education, family relations, and coming of age from their own perspectives.Steering a middle path between the myth of wholesome farm life and the reality of work that was often extremely dangerous, Riney-Kehrberg shows both the best and the worst that a rural upbringing had to offer midwestern youth a time before mechanization forever changed the rural scene and radio broke the spell of isolation. Down on the farm, truancy was not uncommon and chores were shared across genders. Yet farm children managed to indulge in inventive play—much of it homemade—to supplement store-bought toys and to get through the long spells between circuses.Filled with insightful personal stories and graced with dozens of highly evocative period photos, Childhood on the Farm is the only general history of midwestern farm children to use narratives written by the children themselves, giving a fresh voice to these forgotten years. Theirs was a way of life that was disappearing even as they lived it, and this book offers new insight into why, even if many rural youngsters became urban and suburban adults, they always maintained some affection for the farm.

This book examines sanitation and toilet access across rural India, focusing on psychological, socio-cultural, infrastructural, and normative barriers to the initiative of Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). While sketching the evolution of sanitation policies in India, it assesses their impact on sanitation behaviour. It also studies the implications of variations in caste, religion, and geography on toilet usage across Indian states.By analysing data from various states and intensive micro-level studies of three states, i.e., rural Bihar, Gujarat, and Telangana, this volume: Suggests that socio-cultural factors are as significant as economic factors in shaping sanitation behaviour Argues that the concepts of cleanliness and pollution are often determined by the social-cultural context, rooted in historical events that have shaped traditional beliefs and ideas about space Explores gendered perspectives on the usage of and access to toilets Highlights the limited effectiveness of Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) programs in encouraging toilet adoption and emphasizes the need for information dissemination at the ground level Gives recommendations for enhancing the adoption of toilets in rural India, including provision for more than one toilet per household, uninterrupted access to water, and behavioural change to combat open defecation This book will be useful to students studying sociology, psychology, social work, and development studies. It will also be an invaluable companion to NGOs, social workers and activists actively involved in water, sanitation, and hygiene. Moreover, this book holds immense value as a pivotal resource and point of reference for policymakers engaged in rural development with a specific focus on Sustainable Development Goals.

The public healthcare system in rural India is chronically under-resourced. It embodies and often perpetuates the wider politics of the Indian state towards its rural communities with provisions of care that are deeply entangled with violence and disgust. For rural women, such care deepens reproductive chronicity while providing temporary relief. Grounded in women's everyday realities and experiences in sterilization camps and other healthcare settings in rural Rajasthan, State Intimacies examines the mundane workings, ambiguities and fragilities of care in post-colonial rural North India.

“I had been waiting for much of my life to read this extraordinary book…there are clues and messages for every fortunate reader who picks it up.” —Annie Proulx •A New York Times Book Review Editors'Choice• A landmark history of the peasant experience, exploring a now neglected way of life that once encompassed most of humanity, but is rapidly vanishing in our time.“What the skeleton is to anatomy, the peasant is to history, its essential hidden support.” For over the past century and a half, and most notably over the last seventy years, the world has become increasingly urban, and the peasant way of life—the dominant way of life for humanity since agriculture began well over 6,000 years ago—is disappearing. In this vital history of peasantry, social historian Patrick Joyce aims to tell the story of this lost world and its people, and how we can commemorate their way of life. In one sense, this is a global history, ambitious in scope, taking us from the urbanization of the early 19th century to the present day. But more specifically, Joyce's focus is the demise of the European peasantry and of their rites, traditions, and beliefs. Alongside this he brings in stories of individuals as well as places, including his own family, and looks at how peasants and their ways of life have been memorialized in photographs, literature, and in museums. Joyce explores a people whose voice is vastly underrepresented, and is usually mediated through others, in human history—and now peasants are vanishing in one of the greatest historical transformations of our time. Written with the skill and authority of a great historian, Remembering Peasants is a “first-class work” (Kirkus Reviews), a richly complex and passionate history written with exquisite care. It is also deeply resonant, as Joyce shines a light on people whose knowledge of the land is being irretrievably lost during our critical time of climate crisis and the rise of industrial agriculture. Enlightening, timely, and vitally important, this book commemorates an extraordinary culture whose impact on history—and the future—remains profoundly relevant.

In rural northern Idaho in the winter of 2013-2014, Syringa Mobile Home Park's water system was contaminated by sewage, resulting in residents'water being shut off for 93 days. By summer 2018 Syringa had closed, forcing residents to relocate or face homelessness. Trailer Park America chronicles how residents dealt with regulatory agencies, frequent boil order notices, threats of closure, and class-based social stigma over this period. Despite all this, what was seen as a dysfunctional, ‘disorderly'community by outsiders was instead a refuge where veterans, women heads of households, and people with disabilities or substance use disorders were supported and understood. The embattled Syringa community also organized to defend the rights and dignity of residents and served as a site for negotiating with local government, culminating in a class-action lawsuit that reached the federal level. The experiences Syringa residents faced in this conservative, predominately white region of the United States are emblematic of the growing national and global crisis in affordable housing and home ownership, with declining work conditions and incomes for the working-class.

Yongding County in southeast China is famous for its large, multistory communal vernacular buildings known as tulou, translated'rammed earth building.'These structures were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008. Living in Heritage introduces readers outside of China to this classic example of local Chinese architecture in the context of contemporary heritage preservation and tourism.Focusing on the Yongding Hakka Tulou Folk Culture Village, which is part of Hongkeng Village, author Lijun Zhang examines the on-the-ground processes and effects of heritage-making, UNESCO-inspired tourism, and how locals negotiate the dramatic transformation of their daily, social, and economic lives. Within an age of cultural change beginning at the start of the 21st century, Living in Heritage explores how the tulou phenomenon as heritage has and continues to be transformed into cultural, economic, or political capital. Through her careful study, Zhang reveals how the blurring of formerly distinct domains—private and public, local and global—gives rise to a living museum that now relies on insiders and outsiders to preserve their way of life.Living in Heritage offers an in-depth ethnographic account of the people dwelling and working within traditional tulou architecture in the 21st century.

This book presents an analysis of Johannesburg's Kwa Mai Mai market, which was once known to regulars as'a place of healing'and has experienced numerous changes of significant national transformation over time. It explores how the Kwa Mai Mai community, formerly a working class of migrants, reversed roles and took control of the means of production from the dominant class. Through their heightened cultural consciousness, this marginalised migrant community reimagined new economic realities and possibilities, forever distancing themselves from their painful, repressive past. This book chronicles the significance of cultural memory and discusses how it can be used as a weapon to not only resist subjugation but also to invoke entrepreneurial and creative spirit.Written out of the collective observations and interpretations of his ethnographic research spanning four years – Sipho Sithole's ‘Maye Maye'is dedicated to marginalised communities and those who, despite operating on the fringes of the economy, have sought to create their own fortune and destiny.Print edition not for sale in Sub Saharan Africa.

This volume presents insights on the challenges of digital communication and participation in agricultural and rural development. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that digital technology and mediated participation is more important and essential in managing ongoing communication for development projects than ever before. However, it has also underscored the various challenges and gaps in knowledge with digital participatory practices, including the further exclusion of marginalized groups and those with limited access to digital technology. The book considers how the concept of participation has been transformed by the realities of the pandemic, reflecting on essential principles and practical considerations of communication for development and social change, particularly in the context of global agriculture and food security, the well-being of rural communities, and evolving environmental challenges, such as climate change. In gathering these insights, this volume highlights lessons for the future of participatory development in communication for development and social change processes. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of agricultural and rural development, communication for development, digital communication, and sustainable development more broadly.

In August 1889, the five states that were once part of the Dakota 1861 Territory—North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho—drafted their state constitutions in preparation for inclusion in the United States. These constitutions were models of progressive and pragmatic values for their time. Wyoming, for instance, was the first state to grant women's suffrage. In addition to suffrage, delegates from these states banned child labor, curbed the power of railroads and grain monopolies, mandated state ownership of running water, opened voting eligibility, and created state-owned banks. These states, the “89ers,” as Samuel Western calls them, exhibited a spirit of commonweal inclusivity that set them apart.Much has changed since—and not for the better. Today, legislators in these five states have spurned these inclusive values. Instead, they promote the narrative of exclusion and lean toward authoritarianism. Legislators restrict voting, disenfranchise Native Americans, limit protests, squash public education, and discourage immigration initiatives, such as sanctuary cities. In their current condition, these states are in direct contradiction of the pragmatically inclusive and progressive values of their 1889 constitutions. The 89ers today are driven by ideological objections to political autonomy (stripping power from cities), fueling partisanship, and a rigid commitment to traditional commodity-based industries. Western sees hope for the future, but only if these states replace their fidelity to a particular idea of rural America with a more pragmatic openness to diversity and change—which will paradoxically bring them closer to the original spirit of their constitutions.Western calls for a radical rethinking of what rural America is and could be. As a long-time resident in Wyoming, he speaks not from the outside but as someone who personally cares about this region and its future prosperity. The Spirit of 1889 aims to shed light on how these states have drifted so far from where they began and what might be done to reclaim those original values.

This text provides an in-depth exploration of rural community literacy, examining the ways in which community-building, social networks, time, race, and politics interplay.Mapping the dense literacy sponsorship network of a small rural town in the southeastern United States, Nichols offers a window into the challenges and successes of collective literacy sponsorship. Through an original mapping-focused approach, the book explores multiple social and environmental layers that construct literacy sponsorship writ large.This approach provides a novel methodological entry to rural literacies and will be key reading for rural community literacy advocates, literacy scholars, graduate students, and researchers.

Moving beyond existing models from economics and political science, this book shows how crises in capitalism and democracy can be solved with Systemic coordinated inter-organizational networks.It offers a new model of societal coordination that builds cooperation and trust while solving today's modern and complex practical problems: Systemic coordinated inter-organizational networks (SCIONs). It details how SCIONs can quickly catalyze organizational change among interorganizational network members while providing a general framework for characterizing individual and organizational change. The chapters apply these theoretical ideas in an epic case study of the rebuilding of the health care system in rural Nicaragua after a major natural disaster (Hurricane Mitch). They provide lessons for public health program managers while contributing to the literatures on modes of coordination and on social capital.The book is a vital text for upper-division courses on management, inter-organizational collaboration, crisis management and public health.

Since the nation's independence, the union and state governments of India have employed a variety of development strategies, some of which have evolved over time. The model of development implemented in Bihar in recent decades is different from its prior development strategies. Along with a number of social reform initiatives, the Bihar government implemented the “development-with-justice” model to enhance the lives and living circumstances of the most marginalized groups of the population and ensure the attainment of social justice.In light of the aforementioned context, this book offers an understanding of the various aspects of the Bihar government's “development-with-justice” model, and the effects of its implementation on lives and quality of living conditions of the state's underprivileged population. The book covers a wide spectrum of areas such as history of social reform measures, social justice in education, health, labour market, etc., caste- and gender-based discrimination, women's empowerment, migrant workers, poverty, inequality, agrarian concerns, planning for development, and so on. Besides recommending policies to improve the state's development outcomes, this book will aid researchers in identifying topics that may require additional research.Clearly researched, concise, and up-to-date, this book will be useful to the students and researchers from the fields of development economics, development studies, gender studies, sociology, political science, economic history, as well as the policy-planners in the government.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing portrait and damning takedown of America's proudest citizens—who are also the least likely to defend its core principles“This is an important book that ought to be read by anyone who wants to understand politics in the perilous Age of Trump.”—David Corn, New York Times bestselling author of American PsychosisWhite rural voters hold the greatest electoral sway of any demographic group in the United States, yet rural communities suffer from poor healthcare access, failing infrastructure, and severe manufacturing and farming job losses. Rural voters believe our nation has betrayed them, and to some degree, they're right. In White Rural Rage, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman explore why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power and why, as a result, they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions. Their rage—stoked daily by Republican politicians and the conservative media—now poses an existential threat to the United States.Schaller and Waldman show how vulnerable U.S. democracy has become to rural Whites who, despite legitimate grievances, are increasingly inclined to hold racist and xenophobic beliefs, to believe in conspiracy theories, to accept violence as a legitimate course of political action, and to exhibit antidemocratic tendencies. Rural White Americans'attitude might best be described as “I love my country, but not our country,” Schaller and Waldman argue. This phenomenon is the patriot paradox of rural America: The citizens who take such pride in their patriotism are also the least likely to defend core American principles. And by stoking rural Whites'anger rather than addressing the hard problems they face, conservative politicians and talking heads create a feedback loop of resentments that are undermining American democracy.Schaller and Waldman provocatively critique both the structures that permit rural Whites'disproportionate influence over American governance and the prospects for creating a pluralist, inclusive democracy that delivers policy solutions that benefit rural communities. They conclude with a political reimagining that offers a better future for both rural people and the rest of America.

LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2024'Essential reading for anybody who wants to understand rural life'Patrick Galbraith, author of In Search of One Last Song'This is a book of life and why we should celebrate our roots before it is too late'John Connell, author of The Cow BookWhere Are the Fellows Who Cut the Hay? is an ode to rural life, charting traditions of the past, how they were lost and why we need to reconnect.Exploring the relationship between everyday items and the communities that make them, Robert Ashton provides a snapshot of twenty-first century England. Where are the people who grow barley, milk cows and produce wool? How have their farming methods become less ethical, sustainable and natural over time? And what are we doing today to reverse that change?Inspired by George Ewart Evans's Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay, Ashton gives voice to local people and travels rural Suffolk in search for innovation, interweaving his own personal connection to Evans and to the land. Part memoir, part social history, Ashton's thought-provoking book is a manifesto for why, against all odds, we need to step back in order to progress.

Accessing abortion services in rural areas under conditions of liberal abortion legislation is neither straightforward nor simple. As the South African example shows, the liberalisation of abortion legislation was the first step in granting pregnant persons access to abortion care. Despite this and some progress in implementation, many challenges persist resulting in a lack of services, especially in areas where distances and transport costs are a factor. Drawing on the findings of a study conducted in three rural districts of the Eastern Cape, the authors highlight the complexities involved in understanding problematic or unwanted pregnancies and abortion services within these communities; the reported barriers to, and facilitators of, access to abortion services among rural populations; and preferences for types of abortion services. A key finding is the conundrum of costs versus confidentiality: lack of confidentiality involves additional costs to access services outside the area; high costs mean that confidentiality may have to be foregone, which leads to stigma. The authors place the findings within a reparative reproductive justice framework and present a comprehensive set of recommendations. Abortion Services and Reproductive Justice in Rural South Africa is an insightful and informative resource – the first of its kind – for scholars in health and sociology, reproductive health policy makers, national planners, health facility managers and providers, and activists.