Peru: Letters from Shepherds’ union bulletin

Peasants And Poverty, A Study of Haiti by Mats Lundahl. London: Croom Helm; New York: St Martin's Press; 1979. Pp. 699; £19.95

Rural Sociology in the Soviet Union. Its History and Basic Concepts by Terence M. Cox: London: C. Hurst &; Co., 1979. Pp. 106, £7.50.

Peasant Farming in Muscovy by R. E. F. Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Pp. xii + 289, 11 plates. £10.50

Rural Rebels: A Study of Two Protest Movements in Kenya by A. Wipper, Nairobi, London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Pp. xiv + 363. £7.25.

Food Aid and the Developing World by Christopher Stevens, London: Croom Helm, 1979. Pp. 224. £9.95

Research in Economic Anthropology: a research annual Volume 2, edited by George Dalton. Connecticut: Jai Press Inc., 1979, Pp. xi + 390.     

EU-Professionalismus als transnationales Feld

The article scrutinizes the emergence and expansion of EU-related professions and forms of occupation from a field-analytical perspective. Starting from the observation that the EU is not just an influential political actor, but also an expanding area of work, expert involvement and job specialization the paper discusses various forms, dimensions and loci of the ongoing “professionalization” of Europe. It is shown that the expansion of EU-related professional activities is not just a phenomenon of Brussels and the “Eurocracy”, but has expanded into the member states and various areas of occupational activity and expertise. The EU professionalization is conceptualized as a transnational field of specialization and professionalization which produces own principles, forms of knowledge and resources which are used and reproduced by experts and specialists. The field perspective allows identifying common principles, but also the variance and transnational dimension of EU affairs.     

The Greying Periphery—Ageing and Community Development in Rural Romania and Bulgaria

The impact of ageing on community well-being has been part of the policy discourse in the West, but it is a relatively new problem for the post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe. This study focuses on the patterns of ageing in rural Romania and Bulgaria, offering a holistic view of vulnerabilities, including persistent rural disadvantages, ageing in the countryside and the post-socialist transformation. Aggregate statistics and community case studies reveal the links between demographic processes and community development. This paper contributes to the country-specific analysis of the ageing European periphery in the context of social cohesion as a fundamental European goal.     

The role of collective mobilization in the divergent performance of the rural economies of China and India (1950–2005)

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the divergent performance of the rural economies of China and India after 1950 was a product of the different capabilities of the Chinese and Indian governments to mobilize the labor force and financial resources of the rural population. By mobilizing unpaid labor and the financial resources of the villagers through mediation by the collectives (before 1984) and local administrations (from 1984 to the abolition of agricultural taxation and compulsory rural labor mobilization in 2006), the Chinese state developed rural infrastructure and the quality of the labor force at a pace and geographical scope that was far beyond its limited fiscal capacity. Efforts by the Indian state to establish rural organizations with similar mobilization capabilities failed due to the effective opposition of well-entrenched political and economic interests in the countryside. Unable to mobilize the labor and financial resources of the villagers, the Indian government relied primarily on its limited fiscal resources, which produced a much slower development of physical infrastructure and labor force quality. These are the primary reasons why China’s rural economy developed much more rapidly than India’s, which contributed significantly to the divergence of their national economies in the post-1950 era.     

Floral Counterdiscourse: Miscegenation,Ecofeminism, and Hybridity in Lydia Maria Child's A Romance of the Republic

A reformer most of her life, Lydia Maria Child advanced the rights of women, Native Americans, and African Americans in such works as History of the Condition of Women in Various Ages and Nations (1835), Hobomok (1823), and An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833).     

INSTITUTIONAL LAYERING IN GOVERNING HEALTHCARE QUALITY

Since the 1980s, regulated markets and New Public Management have been introduced in the public sector across the world. How they have affected existing governance mechanisms such as self‐regulation and state regulation has remained largely unexplored, however. This article examines the origins and consequences of institutional layering in governing healthcare quality. Dutch health care, where a market‐based system has been introduced, is used as a case study. The results show that this market‐based system did not replace but modified existing institutional arrangements. As a result, hospitals have to deal with the fragmentation of quality demands. Using the concept of institutional layering, this study shows how different arrangements interact. As a consequence, the introduction of a certain policy reform will work out differently in different countries and policy sectors. Our ‘archaeological’ study in this layering can be seen as an example of how such incremental change can be studied in detail.