Rural Households in Emerging Societies: Technology and Change in Sub-Saharan Africa / Edition 1

by Margaret Haswell, Diana Hunt

Overview

The constantly changing circumstances of rural life in sub-Saharan Africa have brought with them both successes and failures. The essays in this volume examine the various pressures and inducements to changing resource-use patterns faced by rural households, and explore the two-way causal relationship between technology and technological change on the one hand and other key elements of rural change - demographic, environmental, economic, social, and political - on the other. Contemporary approaches to the introduction of technical innovations are examined, and new approaches are proposed. Through case studies of particular communities, the wide-ranging impacts of past experiences are assessed, and the causes and consequences of indigenous initiatives are explored.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780854967308
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/18/1991
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Margaret Haswell Independent Consultant in Rural Development Diana Hunt Lecturer in Economics,School of African and Asian Studies, Sussex University

Table of Contents

Contents: P. Richards, Experimenting Farmers and Agricultural Research - R. Chambers and C. Toulmin, Farmer-First: Achieving Sustainable Dryland Development in Africa - D. Hunt, Farm System and Household Economy as Frameworks for Prioritising and Appraising Technical research: A Critical Appraisal of Current Approaches - P. Starkey, Animal Traction: Constraints and Impact among African Households - J.D. van der Ploeg, Autarky and Technical Change in Rice Production in Guinea Bissau: on the Importance of Commoditisation and Decommoditisation as Interrelated Processes - C. Toulmin, Staying Together: Household Responses to Risk and Market Malfunction in Mali - M. Haswell, Population and Change in a Gambian Rural Community: 1947-1987 - J.W. Harmsworth, The Impact of the Tobacco Industry on Rural Development and Farming Systems in Arua, Uganda - A. Cheater, Issues of Energy Autarky and Interdependence among Small-scale Commercial Farmers in Zimbabwe - D. Bruinsma and R. Nout, Choice of Technology in Food Processing for Rural Development

Editorial Reviews

...a useful and insightful work which deserves to be influential.” —Development Policy Review

“These case studies are very useful material for anybody interested in working at the grassroot level of economic development and technological change (and students) of development economics ... who want to venture out of textbook to have a feel of the real world.” —Science, Technology and Development

“The contributions are marvellously varied, each contriving to do justice to empirical complexity with descriptive brevity.” —MAN

“The book as a whole or individual chapters could be valuable teaching material for first or second-year undergraduates.” —Jourbanal of Agricultural Economics

From the Publisher

The book as a whole or individual chapters could be valuable teaching material for first or second-year undergraduates.

Journal of Agricultural Economics

The contributions are marvellously varied, each contriving to do justice to empirical complexity with descriptive brevity.

MAN

These case studies are very useful material for anybody interested in working at the grassroot level of economic development and technological change (and students) of development economics ... who want to venture out of textbook to have a feel of the real world.

Technology and Development Science

...a useful and insightful work which deserves to be influential.

Development Policy Review