Published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Rural Sociological Society, this monograph analyzes the nearly 90 years of rural sociological research on agriculture and provides a comprehensive overview of changing research focuses and theoretical approaches. As the authors note at the outset, there are a good number of continuities between early-20th-century rural sociology and what is now called the sociology of agriculture. There are also, they note, very substantial differences between contemporary sociology of agriculture scholarship and that which preceded it. Their aim throughout is to convey both continuities and discontinuities in theory, method, and approach. Intended primarily as a straightforward exposition of major scholarly themes, the volume is designed to be useful to readers from a variety of theoretical persuasions. The authors do, however, point to areas of weakness in theoretical or methodological approach that should be addressed in future research. The volume is organized around the three major eras of rural sociological conceptualizations of agriculture. The authors begin by examining the founding of U.S. rural sociology shortly after the turn of the century until the early 1950s, demonstrating that during this initial era the study of agriculture was largely construed as one of the many elements necessary for understanding the social fabric of rural community life. In the next section, they explore the social psychological/behaviorist tradition, which held sway from the early 1950s through the early 1970s and which conceptualized farmers as actors responding to stimuli such as new technologies and educational opportunities. The three chapters devoted to recent research in the emerging tradition of the new rural sociology address such topics as the political economy of agriculture, the environment of agriculture, and major theoretical trends in the sociology of agriculture. In their concluding chapter, the authors look toward the future of the sociology of agriculture and identify some potential problems as we move into the 1990s.

The first of an eight-volume series, The Literature of the Agricultural Sciences, this book analyzes the trends in the published literature of agricultural economics and rural sociology during the past fifty years. It uses citation analysis and other bibliometric techniques to identify the primary journals, report series, and monographs of current importance to the developed industrial countries as well as those in the Third World.

This open access book applies for the first time emerging concepts of socioeconomics to analyse an economic sector, namely agriculture. It considers the rational choices of all actors in the system (just as agricultural economists do) and their cultural preferences and constraints (just as rural sociologists do). Socioeconomic concepts are subsequently used to structure agricultural issues with regard to the three governance mechanisms (hierarchy, markets, and cooperation), and different agricultural systems are presented and compared. The book will be of interest to social scientists with various backgrounds, and seeks to break down the barriers of single-disciplinary thinking.

In this chapter we compute measures of total factor productivity (TFP) growth for developing countries and then contrast TFP growth with technological capital indexes. In developing these indexes, we incorporate schooling capital to yield two new indexes: Invention-Innovation Capital and Technology Mastery. We find that TFP performance is strongly related to technological capital and that technological capital is required for TFP and cost reduction growth. Investments in technological capital require long-term (20- to 40-year) investments, which are typically made by governments and aid agencies and are the only viable escape route from mass poverty.

In recent years, Mediterranean agriculture has experienced important transformations which have led to new forms of labour and production, and in particular to a surge in the recruitment of migrant labour. The Mediterranean Basin represents a very interesting arena that is able to illustrate labour conditions and mobility, the competition among different farming models, and the consequences in terms of the proletarianization process, food crisis and diet changes. Migration and Agriculture brings together international contributors from across several disciplines to describe and analyse labour conditions and international migrations in relation to agri-food restructuring processes. This unique collection of articles connects migration issues with the proletarianization process and agrarian transitions that have affected Southern European as well as some Middle Eastern and Northern African countries in different ways. The chapters present case studies from a range of territories in the Mediterranean Basin, offering empirical data and theoretical analysis in order to grasp the complexity of the processes that are occurring. This book offers a uniquely comprehensive overview of migrations, territories and agro-food production in this key region, and will be an indispensable resource to scholars in migration studies, rural sociology, social geography and the political economy of agriculture.

This book examines the economic gains and social costs of agrarian transformation in India. The author looks at three phases of agrarian transformation: colonial, post- colonial, and neoliberal. This work combines macro and micro economic data, economic and noneconomic phenomena, and quantitative and qualitative aspects while exploring the context of historical and contemporary changes with special reference to Maharashtra in western India. It discusses regional disparities in agricultural development, issues of modernisation and social inequality, land owning among scheduled castes and tribes, women in agriculture, pattern of labour migration and farmer’s suicides, and documents the experiences and conditions of the rural poor and socially weaker sections to provide a comprehensive understanding of the significant changes in agrarian rural economy of western India. It also discusses contemporary development policy and practices and their consequences. Lucid and topical, this volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of agrarian studies, rural sociology, social history, agricultural economics, development studies, political economy, political studies, and public policy, as well as planning and policy experts.