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Perspectives on rural poverty and development strategies in Latin America
About: This article is published in Research Papers in Economics.The article was published on 2005-12-01 and is currently open access. It has received 79 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Rural poverty & Rural economics.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the emergence over the last decade of a new approach to rural development studies in Latin America known as the "new rurality" and explore the various interpretations and ambiguities of this approach as well as the ensuing debates are discussed.
Abstract: This article explores the emergence over the last decade of a new approach to rural development studies in Latin America known as the ‘new rurality’. The various interpretations and ambiguities of this approach as well as the ensuing debates are discussed. Analysis focuses on four major transformations in the rural economy and society which are usually highlighted by the ‘new ruralists’. These changes are interpreted as arising from the region's neoliberal shift and its closer insertion into the global system. A novel distinction is made between reformist and communitarian proposals for a new rurality. The merits as well as the limitations of this new approach to rural studies are examined.
158 citations
TL;DR: This article reviewed the histories of agricultural policy in 11 of today's developed countries between the latenineteenth and the mid-twentieth century and in 10 developing and transition economies since the mid twenty-nineteenth century.
Abstract: This article reviews the histories of agricultural policy in 11 of today's developed countries between the late-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century and in 10 developing and transition economies since the mid-twentieth century. After discussing the theoretical limitations of the prevailing orthodoxy, the article discusses the history of a wide range of agricultural policies concerning issues like land, knowledge (e.g., research, extension), credit, physical inputs (e.g., irrigation, transport, fertilizers, seeds), farm income stability (e.g., price stabilisation measures, insurances, trade protection), marketing, and processing. The article ends by discussing the policy lessons that may be learned from these historical experiences.
149 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that deepening commodification in Turkish agriculture has changed the lives of farmers in significant ways, and that global circuits have swept away the accustomed networks of information, production and marketing which had been largely established and maintained by comprehensive governmental support policies.
Abstract: This paper argues that deepening commodification in Turkish agriculture has changed the lives of farmers in significant ways. Global circuits have swept away the accustomed networks of information, production and marketing which had been largely established and maintained by comprehensive governmental support policies. New institutions have come into the picture establishing the links between small producers and larger markets. With state policy strengthening the domination of the market, prices and demand patterns fluctuate widely leaving small producers vulnerable to market forces and raising the level of risk and insecurity. This situation brings about a rapid de-ruralization of the population in most regions of the country. In the fertile coastal strip of the southern and western provinces, however, commercial opportunities introduced by global circuits have led to a thriving market in products, land, and labour. Farming of vegetables and fruits for domestic and European markets dominate agricultural production. Seasonal employment, in tourism and in labour-intensive crops, supplement household incomes, permitting the rural population to remain in the countryside.
82 citations
TL;DR: An overall reduction in both poverty and inequality among smallholders, although poverty decline was more pronounced among new owners, while inequality reduction was larger among original settlers, suggests that families have an initial improvement in livelihood and well-being which tends to reach a limit later.
Abstract: This paper analyses poverty and inequality dynamics among smallholders along the Transamazon Highway. We measure changes in poverty and inequality for original settlers and new owners, contrasting income-based with multidimensional indices of well-being. Our results show an overall reduction in both poverty and inequality among smallholders, although poverty decline was more pronounced among new owners, while inequality reduction was larger among original settlers. This trend suggests that families have an initial improvement in livelihood and well-being which tends to reach a limit later—a sign of structural limitations common to rural areas and maybe a replication of boom and bust trends in local economies among Amazonian municipalities. In addition, our multidimensional estimates of well-being reveal that some economically viable land use strategies of smallholders (e.g., pasture) may have important ecological implications for the regional landscape. These findings highlight the public policy challenges for fostering sustainable development among rural populations.
71 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the gradual imposition of a particular line of action that separates rural development from the unresolved question of the concentration of land ownership and wealth among the very few.
Abstract: Through an examination of interventions in the agrarian structures and rural society of the Ecuadorian Andes over the past 40 years, this article explores the gradual imposition of a particular line of action that separates rural development from the unresolved question of the concentration of land ownership and wealth among the very few. This imposition has been the consequence, it is argued, of the new development paradigms implemented in Andean peasant communities since the end of land reform in the 1970s. The new paradigms emphasize identity and organizational aspects of indigenous populations at the expense of anything connected with the class-based campesinista agenda, which was still operational in the indigenous movement in the early 1990s. The essay concludes with some thoughts on the remarkable parallels between the 1990s neoliberal and counter-reformist models of action, and the pre-reformist indigenist policies of the period that ended in the 1960s.
68 citations
References
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01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: The notion of capital is a force inscribed in objective or subjective structures, but it is also a lex insita, the principle underlying the immanent regularities of the social world as mentioned in this paper, which is what makes the games of society, not least the economic game, something other than simple simple games of chance offering at every moment the possibility of a miracle.
Abstract: The social world is accumulated history, and if it is not to be reduced to a discontinuous series of instantaneous mechanical equilibria between agents who are treated as interchangeable particles, one must reintroduce into it the notion of capital and with it, accumulation and all its effects. Capital is accumulated labor (in its materialized form or its ‘incorporated,’ embodied form) which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor. It is a vis insita, a force inscribed in objective or subjective structures, but it is also a lex insita, the principle underlying the immanent regularities of the social world. It is what makes the games of society – not least, the economic game – something other than simple games of chance offering at every moment the possibility of a miracle. Roulette, which holds out the opportunity of winning a lot of money in a short space of time, and therefore of changing one’s social status quasi-instantaneously, and in which the winning of the previous spin of the wheel can be staked and lost at every new spin, gives a fairly accurate image of this imaginary universe of perfect competition or perfect equality of opportunity, a world without inertia, without accumulation, without heredity or acquired properties, in which every moment is perfectly independent of the previous one, every soldier has a marshal’s baton in his knapsack, and every prize can be attained, instantaneously, by everyone, so that at each moment anyone can become anything. Capital, which, in its objectified or embodied forms, takes time to accumulate and which, as a potential capacity to produce profits and to reproduce itself in identical or expanded form, contains a tendency to persist in its being, is a force inscribed in the objectivity of things so that everything is not equally possible or impossible. And the structure of the distribution of the different types and subtypes of capital at a given moment in time represents the immanent structure of the social world, i.e. , the set of constraints, inscribed in the very reality of that world, which govern its functioning in a durable way, determining the chances of success for practices.
21,046 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1992
TL;DR: The concept of sustainable rural livelihoods as discussed by the authors is based on capability, equity, and sustainability, each of which is both end and means, and is defined as: "a livelihood comprises people, their capabilities and their means of living, including food, income and assets".
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to provoke discussion by exploring and elaborating the concept of sustainable livelihoods. It is based normatively on the ideas of capability, equity, and sustainability, each of which is both end and means. In the 21st century livelihoods will be needed by perhaps two or three times the present human population. A livelihood comprises people, their capabilities and their means of living, including food, income and assets. Tangible assets are resources and stores, and intangible assets are claims and access. A livelihood is environmentally sustainable when it maintains or enhances the local and global assets on which livelihoods depend, and has net beneficial effects on other livelihoods. A livelihood is socially sustainable which can cope with and recover from stress and shocks, and provide for future generations. For policy and practice, new concepts and analysis are needed. Future generations will vastly outnumber us but are not represented in our decision-making. Current and conventional analysis both undervalues future livelihoods and is pessimistic. Ways can be sought to multiply livelihoods by increasing resource-use intensity and the diversity and complexity of small-farming livelihood systems, and by small-scale economic synergy. Net sustainable livelihood effects and intensity are concepts which deserve to be tested. They entail weighing factors which include environmental and social sustainability, and net effects through competition and externalities. The objective of sustainable livelihoods for all provides a focus for anticipating the 21st century, and points to priorities for policy and research. For policy, implications include personal environmental balance sheets for the better off, and for the poorer, policies and actions to enhance capabilities, improve equity, and increase social sustainability. For research, key questions are better understanding of (a) conditions for low human fertility, (b) intensity, complexity and diversity in small-farming systems, © the livelihood-intensity of local economies, and (d) factors influencing migration. Practical development and testing of concepts and methods are indicated. For the reader, there is a challenge to examine this paper from the perspective of a person alive in a hundred years’ time, and then to do better than the authors have done. Gordon Conway is Representative for the Ford Foundation in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. He was previously Professor and Chairman of the Centre for Environmental Technology at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine. In the mid 1980s, he also established the Sustainable Agriculture Programme at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London. He has worked extensively in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, mostly on issues of agriculture and environment. For comments on an earlier draft we are grateful to John Lawton, Melissa Leach, and Michel Pimbert. The views expressed are ours and should not be attributed to the Institute of Development Studies or the Ford Foundation. URI http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/123456789/775 Citation Chambers, R. and Conway, G. (1992) Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical Concepts for the 21st Century, IDS Discussion Paper 296, Brighton: IDS Is part of series IDS Discussion Paper;296 Library catalogue entry http://bldscat.ids.ac.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl?q=rn:90567 Rights holder Institute of Development Studies Sustainable rural livelihoods: practical concepts for the 21st century
3,945 citations
TL;DR: Wade as mentioned in this paper reviewed the debate about industrial policy in East and Southeast Asia and chronicles the changing fortunes of these economies over the 1990s, and extended the original argument to explain the boom of the first half of the decade and the crash of the second, stressing the links between corporations, banks, governments, international capital markets and the International Monetary Fund.
Abstract: Published originally in 1990 to critical acclaim, Robert Wade's Governing the Market quickly established itself as a standard in contemporary political economy. In it, Wade challenged claims both of those who saw the East Asian story as a vindication of free market principles and of those who attributed the success of Taiwan and other countries to government intervention. Instead, Wade turned attention to the way allocation decisions were divided between markets and public administration and the synergy between them. Now, in a new introduction to this paperback edition, Wade reviews the debate about industrial policy in East and Southeast Asia and chronicles the changing fortunes of these economies over the 1990s. He extends the original argument to explain the boom of the first half of the decade and the crash of the second, stressing the links between corporations, banks, governments, international capital markets, and the International Monetary Fund. From this, Wade goes on to outline a new agenda for national and international development policy.
3,863 citations
Book•
07 Sep 2000
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a framework for livelihoods analysis in rural Tanzania based on a case-study in Rural Tanzania, focusing on the gender and rural living conditions.
Abstract: PART I. CONCEPTS, DEFINITIONS, AND FRAMEWORK 1. Livelihoods, Diversification, and Agrarian Change 2. A Framework for Livelihoods Analysis PART II. DIMENSIONS OF DIVERSE RURAL LIVELIHOODS 3. Determinants of Livelihood Diversification 4. Poverty and Income Distribution 5. Agriculture and Farm Productivity 6. Environment and Sustainability 7. Gender and Rural Livelihoods 8. Macro Policies and Reform Agendas PART III. INVESTIGATING LIVELIHOODS FOR POLICY PURPOSES 9. Methods and Livelihoods 10. A Case-Study in Rural Tanzania PART IV. LOOKING AHEAD 11. Livelihoods, Diversification, and Policies
3,639 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors develop an analytical framework for analyzing rural livelihoods in terms of their sustainability and their implications for rural poverty, arguing that the analysis of rural livelihood needs to understand people's access to five types of capital asset and the ways in which they combine and transform those assets in the building of livelihoods that as far as possible meet their material and their experiential needs.
2,143 citations