https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries

PROP. MURDOCK, of Yale University, has made an admirable translation of Lippert's “Kul-turgeschichte der Menschheit in ihrem organischen Aufbau”(1886–87), which together with his other writings, gained for the author the reputation in Germany of being in the front rank of sociologists, though his work has scarcely had due recognition in other countries. At that time trustworthy data on the ethnography of backward peoples were very scanty and incomplete, so it is not surprising that occasionally his imagination led him beyond his facts and that he was inclined to read too much into them. Such faults are characteristic of most pioneers, but Lippert consciously strove to be inductive, as is shown by his use of the method of comparative ethnology. His approach was distinctly evolutionary, as was almost inevitable at that time, and he covered, so far as he could, the whole field of social anthropology with a due regard to balance and perspective. He did not, however, make the common mistake of confusing evolution with progress. Although Lippert says that “human ingenuity has striven in different places to achieve the goal set by the care for life with the elements there at hand”(p. 169), he does not ignore diffusion from a single centre in the case of the bow (p. 180) and claims it for the fire cult (p. 584) and for the origin of grape wine (p. 199), but in his time the conception of the diffusion of cultures had not achieved the importance which it has now attained. The Evolution of Culture. By Julius Lippert. Translated and edited by Prof. George Peter Murdock. Pp. xxxiii + 716. (London: George Alien and Unwin, Ltd., 1931.) 20s. net.

The Evolution of Culture

Journal of Political Ecology Vol.1 1994 7 peasant community to support her claims. Berleant-Schiller and Maurer explore the blending rather than the separation of women's private and public roles in Dominica and Barbuda. Several essays in this section consider important Caribbean institutions in new ways. Pulsipher's paper on houseyards in Monteserrat shows how men's and women's places in domestic networks are spatially represented in the yard and how these roles shift over the life cycle. Brana-Schute traces the recent history of women's groups in Suriname, suggesting a mix of political and social functions, while raising questions about why women have not assumed more prominent and powerful political roles. Women's extensive obligations to kin, even after migrating, are explored by Olwig in an essay on women's intra-regional and international migration from Nevis. The second half of the collection, on women in the economy, examines women's work in both rural and urban sectors. Contributions on women in rural economies generally point to women's historically extensive participation in farming. Papers on Barbados, Grenada, and Trinidad describe patterns of work, land control and crop selection. Stubbs' article on women's involvement in Cuban cooperative agriculture in relation to recent changes in political economy is especially interesting. Momsen's comparative analysis of women's farming and patterns of labor force participation in the eastern Caribbean also addresses structural economic changes in the region. Papers on women in the urban sector treat some new dimensions of women's work experience. Pearson's essay on gender and Jamaican information processing firms suggests that while national investment and control has increased industrial dynamism it will help women workers only if their technical abilities are acknowledged and easily transferred to better jobs. McKay's research on women and tourism in Negril, Jamaica, illustrates the constraints women marketers and landladies face from government regulation and from competition and control by men. This collection is significant for its comprehensive scope and its rich empirical base. The second half of the book, on women in the economy, may be more successful in offering new information and ideas than the first, on the relationship of the public and private spheres. Momsen's Introduction and the precis to each section are acute; she could have offered further theoretical synthesis and more comparisons among societies without damaging the integrity of the empirical work. Essays on the English speaking West Indies significantly outnumber offerings on other areas. However, these problems do not diminish the value of the collection and its importance to the study of women and gender in the region.

This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India.

Reversed Realities uncovers the deeply entrenched, hence barely visible, biases which underpin mainstream development theory and account for the marginal status given to women's needs in current development policy. Naila Kabeer traces the emergence of 'women' as a specific category in development thought and examines alternative frameworks for analysing gender hierarchies. She identifies the household as a primary site for the construction of power relations and compares the extent to which gender inequalities are revealed in different approaches to the concept of the family unit. The book assesses the inadequacies of the poverty line as a measuring tool and provides a critical overview of an issue that has been fiercely contested by feminists: population control. While feminists themselves have no unanimous view of the meaning of 'reproductive choice', Kabeer argues that it is imperative for them to take a lead in the construction of population policy.

Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought.

Despite government’s repeated assertions for the sustainable mining extraction and development of rural and tribal communities living near the vicinity of mining areas, these have not been converted into implementable solutions. The natural resources from rural and tribal areas are being exploited to meet the ever-increasing requirements and aspirations of the affluent groups. With the above background, this article, taking both experimental and control villages into account, tried to explore the impact of coal mining on local environment. Although dealing with local environment, it has mostly focused on sociological impact of mining in air, water, and noise pollution. The data collected show that the suspended particulate matter concentration is alarmingly high in few sampling locations, whereas respirable suspended particulate matter concentration which once used to be within acceptable limits is now gradually approaching its standard acceptable value of 300 µg/m3. Along with uncovered coal transportation, lack of water spraying system and movement of heavy vehicles have brought an addition to air pollution to the locality. The extraction of mining has influenced the water table. The data collected from State Pollution Control Board, Bhubaneswar, show that suspended sediments and chemical oxygen demand in most of the mining areas and biological oxygen demand in few cases have crossed the specific standard. Along with this, household survey was conducted by covering 6 villages and 600 households. The study was undertaken by following experimental design where 450 households were taken from experimental, ie, mining villages, and 150 households have been selected from nonmining areas. Of the 450 households, around 96.44% villagers responded that Mahanadi Coalfields Limited is not taking any mitigation measures to apprehend the pollution caused by mining operations.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1178622117728913

Coal Mining and Local Environment: A Study in Talcher Coalfield of India:

This paper presents the free vibration analysis of sandwich plates with cutouts. Cutouts are inevitable in structural applications and the presence of these cutouts in the structures greatly influences their dynamic characteristics. A finite element model has been developed here using the ANSYS 15.0 software to study the free vibration characteristics of sandwich plates in the presence of cutouts. Shell 281 element, an 8-noded element with six degrees of freedom suited for analyzing thin to moderately thick structures is considered in the development of the model. Block Lanczose method is adopted to extract the mode shapes to obtain the natural frequency corresponding to free vibration of the plate. The effects of parametric variation on the natural frequency of the sandwich plates with cutout are studied and results are presented.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/149/1/012149/pdf

Free vibration Analysis of Sandwich Plates with cutout

Seasonal labour migration is a common form of temporary migration where the work of the migrant labour depends on seasonal conditions and is performed only during that period of year. This paper aims to identify the factors and subfactors of temporary labour migration from the existing literature.,The paper is based on an extensive review of the literature on temporary labour migration. Studies done from 1990 to 2016 were considered for review. The literatures from research articles, book chapters, working papers, conference papers and field-based project reports from various disciplines, like economics, sociology, anthropology, psychology and management studies were reviewed for critically analysing various factors affecting seasonal labour migration.,A total of five key factors and 60 subfactors of temporary labour migration were documented from previous studies. The findings of the study are organized under five thematic segments: economic factors, social factors, environmental factors, policy-related factors and psychological factors New aspects of seasonal migration were identified such as “role of labour contractors ”, “inter-generational mobility”, “social networks”, “grassroot politics”, “migrant’s relationship with the agents”, “labour registration process”, “market intervention” and “civil society intervention” after consultation with the subject experts and field study.,The paper restricts itself to include aspects of temporary labour migration. Only the factors and subfactors affecting temporary migration are taken into purview. Further the findings of the paper can be empirically tested to know the significance of each factor and subfactor.,The paper has implications for better understanding of the temporary labour migration process in different context by focussing extensively on the factors of migration. The factors identified can be empirically tested in regional and local context, which would provide effective insights for policy formulation for the welfare and protection of the migrant workers.,The paper fulfils an identified need to provide a holistic review for understanding and documenting various factors and subfactors that affect the process of temporary labour migration.

Factors affecting temporary labour migration for seasonal work: a review

This article is an attempt to study about the way people adapt to the impact of climate change, especially with floods. It also looks at the sustainability of the coping mechanisms, which the commu...

Vulnerability and Adaptation Analysis in Flood Affected Areas of Orissa

Objective Although nutrition-specific interventions are designed based on maternal, household and community-level correlates, no attempt has been made to project stunting and wasting and identify intervention priorities in India. The objective of this paper is to model the stunting and wasting in the state of Odisha, India by scaling up maternal and child health interventions under alternative scenarios. Design This study primarily used data from National Family Health Survey 4, 2015–2016. Measures The LiST (Lives Saved Tool) software is used to model the nutritional outcomes and prioritise interventions. The projections were carried out under four alternative scenarios: scenario 1—if the coverage indicators continued based on past trends; scenario 2—scaled up to the level of the richest quintile; scenario 3—scaled up to that of Tamil Nadu; and scenario 4—scaled up to an aspirational coverage level. Results In 2015, out of 3.52 million under-5 children in Odisha, around 1.20 million were stunted. By 2030, the numbers of stunted children will be 1.11 million under scenario 1, 1.07 million under scenario 2, 1.09 million under scenario 3 and 0.89 million under scenario 4. The projected stunting level will be 25% under scenario 4 and around 31% under all other scenarios. By 2030, the level of wasting will remain unchanged at 20% under the first three scenarios and 4.3% under scenario 4. Appropriate complementary feeding would avert about half of the total stunting cases under all four scenarios, followed by zinc supplementation. Water connection at home, washing hands with soap and improved sanitation are other effective interventions. Conclusion Sustaining the maternal and child health interventions, promoting evidence-based stunting and wasting reduction interventions, and a multisectoral approach can achieve the World Health Assembly targets and Sustainable Development Goals of undernutrition in Odisha.

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/9/5/e028681.full.pdf

Nihar Ranjan Mishra

Papers

Coal Mining and Local Environment: A Study in Talcher Coalfield of India:

Free vibration Analysis of Sandwich Plates with cutout

Factors affecting temporary labour migration for seasonal work: a review

Vulnerability and Adaptation Analysis in Flood Affected Areas of Orissa

Projecting stunting and wasting under alternative scenarios in Odisha, India, 2015-2030: a Lives Saved Tool (LiST)-based approach.