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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.

This edited book contains salient papers presented at the XII World Congress of Rural Sociology held in South Korea in 2008. These papers have been selected for their quality and have undergone a peer review process. The rationale behind this book rests on the desire to share the wealth of research presented at the World Congress with interested individuals who could not attend the event and it reflects the empirical work and thinking characterizing contemporary rural sociology. As this sociological sub-discipline evolves along with society and the rural world, it appears of paramount importance to make available ground-breaking research to the international scientific community. Rural sociology is changing and this volume testifies of this change by documenting the introduction of new themes of research as well as the evolution of established ones. In this regard, it provides a unique and uniquely international view of the most recent advanced production in rural sociology. The volume consists of eighteen chapters representing original pieces of research and an introduction that frames them in the context of the evolution of the discipline.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“I left the South in search of the Enlightenment. I'm pro-choice, in favor of gay marriage, and against creationism and the war in Iraq. But both my parents'people are deep Southern from many generations, and I spent a little over a third of my life, including the presumably most formative years (toilet training through college), living in the South. Mathematically, that makes me just about exactly as Southern as the American people, 34 percent of whom are Southern residents. But it goes deeper than math—my roots are Southern, I sound Southern, I love a lot of Southern stuff, and when my [Northern] local paper announces a festival to ‘celebrate the spirit of differently abled dogs,'I react as a Southerner. I believe I care as much about dogs'feelings as anybody. It is hard for me to imagine that a dog with three legs minds being called a three-legged dog.”A sly, dry, hilarious collection of essays—his first in more than ten years—from the writer who, according to The New York Times Book Review, is “in serious contention for the title of America's most cherished humorist.”This time Blount focuses on his own dueling loyalties across the great American divide, North vs. South. Scholarly, raunchy, biting and affable, ol'Roy takes on topics ranging from chicken fingers to yellow-dog Democrats to Elvis's toes. And he shares experiences: chatting with Ray Charles, rounding up rattlesnakes, watching George and Tammy record, meeting an Okefenokee alligator (also named George, or Georgette), imagining Faulkner's tennis game, and being swept up, sort of, in the filming of Nashville. His yarns, analyses, and flights of fancy transcend all standard shades of Red, Blue, and in between.Roy on language: “Remember when there was lots of agitated discussion of Ebonics, pro and con? I kept waiting for someone to say that if you acquire white English, you can become Clarence Thomas, whereas if you acquire black English, you can become Quentin Tarantino.”Roy on eating: “The way folks were meant to eat is the way my family ate when I was growing up in Georgia. We ate till we got tired. Then we went “Whoo!” and leaned back and wholeheartedly expressed how much we regretted that we couldn't summon up the strength, right then, to eat some more.”Roy on racism: “Anybody who claims... not to have ‘a racist bone'in his or her body is, at best, preracist and has a longer way to go than the rest of us.”Blount's previous books have included reflections on a Southern president (Jimmy Carter), a novel about a Southern president (Clementine Fox), a biography of Robert E. Lee, a celebration of New Orleans, a memoir of growing up in Georgia, and the definitive anthology of Southern humor. Long Time Leaving is the capper. Maybe it won't end the Civil War at last, but it does clarify, or aptly complicate, divisive delusions on both sides of the longstanding national rift. It's a comic ode to American variety and also a droll assault on complacency North and South—a glorious union of diverse pieces reshaped and expanded into an American classic, from one of the most definitive and esteemed humorists of our time.

This book explores the multiple effects of globalization on urban and rural communities, providing anthropological case studies from postsocialist Bulgaria. As globalization has been studied largely in urban contexts, the aim of this volume is to shift attention to the under-examined countryside and analyse how transnational links are transforming relations between cities, towns and villages in Bulgaria. Since the opening of borders after the end of socialism (1989) and Bulgaria's EU accession (2007), rural communities have been drawn into new transnational connections and global ‘shortcuts'that transcend the framework of the (formerly socialist) nation-state. The case studies of this volume demonstrate that apart from cities, villages and towns are also increasingly exposed to global flows and economic inequalities, resulting in the remaking of rural places. As a result of increased mobility and growing transnational and global connections, boundaries are fading between cities and the countryside and between Bulgaria and Europe. Some Bulgarian villages are winners while others are losers as a result of this development, leading to a situation of extreme rural diversity. This book aims to challenge undifferentiated notions of ‘the countryside', calling for a greater awareness of rural economic and social disparities which are often only associated with urban environments. It also focuses on how the ‘urban'and ‘rural'have been reconfigured in Bulgaria following the end of socialism and the advent of globalization, in socioeconomic as well as political, ideological and cultural terms. The volume is based on a collection of papers presented at a workshop that took place at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies on 29 and 30 May 2008.

Located near the southern edge of the Pennsylvania anthracite, the town of St. Clair in the early half of the 19th century seemed to be perfectly situated to provide fuel to the iron and steel industry that was the heart of the Industrial Revolution in America. It was a time of unprecedented promise and possibility for the region, and yet, in the years between 1830 and 1880, only grandiose illusions flourished there. St. Clair itself succumbed early on to a devastating economic blight, one that would in time affect anthracite mining everywhere. In this dramatic work of social history, Anthony F. C. Wallace re-creates St. Clair in those years when expectations collided with reality, when the coal trade was in chronic distress, exacerbated by the epic battles between the forces of labor and capital. As he did in his Bancroft Prize-winning Rockdale, Wallace uses public records and private papers to reconstruct the operation of an anthracite colliery and the life of a working-man's town totally dependent upon it. He describes the labor hierarchy of the collieries, the communal spirit that sprang up in the outlying mine patches, the polyglot immigrant life in the taverns and churchs, and the workingmen's societies that provided identity to the miners and gave relief to families in distress. He examines the birth of the first effective miners'union and documents the escalating antagonism between Irish immigrant workers—mostly Catholic—and the Protestant middle classes who owned the collieries. Wallace reveals the blindness, greed, and self-congratulation of the mine owners and operators. These “heroes” of the entrepreneurial wars disregarded geologists'warnings that the coal seams south of St. Clair were virtually inaccessible and, at best, extremely costly to mine, and then blamed their economic woes on the lack of a high tariff on imported British iron. To cut costs, they ignored the most basic and safety engineering practices and then blamed “the careless miner” and “Irish hooligans” for the catastrophic accidents that resulted. In thrall to a great dream of wealth and power, they plunged ahead to bankruptcy while the miners paid with their lives. St. Clair is a rich and illuminating work of scholarship—an engrossing portrait of a disaster-prone industry (a portrait that stands as a sober warning to the nuclear-power industry) and of the tragic hubris of a ruling class that brough ruin upon a Pennsylvania coal town at a crucial moment in its history.

As the title suggests, From the Ground Up explores the country's recovery from natural disaster and military conflict from the perspectives of various participants, including scholars, practitioners, and ordinary Acehnese. Across the chapters, there is a sensitivity to Acehnese views, interests, and agency. This is buttressed by the inclusion of several Acehnese authors and a sustained inquiry, based on extensive fieldwork or personal engagement, into a society's recovery at the intersection of international, national, and local action. The papers provide useful insights into the roles played by'external'parties in ending the conflict, such as the Indonesian leaders and the Aceh Monitoring Mission. The book raises important questions about recovery from disaster and conflict

This book contains ten studies of contemporary rural development in Germany and the UK. Based on papers presented at the Third Anglo-German Meeting of Rural Geographers, the book focuses on two key'transitions'occurring in the countryside. The first reflects the impact of global forces on agriculture, with family farming struggling to survive in the face of rising costs and the power wielded by large supermarket chains. The second examines responses to the multi-faceted changes within rural areas: depopulation and decline in rural communities, pressures to maintain the environmental quality of rural areas, the growth of tourism, the creation of new rural-based industries as well as local responses to the threats and opportunities associated with globalization. This book highlights both similarities and distinct differences between Germany and the UK as they both experience a range of rural and agricultural transitions. Strong emphasis is placed upon the way in which different outcomes are occurring based on the intricate interplay between global and local forces.

Proceedings of a conference held at the University of Kent, 11th and 12th October 2008There has been, in recent years, a quickening of interest in the condition of Italy and state of those who lived there during the Roman republic. The diverse nature of the evidence, both historical and archaeological, has stimulated scholarly debate. New techniques and ideas are being brought to bear on old questions with interesting results. The papers in this volume, by both historians and archaeologists, are a contribution to the debate. They look at Italy and Rome from an Italian as well as from a Roman perspective. Dogmatism has been avoided in order to present different viewpoints and individual perspectives. Out of such diversity there eventually comes progress in understanding.A wide range of topics will be found scrutinised and discussed here. Issues covered include villas, the ager publicus and agriculture, Italian participation in Roman politics, Roman agricultural writers and some of the methodological problems our evidence poses.

China's recent economic growth has expanded industrialization and urbanization, upgraded consumption, increased social mobility, and initiated a shift from an agricultural-based economy to one based on services and industry. However, more than half of China's population still lives in rural areas, where the average per capital income is less than a third of the urban average. The government of China has increased its commitment to rural development and poverty-reduction programs, with attention to narrowing the rural-urban divide. Informatization—defined as the transformation of an economy and society driven by information and communications technology (ICT)—is increasingly being explored as a way of helping poor people. Rural Informatization in China presents an overview and in-depth analysis of rural ICT initiatives in China. This study reviews the present-day status of China's rural informatization infrastructure, examines and summarizes by organizational model the key initiatives in the past decade, and provides policy recommendations to address current challenges. Case studies of different financing models of rural ICT initiatives from China and other countries are included.

“I speak in what others often hear as a strange accent. My past can't be located. I live in Buffalo, New York, an exile from the South. But these aren't Yankee dreams, even though my past seems like a fabrication, a dreamworld in which I'm a paper character and not a historical participant, with scars from barbed wire ripping under the pressure and flying through the air like a swarm of bees, or a horse rearing up and banging its head into mine from within, exploding my forehead.” —from the Preface Wisteria draped on a soldier's coffin, sent home to Alabama from a Virginia battlefield. The oldest standing house in the county, painted gray and flanked by a pecan orchard. A black steel fence tool, now perched atop a pile of books like a prehistoric bird of prey. In Dreamworlds of Alabama, Allen Shelton explores physical, historical, and social landscapes of northeastern Alabama. His homeplace near the Appalachian foothills provides the setting for a rich examination of cultural practices, a place where the language of place and things resonates with as much vitality and emotional urgency as the language of humans. Throughout the book, Shelton demonstrates how deeply culture is inscribed in the land and in the most intimate spaces of the person—places of belonging and loss, insight and memory. Born and raised in Jacksonville, Alabama, Allen Shelton is associate professor of sociology at Buffalo State College.

Out of sight, out of mind... Into our trash cans go dead batteries, dirty diapers, bygone burritos, broken toys, tattered socks, eight-track cassettes, scratched CDs, banana peels.... But where do these things go next? In a country that consumes and then casts off more and more, what actually happens to the things we throw away? In Garbage Land, acclaimed science writer Elizabeth Royte leads us on the wild adventure that begins once our trash hits the bottom of the can. Along the way, we meet an odor chemist who explains why trash smells so bad; garbage fairies and recycling gurus; neighbors of massive waste dumps; CEOs making fortunes by encouraging waste or encouraging recycling-often both at the same time; scientists trying to revive our most polluted places; fertilizer fanatics and adventurers who kayak amid sewage; paper people, steel people, aluminum people, plastic people, and even a guy who swears by recycling human waste. With a wink and a nod and a tightly clasped nose, Royte takes us on a bizarre cultural tour through slime, stench, and heat-in other words, through the back end of our ever-more supersized lifestyles. By showing us what happens to the things we've'disposed of,'Royte reminds us that our decisions about consumption and waste have a very real impact-and that unless we undertake radical change, the garbage we create will always be with us: in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we consume. Radiantly written and boldly reported, Garbage Land is a brilliant exploration into the soiled heart of the American trash can.

The present book is a collection of 9 papers and notes from the field in the area of community participation. This edited volume is a sequel to Volume One of the series'Learning to Share,'edited by members of the SRIJ group and published in 1997 by the Concept Publishing Company. The contributors to this volume are development practitioners, engaged in Participatory Action Research (PAR). Their contributions in this volume are the outputs of'participatory research'based on open-ended field inquiry and action as distinct from conventional'academic research.'The present edited volume is a step forward in continuing with the process of learning in community participation. Often there is considerable experience to be shared by development practitioners who organize and facilitate such participation and also help in sustaining it. In this direction, the contributions livelihood and participatory impact assessment. The book provides a glimpse of such activities in different areas and locations as contributed by field practitioners. The book is meant for development practitioners, governmental and non-governmental organizations, donor agencies, action researchers and other involved in the area of community participation.

This volume based on recent fieldwork by distinguished specialists includes information on the changing economic situation in the countryside, particularly after the'owners and tenants'law of 1992. Along with the effects of structural adjustment on agriculture, marketing, and rural life, several chapters address the declining trend of rural Egyptians to emigrate. Other chapters examine changes in consumption patterns and health, various rural social processes and the'new lands'being reclaimed in Egypt's desert areas, representations of the rural population in the media and in statistics, and their own changing self-image. What emerges is a picture of a rural Egypt that is full of life, dramatically evolving, and treading a delicate line between progress and impoverishment. Although nothing is typical of rural Egypt, these papers provide a revealing account of the struggles and rewards that characterize the Egyptian countryside today. Contributors: Mohamed Hassan Abdel Aal, Lila Abu-Lughod, Soraya Altorki, Kamran Asdar Ali, Kirsten Haugaard Bach, Ray Bush, Donald Cole, Nicholas Hopkins, François Ireton, Sohair Mehanna, Günter Meyer, Timothy Mitchell, Mohamed M. Mohieddin, Detlef Müller-Mahn, Hans-Christian Korsholm Nielsen, Malak Rouchdy, Reem Saad, Hania Sholkamy, James Toth, Kirsten Westergaard, Peter Winch, Ahmed Zayed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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

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.

'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.

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.

“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.

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.

Informative, insightful, and startlingly entertaining, The Co-operators is the untold story of the rise and fall and rise again of one of the most resilient and innovative forces for social and economic change Nova Scotia has ever created. Veteran journalist Alec Bruce traces the journey of Nova Scotia's credit unions and co-operative enterprises from their humble beginnings in early 20th-century resource-dependent communities to their modern influence as economic innovators in towns, cities, and suburbs across the province. Through the eyes of its bankers, entrepreneurs, and leaders – in particular, the Nova Scotia Co-operative Council – Bruce paints a rich and engaging tapestry of the “private sector” nobody knows. Meet the dynamic, charismatic, and brilliantly flawed founders Moses Coady and Jimmy Tompkins giving average families hope and means to run their own businesses, create their own jobs, and build their own houses in the midst of the Great Depression. Read how the dream almost died during the post-World War II era, and later, suppressed by big government and business. Learn how the new generation of 21st-century Co-operative Council thinkers and doers have brought it back from the brink to speak compellingly and persuasively to a new generation of dreamers and doers. As The Co-operators shows, the “movement” is alive and well and better than ever, illustrating how people not only can, but do, work together to solve, survive, and succeed; how they are creating educational and employment opportunities for aspiring young folks and entrepreneurial ventures that are both locally relevant and globally competitive; how they are tackling tough problems, like affordable housing and food security, with equal measures of compassion and practicality. The message is as powerful today as it was 75 years ago.

Tackling a global and seismic problem such as climate change requires an equally extensive approach. Investigating current scientific knowledge about climate change in public and policy discussions, as well as the connections between social, economic, and political discourse, The Social Consequences of Climate Change takes a take a multifaceted approach to one of the biggest challenges of our time. Understanding the role of climate conditions in all aspects of human society – where we live, how we build, how we move – chapters wield relevant approaches and techniques from across disciplines to reframe issues that are essential to improving sustainability and capturing innovative solutions to the climate problem. Covering the role of businesses in combatting climate change, environmental health, the vulnerability of urban communities, the nexus between climate, economy and society, climate and national and international agendas, and more, the authors clarify both scientific and policy arguments about the social repercussions of climate change to offer a working basis for seeking solutions. A rich collection of reflections from across the social sciences, this is vital reading for researchers and policymakers invested in how best to respond to a world of increasing climate extremes.

Acclaimed author Tom Wayman's account of his shift from urban to rural. The recent pandemic accelerated an existing trend among urban Canadians to move to the country. Yet to quote from a 2022 Globe and Mail article, “People from cities don't always realize what they're getting into.” For anyone setting out in that direction, or dreaming of doing so, Tom Wayman's The Road to Appledore, or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place is rewarding reading. The book follows Wayman from Vancouver to southeastern BC's Slocan Valley, deep in the Selkirk Mountains, and presents with his characteristic humor and philosophical insight his ensuing major shifts of perspective and knowledge. Mishaps, misadventures and moments of delight and wonder abound in Wayman's prose reflections on his decades of living immersed in nature and the contemporary rural: from having to deal with a bear cub in his kitchen to engaging in a vigilante action to protect a community water system to the quiet satisfaction of growing his own food and flowers. Wayman depicts the rural southwest of Canada in intimate detail and a sense of wonder; readers will be transported alongside him.

Bringing a unique rural lens to the analysis of dark tourism in Australia, this book covers a range of sites including convict museums, sites of serial killings and colonial violence, ghost tours and the emerging tourism of bushfire sites. While some rural communities develop a ‘dark tourism strategy'to maintain economic viability, others may distance themselves from what they perceive to be unethical tourism practices. Jenny Wise examines the roles geographical locations play in dark tourist sites, and how their histories are portrayed, considering how the concept of the rural idyll or dystopia plays a part in Australia's national identity.

This book sketches a road map of privatisation, accumulation and dispossession of communal land in the tribal areas of North East India from pre-colonial times to the neo-liberal era.Spread over five chapters, this study unfolds the privatisation of communal land in the backdrop of a larger theoretical and historical canvas. It deals with the different institutional modes of privatisation, accumulation and dispossession of communal land, the changes in land use and cropping patterns, the changes in land relations and the land-based identity of the tribal community as a result. The conclusive chapter makes a broader reflection of the grand narrative of privatisation, accumulation and dispossession of communal land in North East India.This title is co-published with Aakar Books. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

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.

Rethinking Rural Studies presents an explicitly trans-disciplinary perspective on rural social science. David L. Brown and Mark Shucksmith identify emerging issues and research avenues on the topic, highlighting opportunities for rural studies to contribute towards greater collective wellbeing.This timely book moves away from a binary division of rural and urban to posit that rural and urban areas are closely interrelated through social, economic, demographic and environmental processes. The authors emphasize the central role that power plays in structuring vulnerabilities and opportunities, and indicate the emerging possibilities caused by greater rural agency. Ultimately they argue that this is a critical time to rethink rural studies, asking how and what rural studies can contribute towards better rural futures.Written in an accessible style, this book is an invigorating read for scholars of sociology, human geography, planning and urban studies and population studies. The sustained focus on how social science research can promote social and spatial justice and equality also makes this an important read for those studying inequality.

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.

This book explores the dynamic interactions between the state and society during the industrialization of South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on rural women as a marginalized social group.By illuminating rural women's interactions with the state and their aspirations for entering the middle class, it effectively reveals insights into the gender and class perspectives of industrialization in South Korea. Utilizing an analysis of personal letters from peasant movement activists, documents and periodicals issued by the Korean Catholic Peasant Women's Organization, as well as in-depth interviews with farmers, housewives, activists of the peasant movements, and governmental officers, this book represents a reconsideration of state-society relations, as well as a reinterpretation of housewife ideology theory.Highlighting the often-invisible experiences of marginalized rural women, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Korean Studies, Women's Studies, and Rural Studies.

Climate change. Habitat loss. Soil erosion. Groundwater depletion. Toxins in our food. Inhumane treatment of farm animals. Increasing farm worker exploitation. Hunger and malnutrition in the midst of plenty. What will it take for farmers in the United States to embrace sustainable practices?Michael Mayerfeld Bell's Farming for Us All first tackled this question twenty years ago, providing crucial insight into how the structure of US agriculture created this situation and exploring, by contrast, the practices of farmers who are working together to radically change how they think, learn, and grow. This updated edition of his now-classic work reflects on the lessons learned over the past two decades.Constrained by an oppressive nexus of markets, regulations, subsidies, and technology, farmers find themselves undermining their own economic and social security as well as the security of the land. Bell turns to Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI), that state's largest sustainable-agriculture group. He traces how PFI creates an agriculture that engages others—farmers, researchers, officials, and consumers—in a common conversation about what agriculture could look like. Through dialogue, PFI members crossbreed knowledge, discovering pragmatic solutions to help crops grow in ways that sustain families, communities, societies, economies, and environments.Farming for Us All makes the case that for sustainable farming to flourish, new social relations are as important to cultivate as new crops. This book is necessary—and hopeful—reading for anyone concerned about the present and future of food and farming.

Over the last four decades, China has witnessed dramatic economic growth, transforming into an economic powerhouse with considerable consequences for its rural regions. In this timely book, Guy M. Robinson adeptly navigates the principal elements, key events and significant changes of the transformation of China's countryside.Chapters assess economic, social, and environmental aspects of China's rural transformation, examining the central role of the Chinese Communist Party and government policies in shaping this change. Offering an interdisciplinary perspective, Robinson comprehensively explores the key events in the transition from a rural peasant society to a countryside that is a complex mosaic of ‘hollowed'villages, ‘desakota'peri-urban fringes, farming landscapes, tourist attractions, new villages, ‘left behind'children and elderly, wholesale rural poverty alleviation, and degraded and newly restored ecosystems.This book will prove to be an essential read for academics and students of geopolitics, human geography, environmental studies, economics and finance, and development studies focusing on China. It will also be an invigorating read for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Chinese and Asian studies.

How second homeowners strategically leverage their privilege across multiple spacesIn recent decades, Americans have purchased second homes at unprecedented rates. In Privileging Place, Meaghan Stiman examines the experiences of predominantly upper-middle-class suburbanites who bought second homes in the city or the country. Drawing on interviews with more than sixty owners of second homes and ethnographic data collected over the course of two years in Rangeley, Maine, and Boston, Massachusetts, Stiman uncovers the motivations of these homeowners and analyzes the local consequences of their actions. By doing so, she traces the contours of privilege across communities in the twenty-first century.Stiman argues that, for the upper-middle-class residents of suburbia who bought urban or rural second homes, the purchase functioned as a way to balance a desire for access to material resources in suburban communities with a longing for a more meaningful connection to place in the city or the country. The tension between these two contradictory aims explains why homeowners bought second homes, how they engaged with the communities around them, and why they ultimately remained in their suburban hometowns. The second home is a place-identity project—a way to gain a sense of place identity they don't find in their hometowns while still holding on to hometown resources. Stiman's account offers a cautionary tale of the layers of privilege within and across geographies in the twenty-first century.