What constitutes the political economy of agrarian transformation in post-socialist Tajikistan? How and to what extent does capital accumulation in the agrarian economy occur? These are the... Show moreWhat constitutes the political economy of agrarian transformation in post-socialist Tajikistan? How and to what extent does capital accumulation in the agrarian economy occur? These are the principal questions of this thesis, which is inspired by neo-Marxist theories on rural capital accumulation and extraction. Theoretically this thesis addresses property rights, the anthropology of debt, and the logic of cotton production in order to understand the continuity in agrarian production relations. Innovative in terms of its analyses, this thesis firstly not only focuses on domestic state-society relations, but also on the way in which foreign actors interact with the state. Secondly, unlike most studies informed by agrarian political economy that tend to pay little attention to nature and geography, this thesis explicitly looks at the way in which altitude, remoteness and crop specificities interact with the political economy. This thesis contends that sheer access to arable land in Tajikistan alone is no guarantee for rural well-being. Furthermore, this thesis maintains that Tajikistan’s pathway of agrarian change is characterised by a strong continuation in terms of relations of production. Rural dwellers continue to be tied to the land and are unable to build up an independent rural livelihood. Show less
Sustainable economic development is essential for hundreds of millions of poor households in rural areas. This book represents a merger of environmental science and rural development economics. It... Show moreSustainable economic development is essential for hundreds of millions of poor households in rural areas. This book represents a merger of environmental science and rural development economics. It elucidates the linkage between rational choice theory and theories on land use change. It builds a quantitative framework to connect the environmental method of Material Flow Analysis to basic issues of rural development such as agricultural intensification and food security. And finally, it develops a unique measuring rod of wealth and poverty called Freely Disposable Time, which integrates time and cash flows of households. With this indicator, we can quantify the much-cherished concepts of freedoms and development capacity. Along the way, the book provides critical discussions on ‘standard’ Material Flow Analysis, systems versus actor-based approaches, and the oversupply of inductive studies in land use and development science. Empirical data are drawn from the Philippines, Vietnam, India, Laos and the Netherlands, in a comparative perspective. Show less
Under the impetus of “reservations” -an elaborate government policy of affirmative action- over the past six decades hundreds of thousands of Indian untouchables -individuals ranked extremely low... Show moreUnder the impetus of “reservations” -an elaborate government policy of affirmative action- over the past six decades hundreds of thousands of Indian untouchables -individuals ranked extremely low in the Hindu caste hierarchy- have managed to secure highly valued civil service jobs. The question explored in this study is why these untouchable bureaucrats are not much inclined -as those who introduced reservations had hoped and anticipated they would- to use their new-found positions of power and influence to extend special help to untouchable clients outside bureaucracy. In an effort to account for this puzzling phenomenon of unrepresentative bureaucracy the author conducted prolonged ethnographic fieldwork in a dust-level rural development bureaucracy in north India. He introduces the reader to a complex and vibrant local universe in which an array of actors, factors and considerations conspire to simultaneously limit untouchable bureaucrats’ opportunities and motives for acting as active representatives of untouchable interests and constrain untouchable clients’ possibilities for claiming special treatment. Affirmative action in civil service recruitment, it is concluded, seems to be of doubtful use as a social engineering tool, at least in the case of stigmatized ethnic minority groups in patronage democracies. Show less
