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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

When Kent Meyers was sixteen years old, his father died of a stroke. There was corn to plant, cattle to feed, and a farm to maintain. Here, in a fresh and vibrant voice, Meyers recounts the wake of his father's death and reflects on families, farms, and rural life in the Midwest. Meyers tells the story of growing up on the farm, from the joys of playing in the hayloft as a boy to the steady pattern of chores. He describes the power of winter prairie winds, the excitement of building a fort in the woods, and the self-respect that comes from canning 120 quarts of tomatoes grown on your own land. Meyers's father is the central figure around whom these memories revolve. After his father's death, Meyers fills his shoes out of necessity and respect. In doing so, he discovers that his father was a great teacher and that he himself is no longer a boy but a man. Perhaps the most moving passages of The Witness of Combines acknowledge the simultaneous sadness and pride of growing up in response to death. Meyers recalls planting and harvesting the last crop, selling the family farm, and other emotional moments in a testament to his father, the family bond, and the value of hard work. Meyers's perspective on life in the Midwest elegantly weaves daily farm life with his coming of age story, drawing readers from all walks of life into this brave and poignant work. “Meyers tells stories with precision and joy. He understands how the rhythms of the land bind farmers, give them hope and purpose.” Linda Hasselstrom, author of Land Circle side bar quote: “The Witness of Combines is written with simple, poetic dignity and a savvy for the land that can only come from having been raised up in it with eyes wide open.” Sam Shepard, author of Fool for Love ISBN 0-8166-3104-2 Paper $16.95 248 pages 5 x 8 August Translation inquiries: University of Minnesota Press