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Against the Grain
An Economist Best History Book 2017
\"History as it should be written.\"-Barry Cunliffe,
Guardian \"Scott hits the nail squarely on
the head by exposing the staggering price our ancestors paid for
civilization and political order.\"-Walter Scheidel, Financial
Times Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering
for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains,
and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe
that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to
settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states,
which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a
presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical
evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says
James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first
fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and
finally women in the patriarchal family-all of which can be viewed
as a way of gaining control over reproduction. Scott explores why
we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile
subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from
crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are
based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also
discusses the \"barbarians\" who long evaded state control, as a way
of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject
peoples.
eBook
Food Fights over Free Trade
This detailed account of the politics of opening agricultural markets explains how the institutional context of international negotiations alters the balance of interests at the domestic level to favor trade liberalization despite opposition from powerful farm groups. Historically, agriculture stands out as a sector in which countries stubbornly defend domestic programs, and agricultural issues have been the most frequent source of trade disputes in the postwar trading system. While much protection remains, agricultural trade negotiations have resulted in substantial concessions as well as negotiation collapses.Food Fights over Free Tradeshows that the liberalization that has occurred has been due to the role of international institutions.
Christina Davis examines the past thirty years of U.S. agricultural trade negotiations with Japan and Europe based on statistical analysis of an original dataset, case studies, and in-depth interviews with over one hundred negotiators and politicians. She shows how the use of issue linkage and international law in the negotiation structure transforms narrow interest group politics into a more broad-based decision process that considers the larger stakes of the negotiation. Even when U.S. threats and the spiraling budget costs of agricultural protection have failed to bring policy change, the agenda, rules, and procedures of trade negotiations have often provided the necessary leverage to open Japanese and European markets.
This book represents a major contribution to understanding the negotiation process, agricultural politics, and the impact of international institutions on domestic politics.
eBook
Grounded vision : new agrarianism and the academy
In this book, the author puts contemporary agrarian thinking into a conciliatory and productive dialogue with academic criticism. He argues that the lack of participation in academic discussions means a loss to both agrarians and academics, since agrarian through can enrich other ongoing discussions on topics such as ecocriticism, postmodernism, feminism, work studies, and politics.
Book
Rural Politics
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.
eBook
Against the grain : a deep history of the earliest states
An account of all the new and surprising evidence now available for the beginnings of the earliest civilizations that contradict the standard narrative. Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal family-all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over reproduction. Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also discusses the \"barbarians\" who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject peoples.
Book
Peasants under Siege
In 1949, Romania's fledgling communist regime unleashed a radical and brutal campaign to collectivize agriculture in this largely agrarian country, following the Soviet model. Peasants under Siege provides the first comprehensive look at the far-reaching social engineering process that ensued. Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery examine how collectivization assaulted the very foundations of rural life, transforming village communities that were organized around kinship and status hierarchies into segments of large bureaucratic organizations, forged by the language of \"class warfare\" yet saturated with vindictive personal struggles.
eBook
Agricultural transition in China : domestic and international perspectives on technology and institutional change
\"This book extends current research on the political economy of modern China, with particular regard to agricultural development and its role in economic transition. It uses Neoclassical principles to re-interpret agricultural growth and technological change under complex market institutions with empirical studies on China and selected East Asian economies. The text also questions how technological advances in China contribute to the Great Divergence debate. Through a comparative analysis of agricultural technical changes in the planting of rice paddies in Japan, Taiwan and China, Du finds that different market institutions and structures have given rise to considerable diversity of agricultural change between different economies in terms of the nature, timing and duration of technological transition. Such diversification has, in turn, affected the trajectories of agricultural and wider economic growth. Here, Du reflects on the nature of contemporary Chinese economic development and extends observations on agricultural transition to the entirety of Asia, finding that the nature, timing, and time-span of agriculture technology transitions have varied considerably across different economies.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Agriculture's Energy
Thomas D. Rogers's history of a modernizing Brazil tracks what happened when a key government program,created in the 1970s by the nation's military regime, aspired to harness energy produced by sugarcane agriculture to power the country's economy. The National Alcohol Program, known as Proalcool, was a deliberate economic strategy designed to incentivize ethanol production and reduce gasoline consumption. As Brazil's capacity grew and as international oil shocks continued, the regime's planners doubled down on Proalcool. Drawing financing from international lenders and curiosity from other oil-dependent countries, for a time it was the world's largest oil-substitution and renewable-energy program. Chronicling how Proalcool experimented with and exemplified the consolidation of government, agribusiness, large planters, agricultural and chemical research companies, and oil producers, this book expands into a rich investigation of the arc of Brazil's Green Revolution. The ethanol boom epitomized the vector of that arc, but Rogers keeps wider development imperatives in view. He dramatizes the choices and trade-offs that ultimately resulted in a losing energy strategy, for Proalcool ended up creating a large contingent of impoverished workers, serious environmental degradation, and persistent hunger. The full consequences of the Green Revolution-fueled consolidation continue to take a toll today.
eBook