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Comments on an article about technology diffusion. Concept of technology diffusion; Political and economic relevance of technology; Perspective on Asian agricultural development.

The article focuses on the issues on the restrained revolution of the newspaper industry in Asia. Press Foundation of Asia director Amitabha Chowdhury says that Asian newspaper is unable to maximize its revolution as it lack some powerful catalysts including lower newspaper price, market identification, and media design. It states that despite having press freedom, some constitutions in Asia are being suspended for emergency conditions; thus, shows press freedom to be on the hands of the government. It adds that the industry also faces economic problems such as finance for newsprint, modern equipment, and their own plants and the purchasing power of customers. It explores the conditions of newspaper industries in various Asian countries including Burma, Ceylon, and Philippines.

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article focuses on the comparative content analysis of the Arabic press. The purpose of this analysis was to determine the extent to which the reading publics in various Arab countries are being exposed to news of international events. Secondly, the kind of information the press is transmitting and the relative attention it is paying to events involving different countries of Europe, Asia and Africa. Lastly, the favorable or unfavorable images of these other countries that this information is likely to convey to the readers. The content analysis was carried out in two phases. The first concerned the content of the entire newspaper. In this phase, printed space was measured and multiplied by the average number of pages per issue to obtain base totals for each prestige paper. The second phase of the analysis was confined to the first page only. Items appearing on this page were classified in greater detail. In the study it was found that, despite the small size of many Arabic newspapers, papers, internationally significant news, as opposed to news of local or regional reference, absorbs a surprisingly high percentage of total space. Objective changes in the world power situation and in the nature of Arab-Western interaction have not succeeded in suppressing the Arab's preoccupation with external affairs.

In the postwar years numerous controversies have raged over the adequacy of the levels of food consumption in underdeveloped areas. Usually, the food issue appears to be discussed from the standpoint of health; in this paper, we ask whether food consumption is adequate for work purposes, as distinct from problems of health. In brief, our answer is that for the majority of working Asians, food intake is probably less than optimal from the economic viewpoint. In the concluding sections, the implications for economic development analysis are delineated. The first portions of the paper will evaluate the various qualitative findings of food consumption and concepts of requirements, after which a hypothesis designed to interpret the data will be presented. The discussion will focus on calorie intake which largely determines the output of energy in human physiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluates various papers focusing on social development in Asia. Land reforms and agrarian change in India; Examination of professional profiles and employment problems in selected countries; Analysis of the political sociology of the process of economic development; Agrarian framework for development.

A conference paper about the Asian influence in Europe is presented. It talks about the Tartar influence in European Russia. The author discusses his travels through Russia and the crossing of the Caucasus Mountains into Europe. Subjects of the paper also include tribes of Jews in the mountains, the Armenian Plain, and Tartar mill-work.

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents a list of articles, books, etc., used in cross-referencing some general topics. The article 'Economic Survey of Asia and the Far East,' discuses the substitution of home produced for imported goods for home use and the addition of manufactured goods to the traditional basic commodity exports. It is also a thorough economic study of the ECAFK area's agriculture, industry, and trade. The article "Some Consequences of Segmentation in India," discuses such areas as modernization of customs and economy are considered to be affected by the fragmentation of India's society. The article "New Zealand: Denmark of the South Pacific," presents an economic survey including material on opportunities for selling and investing there by U. S. companies. The article "Politics of Change in Latin America," is a collection of 13 essays by historians, political scientists, economists, and anthropologists on social, economic and political conditions. The article "Focus on East Anglia," is a factual report on industrial conditions and new plants in a section of southeast England.

Using an ecological perspective, one aspect of the relationship of social distance and physical distance is analyzed in the three largest cities in Israel. The principal aim of the paper is to examine ethnic (country of origin) residential segregation as an indicator of social patterning within the society. Despite the different demographic, topographical and functional characteristics of the three cities, fairly similar patterns of ethnic segregation are found using the technique of Smallest Space Analysis (SSA-I) to analyze index of dissimilarity matrices. Patterns of ethnic segregation are then related to the SES of sub-quarters to determine the nature of the internal structure of the cities. It is suggested that ethnicity is an important variable in the process of social stratification in urban Israel, at least insofar as ecological relationships are concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on nationalism in United States. There are scores of new States in Asia and Africa that are trying to set up free societies. It is a "new birth of freedom" on a grand scale. It is in fact freedom's greatest test, for it involves the older free regimes of Europe and the United States. If truth counts over charity, then one must point out that the new States will fail, if not all, then all but a few. Some are already succumbing to the initial perils of liberty that the last paper of the Federalist warned Americans against: "anarchy, civil war, a perpetual alienation of the States from each other, and perhaps the military despotism of a victorious demagogue." The real wonder is in believing that national unity could ever arise in freedom among the many units that nowadays arrogate to themselves the name of nation. They are nations only to the map maker. Many are areas marked off only for colonial administrative convenience; some have dozens, even hundreds, of languages, several antagonistic religions; a still uncounted welter of tribes living in mutual ignorance or traditional war; and above all there stands the great gulf between the village primitive and the urban modern.

The purpose of this research paper is to enlarge the dimension of agrarian reform programs by considering them as a part of the community development role in agrarian improvement and economic development in general. The author's hypothesis shall be that community development programs are a necessary condition for economic development. Implicit in the author's discussion is the thought that community development programs can extend beyond traditional supporting services such as credit availability, technical advice and marketing co-operatives. In some countries, extensive agricultural support programs may, however, qualify for "full-blown" community development status. The contention is that for agrarian reform to make significant economic contributions, major support activities are required. After surveying rural agriculture in Japan, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines, the author concluded that one institution appeared to stand above all others as a requisite for the existence of a strong agricultural sector and that is viable farmer associations.

This paper discusses the problems of industrial development in Asian countries which show high densities of rural population and contrasts their probable pattern of industrialization with that of economically more highly advanced European countries. When an approximately equal proportion of the population of western European countries was dependent upon primary production, as is the case now in agriculture in most Asian countries, agricultural densities were only roughly a fourth as great as in Asia to-day. Yet in western Europe despite emigration of "surplus" labour and relatively large capital supplies, industrialization proceeded only fast enough to skim off the net addition to population in primary production. In Asia population press tire is higher than in Europe in the past arid capital is scarcer. Hence it is not probable that industrialization will proceed to the same degree arid in the same form as in. Europe. In place of generally large-scale production, many small and cottage industries are likely to develop These have lower productivity and hence lower wages than large industry, and the persistence of small-scale industry will impose the need to maintain separate labour markets for large and small industry. The maintenance of existing harriers or the introduction of new impediments to social mobility can be expected to provide a mechanism for an imperfectly "universalist" labour market in Asian countries and the continued existence of non-competing groups ha the industrial labour force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues the need for trade co-operation to increase regional trade among the developing countries of Asia as a major component in the solution to the region's long-term development problems. In the course of this, it examines the existing pattern of trade within the region and its prospects, the state of trade policies, the implications of other regional schemes for economic co-operation, and the feasibility of trade co-operation policies. A detailed quantitative analysis of these problems would be monumental; the literature that already exists gives an idea of the scope of the task involved and, frequently, the inadequacy of the data. The more modest aim here is to make a largely qualitative assessment using broad statistical aggregates. Since, however, the problem of accelerated development from low per capita income levels is a dynamic one, this type of analysis can be illuminating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an abstract of the article "Asian Languages -- A U.S. Weakness and What Can Be Done About It," by Shirley Duncan Hudson, published in the Summer 1955 issue of the journal "ACLS Newsletter."

In recent years the rank-dimensional approach to the analysis of social stratification has become increasingly prominent. One of its advocates, Johan Galtung, has made relations between nations his major point of empirical reference. The present paper applies rank-dimensional analysis to the deprived nations of Africa and Asia (or the so-called Third World) in an attempt to grasp the degree of rank homogeneity within the group and to relate its rank characteristics to the more privileged nations in the global system. This exercise demonstrates that there is a linear relationship between total rank and rank disequilibrium in the Afro-Asian group; a finding which has a number of significant theoretical ramifications. The major theoretical innovation in this connexion is the concept of rank divergence-defined as the degree to which a unit in a system of stratification diverges from the typical relational pattern holding between the unit's total rank and rank disequilibrium scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses various ways to be followed for conducting a social research in a particular country. It is natural to turn to the methods of empirical social research which lends itself to the investigation of the motives, opinions, behavior patterns and reactions of populations and attempt to apply them to the peoples of Asia and Africa, the young countries which are now being industrialized. In this way it is hoped to gain some insight into the way of thinking of those people, and to discover what they expect from cooperation with the older industrial countries and in what fields they would prefer to receive help from the Eastern or Western lands. A further aim is to discover their opinion of the cultural and economic measures introduced in connexion with development aid. If empirical social research is to produce objective results, it must have a competent institute on hand to do the work. It may be taken as a general principle that whatever country is to be investigated, no social survey of this kind can be conducted from abroad. In market research, for instance, interviewers are instructed to discover where the dividing line comes between state and private enterprise, particularly in the economic sphere. Light must be shed on the money market, the distribution of income among the population, the level of technology, the structure of the labor market and the level of education and vocational training.

The article presents a summary of news and announcements as on November 1, 1961. A meeting of European Ministers on problems related to family was held at the Hague on May 15-16, 1961. The Fifth World Congress of Sociology, under United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will be held in Washington, D.C., from September 2-8, 1962, in response to an invitation from the American Sociological Association, the International Sociological Association. The themes of the congress will be of "Sociologists, policy-makers and the public," "Sociology of development" and "Nature and problems of sociological theory." The article announces the demographic fellowship program of the population council for the year 1962/63. A Center for South-East Asia has been set up within the Institut de Sociologic Sohray at the Universitè Libre de Bruxelles. The activities of the new center will be geared to the present-day problems of South-East Asia, comprising Burma, Cambodia, Ceylon, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaya, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam. The article also announces contests to be held by the Luigi Sturzo Institute and the Latin America Pro Deo Prize. The article also presents the report of the announcement of publication of a quarterly journal, "Ethnology," by the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh from January next year.

Input-output studies have proliferated rapidly in recent years and an opportunity now exists for extensive international comparisons of static productive structure. To date, basic input-output accounts have been constructed for about sixty countries and published for more than fifty. This is a far cry from the situation only a decade ago, when Chenery and Watanabe in their pioneering study of four economies reported that "at least fifteen countries have now done serious input-output work although not all of the results have been published". The most extensive comparative study yet attempted appears to be that by Helmstaeder which encompasses twelve national economies. Another broadly based analysis of particular interest from an Australian point of view is a study of seven Asian economies, including Australia, published by the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE). At the present time such broad comparisons must be regarded as somewhat tentative explorations of the extensive approach. They present formidable problems: language difficulties are acute (international bibliographies report. input-output studies published in twenty-three languages); the volume of data to be processed is vast; and wide divergencies in national accounting conventions continue to create additional difficulties. The ECAFE study is, for these reasons, a most welcome contribution to our understanding of the structure of production in the Asian economies. The present paper reexamines some of the results of this analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies by Adelman and by Friedlander and Silver, which have investigated whether regression equations derived from cross-section data can be used to predict the impact of socioeconomic development on changing levels of fertility, are reviewed critically. Regression analyses based on data for 57 countries c. 1960 show that fertility (gross reproduction rate) varies cross-sectionally with region as well as with level of development (as measured by per capita income, percent labor force in primary sector, expectation of life, illiteracy rate). Using equations derived from the cross-section study and time-series data for five European countries during the period that their fertility rates fell, it is shown that predictions about past fertility changes are in error. The results suggest caution in the use of cross-section relations to predict the course of fertility in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]