Poverty and Prosperity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah C. M. Bulloch
Keyword(s):  
Infant Formula ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Consumer Goods ◽  
Conspicuous Consumption ◽  
Concrete Block ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Village ◽  
Simple Life

This chapter introduces Siquijor Island and sketches the socio-economic terrain of the village. It then considers key material markers of development—such as infant formula and concrete block houses—and how these are deployed by individuals and families as they compete for status. While this aspect of the local concept of development emphasizes social mobility anchored in conspicuous consumption, it sits in tension with a contending local ideal of how one should live. Ang simpul nga kinabuhi, the simple life, involves contentment in an austere lifestyle and attention to personal relationships. These ideals respectively embrace and reject liberal norms of enterprise, individual accumulation, competition and the defining of identity in terms of consumer goods. The chapter shows that even within individuals, notions of development are not necessarily singular or fully coherent and these tensions are tied to ambivalent assumptions concerning what constitutes “proper” social and economic relations.

From Iron Curtain to Golden Curtain

2009 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Allina-Pisano
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Recent Project ◽  
International Border ◽  
The Village

The village of Kisszelmenc, a historically Magyar settlement at the edge of southwestern Ukraine, has been separated by an international border from its sister village of Nagyszelmenc, now in Slovakia, since just after World War II. A recent project to reconnect the two villages sought to support Magyar identity in the region through the reunification of village families. The opening of a border crossing project instead drove economic changes that resulted in the Ukrainianization and the Slovakization of Kisszelmenc. This article shows how the reconfiguration of economic relations stemming from changes in political institutions can generate unexpected shifts in the enactment of ethno-cultural identity on a given territory.

US tensions prompt closer China-Russia cooperation

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Gas ◽  
Consumer Goods ◽  
The Other ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Economic Interaction ◽  
Economic Ties ◽  
The Eu

Subject China-Russia cooperation. Significance Beijing and Moscow are compensating for deteriorating ties with Washington by building -- or at least declaring -- close political and economic relations with each other. Chinese exporters of production and consumer goods are replacing Western companies that are curtailing activities due to Western sanctions and Moscow’s countersanctions. However, neither Beijing nor Moscow sees the other as a true substitute for normal relations with Washington. Impacts China and Russia will more actively use the renminbi and ruble as settlement currencies. Russia will preserve its position as China’s key supplier of oil and will significantly expand deliveries of natural gas. Russia will press for closer ties in high-tech industries; China will be wary, fearing this might prompt new US sanctions. The epicentre of Russia’s foreign economic ties will shift further from the EU to China. Greater economic interaction with Russia will help China cement its relations with other former Soviet countries.

scholarly journals The Revival of Rural Settlements and Cultural Landscape

2019 ◽  
pp. 70-77
Author(s):  
Zoya K. Petrova ◽  
Victoria O. Dolgova
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Agricultural Products ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Federal Program ◽  
The Village

The relevance of the topics investigated due to acute socioeconomic problems of extinction of Russian villages. Desertification is in the process of disappearance ten thousand villages, which continues its devastating pace. The article addressed the issue of the revival of Russian villages, construction, and upgrading of rural settlements based on the realization of the Federal program "sustainable development of rural territories in the years 2014-2017 and for the period up to 2020". Revival and construction of rural settlements today mainly involves the development of agricultural holdings on the basis of which will be established equipped agricultural town. Any country associated with a particular way of perceiving not only significant monuments of its culture and architecture but also the types of rural settlements. The village is not a business project; and thelifestyle of a Russian man, a certain way of all cultural, social and economic relations. Currently, the increase of rural settlements and revitalizing rurallife is happening on several fronts: a) building settlements with agro holdings; b) farms; c) creating few ecovillage; d) Renaissance village through the townspeople-truckers as a new phenomenon. Types of rural settlements in Russia are very diverse. They are, first and foremost, thelandscape of the countryside, the direction of agricultural production, ethnic features. In residential areas with recreational and cultural potentials, farms should be promoted and personal subsidiary farms, which will focus on quality and a variety of agricultural products. The revival of villages and rural areas concerned, first and foremost, the provincial small farmsteads landlords "high hand", little knownlocations of handicrafts. It is proposed to simplify thelegislation documents for the category of "noteworthy" in relation to the territories of rural settlements with historical and cultural potential.

scholarly journals Self-Made Farmers and Sustainable Change?

2021 ◽  
pp. 194-216
Author(s):  
Wilhelm Östberg ◽  
Joseph Mduma ◽  
Dan Brockington
Keyword(s):  
Satellite Data ◽  
Consumer Goods ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Forest Loss ◽  
Poverty Dynamics ◽  
Sustainable Change ◽  
Cash Crop ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Village People ◽  
The Village

We studied livelihood changes and poverty dynamics over a twenty-five-year period in two villages in central Tanzania. The villages were, from the early 1990s and 2000s, strikingly poor with between 50 per cent and 55 per cent of families in the poorest wealth groups. Twenty-five years later much has changed: people have become substantially wealthier, with 64 per cent and 71 per cent in the middle wealth groups. The new wealth had been generated locally, from farming, particularly of sunflowers as a cash crop. This goes against a conventional view of small-scale farming in Tanzania as being stagnant or unproductive. The area of land farmed per family has increased, almost doubling in one village. People have made money, which they invest in mechanized farming, improved housing, education of their children, livestock, and consumer goods. Improved infrastructure and local entrepreneurs have played key roles in the area’s transformation. Locally identified wealth rankings showed that most villagers, those in the middle wealth groups and above, can now support themselves from their land, which is a notable change to a time when 71 per cent and 82 per cent in each village respectively depended on casual labour for their survival. This change has come at a cost to the environment. By 2016, the village forests have largely gone and been replaced by farms. Farmers were concerned that the climate was turning drier because of deforestation. Satellite data confirms extensive forest loss in this location. Studying the mundane—the material used in roofs, the size of farms, and so on—made it possible to trace and understand the radical transition the area has experienced.

Land, Landowners, and Tenants

2020 ◽  
pp. 138-196
Author(s):  
Micaela Langellotti
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Oil Production ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Public Land ◽  
Private Land ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Village

This chapter investigates the village agricultural economy, and the evidence for landowning in the early Roman period is interpreted against the generally accepted framework of land tenure in Roman Egypt. The first part of the chapter investigates the location, distribution, and management of the different categories of land. In light of the land-related contracts that were registered at the record-office, a second section discusses the identity and social status of the holders of public land and owners and tenants of private land, their social and economic relations, and how these affected the general social structure of the village. The last part of the chapter examines the role of viticulture, oil production, and pastoralism.

Fertility and childbearing practices among poor Gypsy women in Hungary: the intersections of class, race and gender

1997 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judit Durst
Keyword(s):  
Birth Weight ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
The Past ◽  
Low Birth Weight Babies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Roma Women ◽  
The Village

This article explores changes in childbearing practices among Gypsy (Roma) women in a small village in Northern Hungary. The author benefited from several years of ethnographic field research and data collected in this village, where the proportion of the out-of-wedlock births and births to teenage—mostly Gypsy—mothers have increased by a factor of three in the past 10 years as the population of the village has become more and more impoverished and the opportunities for geographic or social mobility declined sharply for the ethnic minority. The author argues that bearing children early is a sign of passage to adulthood in this group of women, a function which had been assigned to other social institutions before 1989. Early childbearing at the same time exacerbates the problem of Gypsy women: this is the first study which documents the consequences of poverty on women's and children's health by showing an increase in low birth weight babies in the community since 1989.

scholarly journals AN ETHOLOGICAL STORY FROM A CLASSIC

2019 ◽  
pp. 160-173
Author(s):  
Anatoliy Tkachenko
Keyword(s):  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
True Story ◽  
200Th Anniversary ◽  
The People ◽  
Artistic Heritage ◽  
The Village

In November 2018 it was 190 years since the birth of Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky. The author of the article believes that it is now necessary to accumulate materials for the updated academic edition of the artistic heritage of the classics of Ukrainian literature to its 200th anniversary. In this context, the work “How Sugarheads were flying in the air” is interesting for researchers. It was forgotten and the only one publication of the draft text was made by Vira Levytska, the great-niece of writer, in 1978. At the time of preparation for publication, the writing of some words, in particular phonetic dialecticisms, was consistent with the rules of the then spelling. According to the author of the article, in preparation for a textually validated publication, phonetic dialecticisms should be reproduced or at least submitted in the notes. The essay is based on a true story: farmer Pylyp Taran, who had become an involuntary accomplice to the theft, later told the village priest about that sin. Pylyp asked him to warn the host, Lazar Gershkovich Lieber[ma]n, that his employees steal and smuggle refined sugar through the fence. In the preamble to the first publication, in particular, it is said that the work “reveals certain facets of socio-economic relations in a capitalist society, which neglects people and leads to moral degradation. There are also anticlerical motives here”. In fact, the analyzed work shows the beneficial influence of the rural priest on the development of the described events and their solution. The article combines genre features of essay, partial re-publication, ethological and poetic analysis. In particular, the peculiarities of the poetics of the essay narrative, its ethological rootedness in the mentality of the people are analyzed.

Establishing a Family in the Nile Delta

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Célia Lamblin
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Nile Delta ◽  
Economic Costs ◽  
Upward Social Mobility ◽  
The Village

Abstract In Egypt, the economic costs incurred by spouses to pay for a marriage are huge, going far beyond the parties’ regular income. Migration often appears to be the only possible way to amass the capital required to pay the expenses associated with their establishment as a couple and to support the household. This article is based on data collected in the course of several ethnographic surveys carried out between 2014 and 2017 in a village in the Nile Delta, and deals with the issue of establishing a family in the context of migration for men who have left for France, and for women who remain in the village. It presents the marriage of migrants in the village as an instrument which both guarantees the homecoming of the men who have emigrated and enables the upward social mobility of women without however challenging the patriarchal organisation of Egyptian society.

scholarly journals Modern Houses, Conspicuous Consumption, and Elite–Villager Interfaces in the Mandara Highlands

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melchisedek Chétima
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Conspicuous Consumption ◽  
Reciprocal Relationships ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Permanent Residents

This paper argues that changes in architectural practices related to the emergence of modern elites in the Mandara Mountains blur the relationship between them and the village’s permanent residents. Probably because they spend much of their time in urban cities, modern elites prefer building their main houses in those locations. Villagers interpret their behavior as a message of rejection. In turn, this interpretation significantly affects the reciprocal relationships between modern elites and the villagers. Although the former would built houses in the village also, this practice does not remove the suspicion they attract from the latter. On the contrary, the massive character of the houses combined with their emptiness contribute to reinforce the villagers’ belief that they are the fruit of occult practices. Relying on these observations, I argue that elites’ houses are not only the sites of production of social relations, as Claude Lévi-Strauss theorized, but they are also the site of tensions.

scholarly journals Lumbung Desa in Java: A Credit Institution, Poverty Management, and Financial Problem Solving for Villagers During the Colonial Period

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 234
Author(s):  
Haryono Rinardi ◽  
Yety Rochwulaningsih ◽  
Titiek Suliyati ◽  
Sutejo K. Widodo
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Credit Institution ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Community Needs ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
Village Level ◽  
Grand Design ◽  
The Village

This paper aims to examine the existence and development of Lumbung Desa or village rice barns as a credit institution during the colonial era. It was expected to be an inspiration and reference to revitalize, design, and develop barns at the village level that contributed significantly to the village welfare at the recent time.  Therefore, how and why was Lumbung Desa institution able to develop during the colonial era? How much was its contribution to the village welfare? To examine these questions, the authors used critical historical method and through economical and sociological approach. The result shows that Lumbung Desa was formed and developed by the Dutch to overcome poverty as a strategic issue at the time, especially at village level. The grand design program of Lumbung Desa was to channel loan schemes especially and savings that could be in the form of in cash or rice. It was used to help farmers against the middlemen and moneylenders who were considered as adverse parties for the villagers. Lumbung Desa existed and was managed in many villages of Java during the colonial era. It relied on rural communities with distinctive personal socio-economic relations that brought about both strengths and weaknesses for the institution. However, there were some advantages of Lumbung Desa; first, it provided loans in two types, cash and/ or rice which became major and urgent needs for the villagers; second, its presence in rural areas made farmers become customers and easily access the market; third, its flexibility made it easily transform according to rural community needs.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document