Design for poverty alleviation and craft revitalization in rural China from an actor-network perspective: the case of bamboo-weaving in Shengzhou

Design for poverty alleviation (DPA) is becoming an active promoter and effective practice form of rural social innovation. This study aims to explore the sustainable, collaborative design path of rural poverty alleviation. Based on actor network theory, this study analyzes the poverty alleviation process of rural actor network construction and participatory translation through the perspective of design integration. The case study chooses the traditional Chinese handicraft, Shengzhou bamboo weaving, to discuss the key links and elements of sustainability such as the role, benefits, and interaction of multiple actors. The staged effectiveness and social impact of the design integration are evaluated by questionnaire surveys, in-depth interviews, qualitative and quantitative data collections, a logistic regression model was used to test for significant effects while adjusting for multiple factors simultaneously. The analysis shows that although DPA is difficult to realize the fundamental adjustment of the rights and interests of rural craftsmen, it plays a key role in guiding the development of industrial goals, expected economic and social benefits, brings huge driving force and implementation effect to rural social innovation. The actor network theory solves the problem of separation between the individual and network attributes of DPA among stakeholders, and provides an innovative basis for rural social innovation to choose effective design intervention and mechanisms to balance the rights and interests of various stakeholders.

Does the Accessibility of Regional Internal and External Traffic Play the Same Role in Achieving Anti-Poverty Goals?

Traffic development can promote the flow of goods and people, which has long been widely considered to have a poverty reduction effect but, in fact, is not unbreakable. The development of traffic is similar to economic and social development, with internal and external characteristics, but few studies have explored the differences between the effects of their poverty reduction. Taking the land traffic of the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone (CCEZ) as an example, this paper represents traffic accessibility at a county level by relying on the average internal and external travel times. Rural poverty was identified by the pentagon of livelihoods to measure the Multidimensional Development Index (MDI). Furthermore, a Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) model was used to explore the relationship and spatial differentiation characteristics between county traffic accessibility and poverty. The results show that the traffic accessibility of the counties in the CCEZ was quite different. The average internal travel time was between 0.16 and 7 h, and the average external travel time was between 4.2 and 10.6 h. The radiation gradient structure centered on Chengdu municipal districts and the Chongqing main urban area, and the accessibility level needed to be improved. Furthermore, the MDI values of each county in the CCEZ showed the structural characteristics of “large bottom and small top”; additionally, the higher the high-value group of MDI, the stronger the spatial aggregation and the more obvious the characteristics of regional differentiation. Finally, the relationship between traffic accessibility and poverty in counties cannot be generalized. The improvement of external traffic accessibility obviously helped to improve the poverty situation in the CCEZ; the improvement of internal traffic accessibility had a multidimensional impact, but it was mainly due to the occupation or spillover of livelihood capital in rural areas; counties accounting for 82.74% would even reduce the MDI and, thus, aggravate poverty.

Environmental degradation and agriculture: an approach in countries by middle of indexes

ABSTRACT: Society evolution is commonly followed by changes; however, some of them bring negative implications for the community. One of these consequences refers to environmental degradation, which has agricultural activity as one of its influencing agents, which is essentially characterized by man’s predatory actions. Accordingly, this research analyzed the environmental degradation in 167 pattern in the agricultural world. Therefore, the Agricultural Environmental Degradation Index (IDAA) was used as a proxy for agricultural environmental degradation and the factor analysis technique. Results indicated that the most degraded country was Russia, which belongs to the European continent; however, the other positions were occupied predominantly by Africa, followed by North America and Oceania. Issues such as rural poverty and primitive natural settings can leverage this phenomenon. The lowest rates of degradation were concentrated on Central America and Europe, where agricultural activity was most incipient. In this sense, a directly proportional relationship between environmental degradation and agricultural practice was reported considering that countries dependent on this phenomenon had the most worrying results. Thereby, there is an emerging need for public policies that integrate economic and environmental dimensions that reduce negative impacts in the regions most degraded.

Gender and Mindscapes of Patriarchy in Poverty Reduction

Is poverty gendered? Feminist theorists suggest that the experience of poverty by any woman is shaped not only by her gender but by ideologies and other systems of social stratification such as race, ethnicity, and class – and that these dimensions are not simply an additional facet of a woman's identity but do affect her gendered experience as well. The narratives examined in this chapter consist of symbolic patriarchy, inheritance laws, gender socialization, domestic division of labor, and certain accounts pertaining to widows and the subordination of women. A scan of the African cultural landscape revealed a profile of rural poverty that is unproportionate, unequal, and sometimes unfairly affects women more than men. Patriarchal and discriminatory practices are stubbornly unyielding in some rural areas and has inflicted a blow against women the most.

Dimensions of Rural Poverty as Social Problems

This chapter uses a sociological approach to tackle poverty as a social problem. As a social problem, sociologists believe poverty is linked to the distribution of wealth and power structures and how political, economic, institutional arrangements, and historical conditions shape our lives and the possibilities to survive in a competitive world. They use analytic framework that shifts from the current popular focus of blaming the victim to addressing the inequalities of the distribution of power, wealth, and opportunity. Second, the chapter broadens the poverty reduction narrative to recognize that studying poverty is not the same thing as studying the poor. This framework turns empirical attention to political, economic, institutional, and historical conditions, as well as the policy decisions that shape the distribution of power and wealth, and interventions that seek to change the conditions of structural inequality and social stratification rather than narrowly focusing on changing the poor.

Ending Extreme Poverty in Rural Populations

In this chapter, attention shifts to the locality and context of extreme poverty in rural areas and sheds light on the challenges rural people face to overcome poverty. Due to limited information, inadequate access to markets and social services, and lack of opportunities to take ownership of productive assets, little is known about how populations overcome their struggles in extreme poverty in rural areas. The discussion exemplifies the need to examine culture, politics, and the social-historical context in which poor people live. The chapter concludes that rural poverty and the challenges to eliminate its causes and consequences are associated with lack of education, land and livestock, infrastructural technical support, the absence of good enough governance, as well as inability to secure non-farm alternatives to diminishing farm opportunities.

Studying and Addressing Listening Levels of Children in a Rural Poverty-Stricken Area

This chapter reports the work of a teacher educator/researcher as she supported teacher candidates to assess and tutor struggling readers in a public school in a rural, economically depressed, yet diverse, area. Alerted by the scores for listening comprehension the candidates were finding over several semesters that indicated little reading potential for the students being assessed, she worked with the school's principal to reassess one group of students at the end of the year to determine growth, and therefore potential success, of the school's new intervention program in raising listening levels. No significant results were found, yet school personnel made no change in their program to address it. The teacher educator/researcher subsequently followed the implications of the research to provide instruction in listening skills to students in two other schools. The chapter closes with a discussion of what may truly make a difference in developing listening skills for the children in this community beyond a commercial program.

Smart Farming and Surveillance using a Multipurpose Robot and Machine Learning

Agriculture is the procedure of producing food, feed, fiber, and many other favored merchandise by cultivating favorable vegetation and raising farm animals. The exercise of agriculture is also referred to as farming. However, there are a few challenges in raising agricultural productiveness in line with the unit of land, reducing rural poverty through a socially inclusive strategy that contains each agriculture in addition to non-farm employment, ensuring that agricultural boom responds to food security wishes. Nowadays, the advancement in ingenious farming techniques is progressively enhancing the crop yield making it greater worthwhile and reduce irrigation wastages. The proposed system is to layout and increases an autonomous vehicle that can carry out various agricultural activities inclusive of digging, sowing seeds, pumping insecticides, cutting undesirable grass within the discipline, etc. The farming land is autonomously irrigated with sufficient water with the help of moisture sensors within the land. The autonomous robot's general operation and the irrigation gadget are monitored and maintained using Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. The overall operation and records are measured via the sensors are stored in the cloud for device gaining knowledge of (ML) algorithm and future references. Thereby, it increases the machine's overall performance accuracy and reduces the human power and saves the time required to cultivate the farmland