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\"This volume seeks to answer modern questions and concerns regarding peasants, their production techniques, and their links to wider society. In the past, peasants and their seemingly simple production models have been criticized for being unable to fully meet the needs of modern society, especially when it comes to world hunger, food quality, and sustainability. However, often neglected is the myriad of new initiatives that alter the way food is produced and marketed. New 'peasant markets' are created everywhere and new products and services abound. This volume argues that these initiatives represent \"seeds of transition\"; they are the \"sprouts\" out of which new socio-technical modes for organizing production and marketing emerge - \"sprouts\" that, taken together, can be summarized as \"rural development\". This book critically discusses these new practices and the actors engaged in them. In doing so, it deals with several countries in three different continents (Asia, South America and Europe). It proposes new concepts and approaches for a better understanding of the re-emergence of peasants as indispensable part of modern societies.\"

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.

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.

This sourcebook draws on the emerging principles of Agricultural Innovation System (AIS) analysis and action to help to identify, design, and implement the investments, approaches, and complementary interventions that appear most likely to strengthen innovation systems and promote agricultural innovation and equitable growth. Although the sourcebook discusses why investments in AISs are becoming so important, it gives most of its attention to how specific approaches and practices can foster innovation in a range of contexts. The sourcebook is targeted to the key operational staff in international and regional development agencies and national governments who design and implement lending projects and to the practitioners who design thematic programs and technical assistance packages. The sourcebook is also an important resource for the research community and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and may be a useful reference for the private sector, farmer organizations, and individuals with an interest in agricultural innovation. It concludes with details on the sourcebook's structure, a summary of the themes covered in each module, and a discussion of the cross-cutting themes treated throughout the sourcebook.

In the past ten years or so, displacement by development projects has gone on almost untamed under the globalization pressures to meet the demand for land from local and increasingly foreign investors. Focusing on India, this book looks at the complex issue of resettling people who are displaced for the sake of development. The book discusses how the affected farming communities are fiercely opposing the development projects that often leave them worse off than before, and how this conflict is a matter of serious concern for the planners, as it could discourage potential capital inflows and put India's growth trajectory into jeopardy. It analyses the challenge of protecting the interests of farmers, and at the same time ensuring that these issues do not hinder the path of development. The book goes on to highlight the emerging approaches to resettlement that promise a more equitable development outcome. A timely analysis of displacement and resettlement, this book has an appeal beyond South Asian Studies alone. It is of interest to policy makers, planners, administrators, and scholars in the field of resettlement and development studies.

Making Muskoka traces the first decades of Muskoka's transformation from Indigenous homeland to a part-time playground for tourists and cottagers and uncovers the consequences for those who lived there year-round.

During modernity metropolitan ruralities have been regarded as land reserves for urban expansion. However, there is a growing insight that there are limits to the urban expansion into rural areas. This volume discusses potential developments in urban (and rural) policy and planning which need to be considered.

This book deals with the controversies on developmental aspects of large dams, with a particular focus on the Narmada Valley projects in India. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and research, the author draws on Marxist theory to craft a detailed analysis of how local demands for resettlement and rehabilitation were transformed into a radical anti-dam campaign linked to national and transnational movement networks. The book explains the Narmada conflict and addresses how the building of the anti-dam campaign was animated by processes of collective learning, how activists extended the spatial scope of their struggle by building networks of solidarity with transnational advocacy groups, and how it is embedded in and shaped by a wider field of force of capitalist development at national and transnational scales. The analysis emphasizes how the Narmada dam project is related to national and global processes of capitalist development, and relates the Narmada Valley movement to contemporary popular struggles against dispossession in India and beyond. Conclusions drawn from the resistance to the Narmada dams can be applied to social movements in other parts of the Global South, where people are struggling against dispossession in a context of neoliberal restructuring. As such, this book will have relevance for people with an interest in South Asian studies, Indian politics and Development Studies. 1. The River and the Rage: Introducing the Narmada Valley Conflict 2. Losing Ground: Accumulation by Dispossession in the Narmada Valley 3. Everyday Tyranny and Rightful Resistance: The Emergence of the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath 4. Discovering the Dam: Militant Particularist Struggles for Resettlement and Rehabilitation 5. Towards Opposition: The Formation of the Anti-Dam Campaign 6. Cycles of Struggle: The Trajectory of the Anti-Dam Campaign 1990-2000 7. Enablements and Constraints: The Making of the Maheshwar Anti-Dam Campaign 8. Development, Not Destruction: Alternative Development as a Social Movement Project 9. Whither the Rage? Learning from the Narmada Valley Movement Process Alf Gunvald Nilsen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Norway. His research interests cover social movement theory and research, critical development research, and Marxist approaches to the political economy of capitalist development – all with special reference to India and South Asia. A Discussion Forum has been set up for this title. To add or read comments visit http://www.theriverandtherage.org/ \"This book is an exemplary analysis of an important social movement against a major dam project in post-colonial India... the book is a theoretically and empirically rich study of one of the most significant movements against neoliberal globalisation, and will surely inform future studies of movements in the developing world.\" - Manali Desai, London School of Economics, UK Capital & Class, 2011 \"The author has written a devastating critique of current economic planning in India. In many ways we need such an authoritative feeling analysis to validate what might otherwise seem the strident opposition of Arundhati Roy to Indian capitalism today. It provides a very disturbing insight into the cost of globalisation.\" - Antony Copley, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University of Kent; Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society \"Nilsen reminds us that the possibility of radical social change ultimately lies in building alliances between different social movements, in developing a capacity for counter-hegemony and posing systemic challenges to the present socio-historical totality.\" - Budhaditya Das, Department of Social Work, University of Delhi; Economic and Political Weekly