The book demonstrates that reform policies_including privatization of land and the shift from collective to individual farming_have a significant impact on agricultural growth, rural incomes, and poverty alleviation. The analysis spans more than 40 years of agricultural and rural development in Azerbaijan, based on country-level statistical data and original farm and household surveys.
This dissertation asks how rural populations accepted and adjusted to Azerbaijan's neoliberal restructuring under IMF guidance from a mainly agricultural Soviet economy to an urban-based petroleum exporter of the world. The answers draw a history of changing land-use patterns, livelihood strategies, and mind-sets in rural Azerbaijan, illuminating ideological aspects of what Michael Woods called "rural globalization"--Of how rural places are remade with globalization. This work will show how breaking the rural resistance to the IMF-designed restructuring of post-Soviet Azerbaijan has depended on igniting hopes in the bounties of the market system, the individualization and disintegration of rural communities through land reforms, and rural migration. The spread of hopes in the market system as the just distributor of resources and as a road to prosperity through organized government efforts was a crucial first step and involved a redefinition of prosperity from long-term communal goal to immediate personal goal. Land reforms, held in hopes of self-sufficient prosperity, individualized and disintegrated rural communities, diminishing their ability to stand up against the land manipulations and enclosures that followed. Finally, rural migration was instrumental to the transformation of rural Azerbaijan, not just in easing social tensions but as a key channel through which the ideas and values of the market, specifically seeking individual material interests, travelled to the countryside and began to be accepted as normal. Rural areas' acceptance of the neoliberal development of post-Soviet Azerbaijan rested on a profound and massive moral transformation, which furthered a specific model of individual-community relationship, and thus helped marketization succeed. Globalization has often been presented as a transnationally orchestrated process against which locales have been helpless. Yet, as this dissertation reminds, the expansion and deepening of the global market crucially rests on building wider consent to market values as legitimate guiding principles of life.
In the past fifteen years, most countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States have shifted from predominantly collective to more individualized agriculture. These years also have witnessed the largest fall in agricultural production, yields, and rural employment on record, while the deterioration and dissolution of collective and state farms have been accompanied by a significant drop in rural public services. Land Reform and Farm Restructuring provides a structured and comparative review of important aspects of land reform and documents important differences in policies between countries to examine why the reforms have not yet lived up to their potential. It is based on data from farm and household surveys and interviews conducted in 2003 and 2004. Case studies from Bulgaria, Moldova, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan - countries that have had particular difficulties in land reform, farm restructuring, farm performance, or rural poverty - each highlight a central conundrum about land reform and farm restructuring. The paper concludes with some implications for policy.
Three billion people live in rural areas in developing countries. Conditions for them are worse than for their urban counterparts when measured by almost any development indicator, from extreme poverty, to child mortality and access to electricity and sanitation.
Around the globe, people leave their homes to better themselves, to satisfy needs, and to care for their families. They also migrate to escape undesirable conditions, ranging from a lack of economic opportunities to violent conflicts at home or in the community. Most studies of migration have analyzed the topic at either the macro level of national and global economic and political forces, or the micro level of the psychology of individual migrants. Few studies have examined the "culture of migration"—that is, the cultural beliefs and social patterns that influence people to move. Cultures of Migration combines anthropological and geographical sensibilities, as well as sociological and economic models, to explore the household-level decision-making process that prompts migration. The authors draw their examples not only from their previous studies of Mexican Oaxacans and Turkish Kurds but also from migrants from Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific, and many parts of Asia. They examine social, economic, and political factors that can induce a household to decide to send members abroad, along with the cultural beliefs and traditions that can limit migration. The authors look at both transnational and internal migrations, and at shorter- and longer-term stays in the receiving location. They also consider the effect that migration has on those who remain behind. The authors' "culture of migration" model adds an important new dimension to our understanding of the cultural beliefs and social patterns associated with migration and will help specialists better respond to increasing human mobility.
The Population Situation Analysis (PSA) provides the basis for an integrated appraisal of the population and reproductive health dynamics and their impacts on poverty, inequality and development. By integrating a micro and macro analytical approach, the population situation analysis clarifies the interactions between individual behaviour and demographic dynamics. The Population Situation Analysis (PSA) responds to demand by countries that international cooperation should promote national capacity-building and recognize national ownership and leadership as prerequisites for development, in accordance with the principles agreed at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the Millennium Declaration. This manual contributes to more efficient evidence-based programming, which relies on increased capacity for data generation, new databases, the consolidation of available evidence and the promotion of the use of hard data. The knowledge generated thr
This volume combines approaches from three disciplines – economics, sociology, and demography – and empirically analyzes the key aspects of the labor market and social demography processes in post-Soviet transitional societies while focusing on the gender perspective. Here, readers will find empirical studies on such countries as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The volume contributes to the literature by addressing the lack of academic empirical research on gender difference issues in the labor markets of post-Soviet countries as well as gender inequalities in fertility preferences, gender disparities among the youth and elderly, the gender pay gap, gender differences in employment, and female voices. The book brings together researchers of different disciplines from a variety of countries, distinguishing this project as international and interdisciplinary. The authors use the quantitative survey micro-data approach as well as the qualitative methods of interview data analysis to provide a comprehensive and detailed overview of the economic and social developments in the region regarding gender differences. The volume consists of three parts tackling the following topics: 1) gender differences and demography (family formation and fertility, youth and elderly employment); 2) gender differences and labor market (gender wage gap, motherhood wage penalty, gender differences among freelancers, and women in STEM science); and 3) gender differences, well-being, and gender equality attitudes (women’s voices, women’s collective actions, gender equality attitudes, and spending patterns of housewives).
First book length treatment of Muslim Soviet Women Cross disciplinary - gender and women's studies, anthropology, Central Asia and Caucasus Suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate level Offers a new dimension for specialists on gender relations in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, where previous work has mostly had a Russian perspective For Middle East specialists, provides insights into a region closed to researchers and its non-soviet neighbours for much of the 20th century
This study of women and gender in a Muslim society draws on archival and literary sources as well as the life stories of women to offer a unique ethnographic and historical account of the lives of urban women in contemporary Azerbaijan.
