The Politics of Agricultural Mechanization in the Post-Mao Era, 1977–87

1993 ◽  
Vol 134 ◽  
pp. 264-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jae Ho Chung

Analyses of rural reform in post-Mao China have focused mainly on changes in the production unit, the incentive system and the expanded decision-making power of the rural household in production and marketing. They have largely neglected the evolution in policy toward the- inputs of agricultural production: farm machinery, fertilizer, soil, irrigation, seed and plant improvement, and so on. There have been few studies about the relationship between the changes in rural production organizations and incentive systems on the one hand, and peasant choices among various production input options on the other. On the whole, post-Mao agricultural policies slighted what could be called the mechanical package of agricultural inputs in favour of the biological package. Yet no Western analyses have dealt exclusively with this, which is quite surprising, given the enormous significance attached to the mechanical package in general and mechanized farming in particular during the whole period of Mao's rule.

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Wiering ◽  
Duncan Liefferink ◽  
Daan Boezeman ◽  
Maria Kaufmann ◽  
Ann Crabbé ◽  
...  

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is typically a framework directive that tries to encourage integration of policies for water quality and agriculture. Nutrients (nitrates, phosphates) from agricultural sources remain a ‘wicked problem’ in realizing the aims of the WFD, partly because the directive has to rely on other, neighboring policies to tackle to problem pressure of nutrients; it seems to lack instruments and measures to directly intervene in relevant agricultural policies. This contribution describes the different governance approaches of five member states and regions (The Netherlands, Flanders in Belgium, Lower Saxony- in Germany, Denmark and Ireland) to the nutrients problem and specifically focuses on the relationship between the nature of governance and the nature of measures taken. On the one hand, countries can vary in terms of a more consensual or antagonistic approach to dealing with water quality and diffuse pollution by agriculture, and emphasize more integration or separation in organization and programs. On the other hand, they can vary in the ‘outcomes’ in terms of more source-based measures or effect-based measures and the emphasis in policy instruments used. This article is based on the screening of policy documents, 44 interviews and several (international) feedback workshops. We found a great variety in governance approaches, while the nature of measures, in terms of source-based and effect-based, is only slightly different. On closer inspection, there are interesting differences in the consensual or antagonist discourses and differences in the use of more mandatory instruments or area-based policies. In many countries, the major challenge is to strike a balance between taking source-based measures, where necessary, and accommodating the difficult situations farmers very often find themselves in, as the reduction of nutrients (as a source-based measure) use can lead to lower yields and higher costs for manure disposal.


Author(s):  
Jesse Schotter

The first chapter of Hieroglyphic Modernisms exposes the complex history of Western misconceptions of Egyptian writing from antiquity to the present. Hieroglyphs bridge the gap between modern technologies and the ancient past, looking forward to the rise of new media and backward to the dispersal of languages in the mythical moment of the Tower of Babel. The contradictory ways in which hieroglyphs were interpreted in the West come to shape the differing ways that modernist writers and filmmakers understood the relationship between writing, film, and other new media. On the one hand, poets like Ezra Pound and film theorists like Vachel Lindsay and Sergei Eisenstein use the visual languages of China and of Egypt as a more primal or direct alternative to written words. But Freud, Proust, and the later Eisenstein conversely emphasize the phonetic qualities of Egyptian writing, its similarity to alphabetical scripts. The chapter concludes by arguing that even avant-garde invocations of hieroglyphics depend on narrative form through an examination of Hollis Frampton’s experimental film Zorns Lemma.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Evans

This paper considers the relationship between social science and the food industry, and it suggests that collaboration can be intellectually productive and morally rewarding. It explores the middle ground that exists between paid consultancy models of collaboration on the one hand and a principled stance of nonengagement on the other. Drawing on recent experiences of researching with a major food retailer in the UK, I discuss the ways in which collaborating with retailers can open up opportunities for accessing data that might not otherwise be available to social scientists. Additionally, I put forward the argument that researchers with an interest in the sustainability—ecological or otherwise—of food systems, especially those of a critical persuasion, ought to be empirically engaging with food businesses. I suggest that this is important in terms of generating better understandings of the objectionable arrangements that they seek to critique, and in terms of opening up conduits through which to affect positive changes. Cutting across these points is the claim that while resistance to commercial engagement might be misguided, it is nevertheless important to acknowledge the power-geometries of collaboration and to find ways of leveling and/or leveraging them. To conclude, I suggest that universities have an important institutional role to play in defining the terms of engagement as well as maintaining the boundaries between scholarship and consultancy—a line that can otherwise become quite fuzzy when the worlds of commerce and academic research collide.


1968 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 606-617
Author(s):  
Mohammad Anisur Rahman

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the relationship between the degree of aggregate labour-intensity and the aggregate volume of saving in an economy where a Cobb-6ouglas production function in its traditional form can be assumed to give a good approximation to reality. The relationship in ques¬tion has an obviously important bearing on economic development policy in the area of choice of labour intensity. To the extent that and in the range where an increase in labour intensity would adversely affect the volume of savings, a con¬flict arises between two important social objectives, i.e., higher rate of capital formation on the one hand and greater employment and distributive equity on the other. If relative resource endowments in the economy are such that such a "competitive" range of labour-intensity falls within the nation's attainable range of choice, development planners will have to arrive at a compromise between these two social goals.


Author(s):  
B.A. Voronin ◽  
◽  
I.P. Chupina ◽  
Ya.V. Voronina ◽  
◽  
...  

The article discusses a non-standard view of the formation of human capital for work in organizations of the agricultural sector of the economy, in the context of modern socio-economic transformations. In the classical sense, human capital for agriculture should be formed and developed in rural areas. But in real life, this is not always the case, because there are many factors that prevent the classical solution of this problem. First, the demographic factor affects, second, social and household factors, and third, in many rural areas there are no working agricultural organizations where qualified agricultural specialists can work. All these and other circumstances actualize the problem of the quality of human capital in rural areas in relation to the development of agricultural production.


Stanovnistvo ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 141-161
Author(s):  
Marina Todorovic ◽  
Gordana Vojkovic

The author begins by discussing the relationship between agriculture and population at a theoretical level, proceeds with a historical review of changes in the role and significance of an individual as agricultural producer, and finally, analyzes population as an element (potentials - limitations) of agricultural development in Serbia. The overall production results, and particularly the propensity to technical and technological innovation, as well as the ability to adapt to the changed conditions are, as we know well, crucially dependent on the structure of the working population. Hence, the author discusses regional differences in agricultural population by age, sex, level of education and productivity to provide a clear illustration of the impact of this element (indicator) on the population as the factor of agricultural production. The results show significant macroregional differences by this element with respect to the average for Serbia.


Author(s):  
Peter Coss

In the introduction to his great work of 2005, Framing the Early Middle Ages, Chris Wickham urged not only the necessity of carefully framing our studies at the outset but also the importance of closely defining the words and concepts that we employ, the avoidance ‘cultural sollipsism’ wherever possible and the need to pay particular attention to continuities and discontinuities. Chris has, of course, followed these precepts on a vast scale. My aim in this chapter is a modest one. I aim to review the framing of thirteenth-century England in terms of two only of Chris’s themes: the aristocracy and the state—and even then primarily in terms of the relationship between the two. By the thirteenth century I mean a long thirteenth century stretching from the period of the Angevin reforms of the later twelfth century on the one hand to the early to mid-fourteenth on the other; the reasons for taking this span will, I hope, become clearer during the course of the chapter, but few would doubt that it has a validity.


Cancers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 3141
Author(s):  
Aurora Laborda-Illanes ◽  
Lidia Sánchez-Alcoholado ◽  
Soukaina Boutriq ◽  
Isaac Plaza-Andrades ◽  
Jesús Peralta-Linero ◽  
...  

In this review we summarize a possible connection between gut microbiota, melatonin production, and breast cancer. An imbalance in gut bacterial population composition (dysbiosis), or changes in the production of melatonin (circadian disruption) alters estrogen levels. On the one hand, this may be due to the bacterial composition of estrobolome, since bacteria with β-glucuronidase activity favour estrogens in a deconjugated state, which may ultimately lead to pathologies, including breast cancer. On the other hand, it has been shown that these changes in intestinal microbiota stimulate the kynurenine pathway, moving tryptophan away from the melatonergic pathway, thereby reducing circulating melatonin levels. Due to the fact that melatonin has antiestrogenic properties, it affects active and inactive estrogen levels. These changes increase the risk of developing breast cancer. Additionally, melatonin stimulates the differentiation of preadipocytes into adipocytes, which have low estrogen levels due to the fact that adipocytes do not express aromatase. Consequently, melatonin also reduces the risk of breast cancer. However, more studies are needed to determine the relationship between microbiota, melatonin, and breast cancer, in addition to clinical trials to confirm the sensitizing effects of melatonin to chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and its ability to ameliorate or prevent the side effects of these therapies.


Elenchos ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-194
Author(s):  
Angela Longo

AbstractThe following work features elements to ponder and an in-depth explanation taken on the Anca Vasiliu’s study about the possibilities and ways of thinking of God by a rational entity, such as the human being. This is an ever relevant topic that, however, takes place in relation to Platonic authors and texts, especially in Late Antiquity. The common thread is that the human being is a God’s creature who resembles him and who is image of. Nevertheless, this also applies within the Christian Trinity according to which, not without problems, the Son is the image of the Father. Lastly, also the relationship of the Spirit with the Father and the Son, always within the Trinity, can be considered as a relationship of similarity, but again not without critical issues between the similarity of attributes, on the one hand, and the identity of nature, on the other.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 199
Author(s):  
Maria Ledstam

This article engages with how religion and economy relate to each other in faith-based businesses. It also elaborates on a recurrent idea in theological literature that reflections on different visions of time can advance theological analyses of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. More specifically, this article brings results from an ethnographic study of two faith-based businesses into conversation with the ethicist Luke Bretherton’s presentation of different understandings of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. Using Theodore Schatzki’s theory of timespace, the article examines how time and space are constituted in two small faith-based businesses that are part of the two networks Business as Mission (evangelical) and Economy of Communion (catholic) and how the different timespaces affect the religious-economic configurations in the two cases and with what moral implications. The overall findings suggest that the timespace in the Catholic business was characterized by struggling caused by a tension between certain ideals on how religion and economy should relate to each other on the one hand and how the practice evolved on the other hand. Furthermore, the timespace in the evangelical business was characterized by confidence, caused by the business having a rather distinct and achievable goal when it came to how they wanted to be different and how religion should relate to economy. There are, however, nuances and important resemblances between the cases that cannot be explained by the businesses’ confessional and theological affiliations. Rather, there seems to be something about the phenomenon of tension-filled and confident faith-based businesses that causes a drive in the practices towards the common good. After mapping the results of the empirical study, I discuss some contributions that I argue this study brings to Bretherton’s presentation of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism.


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