Revisiting Rural Places

Revisiting Rural Places

Author: Jonathan Rigg

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13:

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In Revisiting Rural Places, scholars return to sites of their earlier research in Southeast Asia to examine how the rapid pace of change in the countryside affected places, spaces and people that they originally studied decades ago. Each of the 14 core chapters is organized around a change that, based on broader trends, the authors did not anticipate: a new longhouse in Sarawak, the urban forests of Java, the assertion of an ethnic minority identity in Northern Thailand, the re-shaping of class relations and identities in the Philippines, and the uncontested sell-off of farmland to cacao entrepreneurs in Sulawesi. These outcomes pose a challenge to conventional understandings of how the countryside is being re-shaped, and to what effect. The accounts in this volume map out diverse pathways to poverty or prosperity. Families who seemed trapped in poverty decades ago have prospered owing to non-farm and educational opportunities. Others have unexpectedly been thrust into relative deprivation by industrial agriculture, rural industrialization, or destructive natural resource extraction. The breadth of the material makes this unique and exceptionally rich account of rural change a valuable classroom tool as well as an important source of information for a broad spectrum of institutions and other stakeholders, from the World Bank to NGOs and rural activists.


New Directions for Smallholder Agriculture

New Directions for Smallholder Agriculture

Author: Peter B. R. Hazell

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-03-06

Total Pages: 641

ISBN-13: 0191003565

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The majority of the poor and hungry people in the world live on small farms and struggle to subsist on too little land with low input - low yield technologies. At the same time, many other smallholders are successfully intensifying and succeeding as farm businesses, often in combination with diversification into off-farm sources of income. This book examines the growing divergence between subsistence and business oriented small farms, and discusses how this divergence has been impacted by population growth, trends in farm size distribution, urbanization, off-farm income diversification, and the globalization of agricultural value chains. It finds that policy makers need to differentiate more sharply between different types of small farms than they did in the past, both in terms of their potential contributions towards achieving national economic growth, poverty alleviation, and food security goals, and the types of assistance they need. The book distinguishes between smallholders that are business oriented, subsistence oriented, and at various stages of transition to the non-farm economy, and discusses strategies appropriate for assisting each type. The book draws on a wealth of recent experience at IFAD and elsewhere to help identify best practice approaches.


Transforming the Rural Asian Economy

Transforming the Rural Asian Economy

Author: Mark W. Rosegrant

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13:

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Over the past three decades the rural Asian economy has experienced a dramatic transformation. In most countries the speed and level of development have far exceeded expectations. This book describes this "quiet revolution" with an emphasis on policies and strategies and their impact on agricultural and economic growth, poverty, and the environment.


Environment and Livelihoods in Tropical Coastal Zones

Environment and Livelihoods in Tropical Coastal Zones

Author: International Rice Research Institute

Publisher: CABI

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1845931076

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This book focuses on the challenges people face in managing agricultural crops, aquaculture, fisheries and related ecosystems in inland areas of coastal zones in the tropics of Asia, Africa, Australia and South America. These challenges can create conflicts in the use of natural resources between different stakeholders. Through many case studies, the book discusses the nature of the conflicts and identifies what is known and not known about how to manage them. For example, some case studies relate to the trade-offs between enhancing agricultural production by constructing embankments to keep out saline water and maintaining not only the variety of rural livelihoods but also brackish aquatic biodiversity. Other case studies provide the lessons learnt from the conversion of mangrove forests to shrimp farms.


Labor Markets in Asia

Labor Markets in Asia

Author: Jesus Felipe

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2006-07-03

Total Pages: 725

ISBN-13: 0230627382

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This volume argues that while labour market reforms may be necessary in some specific cases, by no means are labour market policies the main explanation for the widespread increase in unemployment and underemployment across Asia and country specific studies undermine the case for across-the-board labour market reforms.


Surviving the Global Financial and Economic Downturn

Surviving the Global Financial and Economic Downturn

Author: Hossein Jalilian

Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Published: 2014-03-12

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 9814459666

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The global financial and economic shock of 2007-09 is the third major economic crisis to have buffeted Cambodia in its post-conflict period, coming in the wake of the food crisis of 2007-08 and just a decade after the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 (the "triple crises"). Cambodia's post-conflict history can be divided into two periods: 1991-98, referred to as the early phase of transition during which the first of the triple crises, the Asian financial crisis, occurred; and 1998 to the present, the late phase of transition during which the food and economic shocks transpired. A stocktake of the developments in Cambodia's post-conflict history suggests that the country has come a long way in reinstituting the foundations of a capitalist economic and procedural democracy but has yet to make significant headway in economic sophistication and substantive democracy. The triple crises were different, yet had similar characteristics. They were all exogenously-driven shocks with their own specific causes but their effects were shaped by the country's situation at the time. In terms of magnitude of impact, the global financial and economic downturn was the worst of the three crises. That it caused the first ever growth contraction in the post-conflict period was sufficient rationale for the series of studies that substantiate this book. Like the two shocks that preceded it however, the way it impacted on Cambodia cannot be understood in isolation from the overall post-conflict milieu. The thesis here is not that endogenous factors caused the crisis. It is simply that endogenous factors shaped the impact of the crisis and a historical, as opposed to a static, analysis better illuminates the nature of the impact. This book is an in-depth comprehensive examination of the impact of the global financial and economic crisis on Cambodia. It probes into the effects of the shock at macro, sectoral and micro levels using qualitative and quantitative techniques.


Costs and Benefits of Cross-country Labour Migration in the GMS

Costs and Benefits of Cross-country Labour Migration in the GMS

Author: Hossein Jalilian

Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 9814345334

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International labour migration can be characterized in three ways - as human aspiration, tradition, and necessity. For some people, working overseas is a dream. For others, international labour mobility is a tradition. For a great number of people however, international labour migration is an economic necessity. It is the only viable solution to realize their basic human right to a decent life. GMS worker movements to Thailand typify all three characterizations of international labour mobility. While this book focuses on the economic dimensions of international labour emigration, principally from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam to Thailand, it recognizes at the very outset the equal standing of non-economic motivations for migration.