"Cooperatives, Grassroots Development, and Social Change" presents examples from Paraguay, Brazil, and Colombia, examining what is necessary for smallholder agricultural cooperatives to support ...holistic community-based development in peasant communities. Reporting on successes and failures of these cooperative efforts, the contributors offer analyses and strategies for supporting collective grassroots interests. Illustrating how poverty and inequality affect rural people, they reveal how cooperative organizations can support grassroots development strategies while negotiating local contexts of inequality amid the broader context of international markets and global competition. The contributors explain the key desirable goals from cooperative efforts among smallholder producers. They are to provide access to more secure livelihoods, expand control over basic resources and commodity chains, improve quality of life in rural areas, support community infrastructure, and offer social spaces wherein small farmers can engage politically in transforming their own communities. The stories in "Cooperatives, Grassroots Development, and Social Change" reveal immense opportunities and challenges. Although cooperatives have often been framed as alternatives to the global capitalist system, they are neither a panacea nor the hegemonic extension of neoliberal capitalism. Through one of the most thorough cross-country comparisons of cooperatives to date, this volume shows the unfiltered reality of cooperative development in highly stratified societies, with case studies selected specifically because they offer important lessons regarding struggles and strategies for adapting to a changing social, economic, and natural environment.
Esta investigación evalúa y propone una vivienda rural térmica, construida con bloques de cemento con fibras de stipa ichu (fibrocemento), con el fin de ahorrar energía y mejorar el confort térmico ...de los habitantes. Se llevó a cabo una evaluación técnica de los materiales utilizados en la construcción de la vivienda y se construyó la vivienda prototipo de 7.5 m2 con los bloques, donde se evaluó y comparó la temperatura en el interior de una vivienda rural típica de la zona con la vivienda prototipo a la variación térmica. Se reportó un máximo de 22.2 °C y un mínimo de 10.1 °C en la vivienda prototipo, mientras que en la vivienda típica rural, un máximo de 14.6 °C y un mínimo de -2.3 °C en los meses de setiembre a diciembre de 2021, el cual mejoró las condiciones térmicas. La propuesta técnica de una vivienda rural térmica, construida con bloques de cemento adicionado con fibras de stipa ichu, puede emplearse como material para la construcción en las viviendas rurales para atenuar las bajas temperaturas. Los resultados obtenidos indican que la vivienda construida con bloques de fibrocemento mejora significativamente las características térmicas, en comparación con viviendas construidas con otros materiales convencionales.
War, agriculture, and food Brassley, Paul; Segers, Yves; Molle, Leen van
2012, 20120427, 2012-04-26, 2012-04-27, Letnik:
18
eBook, Book
Between the 1930s and the 1950s rural life in Europe underwent profound changes, partly as a result of the Second World War, and partly as a result of changes which had been in progress over many ...years. This book examines a range of European countries, from Scandinavia to Spain and Ireland to Hungary, during this crucial period, and identifies the common pressures to which they all responded and the features that were unique to individual countries. In particular, it examines the processes of agricultural development over western Europe as a whole, the impact of the war on international trading patterns, the relationships between states and farmers, and the changing identities of rural populations. It presents a bold attempt to write rural history on a European scale, and will be of interest not only to historians and historical geographers, but also to those interested in the historical background to the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union, to which the changes discussed here provided a dramatic prologue.
Rural Politics Winter, Michael
1996, 20130513, 2013-05-13, 19960101
eBook
The rural areas of Britain, Europe and the developed world are undergoing massive changes, with increasing concern about productivity, agricultural methods and environmental policy. Rural Politics ...examines the issues affecting rural areas, such as water pollution, forestry, and the greening of agricultural policy. It looks in particular at the political parameters to these issues and how concern for the countryside is essentially a part of a wider set of political processes. Rural Politics provides a much needed examination of the evolution and content of policies affecting today's countryside, both in terms of major land uses and economic and social development.
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•Unveils how the collective land owners circumvent institutional restrictions by engaging in multi-stage land-use changes.•This finding damps the rosy picture of the reportedly ...slowdown in China's farmland reduction in recent years.•It provides a practical scientific basis for constituting more strict farmland protection objectives and strategies for China.•Policy and institution innovation concerning land use in China needs feature highly in the government's agenda.
Based on surveys on rural land-use change at village scale in Yucheng City, Shandong province, this paper presents how land-use change takes place in response to inhibitive institutional forces in light of an outmoded land ownership system and unreasonable land use rights administration, and discusses it in the broader social context of industrialization, rural depopulation, a dual-track land market, and land use legislation. Spatial comparison of land use maps interpreted from aerial photographs in different period unveils a decrease in arable land for farming, and an increase in rural settlements, facilities land and unused land. Despite rural depopulation, rural settlements area nearly tripled during 1967–2008. Nearly all newly gained non-agricultural land originated from farmland at the village fringe while formerly facilities land and unused land had been converted to residential use and it was abandoned later. Thus, the destructive farmland conversion from productive use to non-agricultural uses took place at multiple stages. Questionnaire survey of 1650 households in 48 villages in Yucheng City indicated that 41% of the households had multiple dwellings, even though some of them are not occupied or even ruined. This finding may damp the rosy picture of the reportedly slowdown in China's farmland reduction in recent years as these destructive changes are too small to detect from satellite imagery, and it will also provide a practical scientific basis for constituting more strict farmland protection objectives and strategies for China in the near future. In order to hold back the destructive conversion trend from farmland to non-agricultural uses, the authors argue that policy and institution innovation concerning land use and urban–rural development in China needs feature highly in the government's agenda.
Con el fin de cumplir con uno de los requisitos que el reglamento de titulación de posgrado de la Universidad Autónoma Chapingo exige para lograr el grado de Maestro en Ciencias, el presente trabajo ...tiene como objetivo detectar áreas de oportunidad para escribir un artículo a través del proceso del método científico, teniendo como base la malla curricular de la Maestría en Ciencias en Desarrollo Rural Regional, apegado a normas editoriales de una revista de investigación; pretendiendo que el estudiante, durante su formación académica desarrolle, al menos, un artículo resultado de investigacion que pueda ser publicado en alguna revista indizada.
The armed conflict in Sierra Leone and the extreme violence of the main rebel faction - the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) - have challenged scholars and members of the international community to ...come up with explanations. Up to this point, though, conclusions about the nature of the war are mainly drawn from accounts of civilian victims and commentators who had access to only one side of the war. The present study addresses this currently incomplete understanding of the conflict by focusing on the direct experiences and interpretations of protagonists, paying special attention to the hitherto neglected, and often underage, cadres of the RUF. The data presented challenges the widely canvassed notion of the Sierra Leone conflict as a war motivated by 'greed, not grievance'. Rather, it points to a rural crisis expressed in terms of unresolved tensions between landowners and marginalized rural youth, further reinforced and triggered by a collapsing patrimonial state.
China has undergone a dramatic transition echoed the unprecedented urbanization and economic growth since the late 1970s. The current research on urbanization has overlooked the transformation ...consistency between urban and rural areas. Although the Chinese central government has focused on improving rural residents' livelihood, it is still far from achieving coordinated urban–rural development. This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of China's urban–rural development transformation (URDT) based on three indicator systems, namely the urban–rural development level (URDL), the urban–rural structure level (URSL), and the urban–rural coordination level (URCL). Findings from this investigation show that universal and intense URDT has taken place in China over the last two decades. This has been accompanied by growth of URDL and URSL and deterioration of URCL. There are, however, obvious spatial disparities in the different aspects of URDT. The western and northeastern regions of China have experienced slower transformation than other regions between 1990 and 2010. Correlation analysis among the sub-index shows that coordinated urban–rural development needs a certain initial socioeconomic level and moderate changes of URDL and URSL. This paper suggests that more attentions should be paid to rural areas and lagging areas in central and western China. Given the regional disparities of URDT, the most effective way to achieve urban–rural integration in China is by taking the overall considerations of development policies of both region and urban–rural areas aimed at various urban–rural development transformation characteristics.
•The research comprehensively assesses urban–rural development transformation in China.•The western and northeastern regions of China experienced slower transformation than other regions between 1990 and 2010.•The initial development level and moderate socioeconomic changes lead to coordinated urban–rural development.•Related urban–rural policies aimed at different regional patterns help to reach balanced urban–rural development in transitional China.
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