Showing papers on "Rural area published in 1983"

Rural development : putting the last first

Abstract: Rural poverty is often unseen or misperceived by outsiders. Dr Chambers contends that researchers, scientists, administrators and fieldworkers rarely appreciate the richness and validity of rural people's knowledge or the hidden nature of rural poverty. This is a challenging book for all concerned with rural development, as practitioners, academics, students or researchers.

Consanguineous matings in the Egyptian population.

Abstract: A total of 26 554 Egyptians was ascertained to study the incidence of consanguineous marriages. They were of different ages, different socioeconomic standards, and from different areas. There were 7646 from urban areas, 11 280 from suburban areas, and 7628 from rural areas. The incidence of consanguineous matings in the general population was found to be 28.96% with an average inbreeding coefficient of 0.010, which could be considered high. The highest incidence was that in the rural areas. First cousin marriages occurred more often than the other types of consanguinity.

The social component of mortality decline: an investigation in South India employing alternative methodologies.

Abstract: It has previously been reported that mother's education exerts an influence on infant and child mortality that is independent both of the level of medical technology found in the society and of the family's access to it.1 This finding suggests that social change may have played an important role in the mortality transition and that social factors may explain the failure of health services to be more effective. Clearly an adequate investigation of this proposition means a study not only of mortality but of pre-existing morbidity, an area in which there has been only a limited development of research methodology. Since 1979 we have been testing the limits of the survey approach in a rural area of south India, and experimenting with the development of supplementary or alternative methods for collecting demographic information. These alternative approaches draw heavily on the methods of anthropology. The continuing work is a joint project of the Population Centre, Bangalore, and the Department of Demography, Australian National University. The original focus of the research had been on changes in marriage and control of marital fertility,2 but, given long periods of village residence, we had inevitably learnt much about the conditions of health, and by 1981 were in a position to concentrate our interest upon these matters. The work reported here was carried out in a rural area of southern Karnataka (once Mysore) 125 kilometres west of the city of Bangalore. The study population consisted of one large village with 2,557 inhabitants and eight smaller villages, ranging in size from 62 to 543 persons and totalling another 2,216 inhabitants. The area is traversed by a moderately important sealed road, but only the large village is right on it and most of the others are approached easily only by ox cart. The most distant of the small villages * This research constitutes part of a joint project of the Population Centre, Bangalore, India, and the Department of Demography, Australian National University. Most of the funding has come from the two institutions, but other support, especially for the analysis, has been provided by the Ford Foundation and by a Population Council International Research Award. The project has benefited from the research assistance of Pat Quiggin in Canberra, and also in Karnataka and/or Canberra from Wendy Cosford, Jennie Widdowson,

Anthropologists at home in North America : methods and issues in the study of one's own society

Abstract: Preface Part I. Introduction: 1. On anthropology 'at home' Donald A. Messerschmidt 2. Insider research: an ethnography of a debate John L. Aguilar Part II. Urban Studies: 3. Unseen community: the natural history of a research project Paul Bohannan 4. Common sense and science: urban core black observations John L. Gwaltney 5. Observer participation and consulting: research in urban food cooperatives Richard Zimmer 6. The masking of social reality: ethnographic fieldwork in the bureaucracy David Serber Part III. Rural Studies: 7. Longitudinal research in rural North America: the Saskatchewan Cultural Ecology Research Program, 1960-1973 John W. Bennett and Seena Kohl 8. Social networks and community administration: a comparative study of two mining towns Susan Brandt Graham 9. The anthropologist as key informant: inside a rural Oregon town Lawrence Hennigh 10. Neighboring: discovering support systems among Norwegian-American women Agnes M. Aamodt Part IV. Health Systems: 11. Applied ethnoscience in rural America: New Age health and healing Craig Molgaard and Elizabeth Byerly 12. Interactive research in a feminist setting: The Vancouver Women's Health Collective Linda Light and Nancy Kleiber Part V. Education Systems: 13. Constraints in government research: the anthropologist in a rural school district Donald A. Messerschmidt 14. Many roles, many faces: researching school-community relations in a heterogeneous American urban community R. Timothy Sieber Part VI. Contract Anthropology: 15. Anthropology under contract: two examples from Alaska Kerry D. Feldman 16. Talking to an agency: communicating the research findings Ruth M. Houghton Part VII. Reflections on Anthropology at Home: 17. Home and away: personal contrasts in ethnographic style Harry F. Wolcott Contributors Notes Bibliography Index.

Health expectancy in Canada, late 1970s: demographic, regional, and social dimensions.

Abstract: Based on estimates of activity restriction from the Canada Health Survey, institutional data on long-term care, and survival data from vital statistics, we have calculated an index of health expectancy (life expectancy in each state of health), and a summary of these indices which we have called quality-adjusted life expectancy. At birth, expected years of long-term institutionalization were 0.8 for men and 1.5 for women. Expected years of activity restriction not involving long-term institutionalization were 10.8 for men and 14.0 for women; 3.0 of the expected years of activity restriction for men and 1.3 of these years for women were in the most severe category of restriction (unable to do major activity). For both sexes together, quality-adjusted life expectancy was 1.4 years greater in Ontario and the Prairies than in the Atlantic region, 3.2 years greater in Canada's three largest cities than in rural areas and small towns, and 7.7 years greater among persons from high-income families than among persons from low-income families.

The economic and demographic status of female headed households in rural Botswana

Abstract: Analyzes the economic and demographic status of female headed households in Botswana where insufficient economic opportunities force many men to live and work away from home. The analysis is based on the Rural Income Distribution Survey conducted in 1974-75 by the Central Statistical Office of Botswana in which 957 households containing 6475 individuals were interviewed once a month for 23 months. The relevant items surveyed were age and sex of household nembers amount and sources of income identity and value of assets use of time extent of education and sex of perceived head of household. The analysis recognizes 4 types of households: male head with male aged 20-64 present (452); male head with no male 20-64 present (77); female head with male aged 20-64 present (131); and female head with no male aged 20-64 present (277). The primary analysis consists of a comparison of the 1st and 4th of these groups; categories 2 and 3 are intermediate positions and their characteristics are less clear cut. The income distribution in rural Botswana is more unequal than in many other developing countries with female headed households faring especialy poorly. On a per adult equivalent basis the welfare attained by members of female headed households is nearly 25% lower than that attained in male headed households. Such is the case despite the fact that women in Botswana have been shown to compare favorably with men in regard to education willingness to work agricultural know-how and entrepreneurial ability. Reasons for womens lower economic status in this country are discussed and policy suggestions to overcome this discrepancy are made.

In rural areas

Abstract: Characteristics of the road network in rural areas are presented: length, vehicle categories, traffic safety and traffic concentration. It is shown that a detailed traffic survey for heavy transport on rural highways is required. Further study is needed into the influence of the land use, agricultural vehicles and the weekend on the number of equivalent axle loads on rural highways. Criteria for the determination of highway capacity and the determination of traffic flow are discussed. (TRRL)

Mental health and the interpersonal environment: a reexamination of some effects of social structure on mental health*

Abstract: Despite much speculation in classical sociological theory, urbanization and industrialization are not systematically related to individual mental health. The "interpersonal environment" mediates between larger system properties and individual realities. Two kinds of interpersonal environments are noted in classical theory: a gemeinschaft environment of high social density, and an overlapping specialized social circle environment. Using stress reactions (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) of Vietnam veterans to combat as an example, it was found that social density predicts lower levels of stress reaction only in smaller cities and rural areas, whereas interaction with a circle of Vietnam veterans is associated with reduced distress in cosmopolitan metropolitan areas and with increased stress reactions in medium sized cities and rural areas. Because combat is exogenous to the men's current urban setting, the findings are less likely to be confounded by "drift" and self-selection. Implications for classical urban theory are developed. Social science has long attempted to relate individual mental health to various elements of social structure. While modernization, urbani

Towns and small cities in developing countries.

Abstract: The strategy if Industrial growth poles initiated during the 1960s now seems to be neither appropriate nor sufficient to generate widespread development in developing countries. This paper discusses the importance of towns and small cities for developing hinterlands transforming subsistence into commercial agriculture and integrating urban and rural economies. Although cities have a strong influence on the development of their regions their areas of influence are clearly limited. Towns and small cities provide essential links of distribution and exchange between agricultural areas and urban centers. The growth of massive metropolitan areas in 3rd World countries has created serious economic and social problems. The effects of cities on villages and rural populations decline with increased distance thereby creating an uneven distribution of growth economy and improved access for the rural population to town-based services and facilities such as medical services banks and agricultural exchange. The absence of these essential services and facilities in small cities helps to create underdeveloped low-order settlements in rural regions. The linkage between towns and rural areas are therefore the primary channels through which rural populations derive their income. In addition investment in farm-to-market roads waterways small scale agroprocessing establishments and health and social services will help establish rural industrialization an important element for the development of towns and small cities.

Old age pensions and fertility in rural areas of less developed countries: some evidence from Mexico.

Abstract: This paper reviews the theoretical relationship between old age pensions and human fertility and offers preliminary evidence from Mexico on the direction and magnitude of the effect on fertility of the introduction of a formal old-age pension system. The security motive is an untested but plausible hypothesis especially for rural areas where alternative methods for caring for the elderly if they exist are likely to be relatively risky and unprofitable. A number of different effects can theoretically be expected following introduction of a system of old age pensions in such areas including a savings-reduction effect and life-cycle effects such as effects on the time-phasing of labor force participation and of consumption and effects on family fragmentation and intergenerational transfers and on the sex composition of the labor force and the allocation of family resources between the sexes. Information costs uncertainties about various aspects of the social security system and the possibility of differences between desired and actual fertility must also be considered. Given the long list of possible effects and offsetting influences and uncertainties about the magnitudes of such effects the actual outcome can only be resolved empirically. Data on sugar cane workers who began to be covered by a social security system in 1963 in 34 contiguous rural municipalities in the Papaloapan River Basin in southeastern Mexico were used to test the relationship. A regression analysis of the determinants of change in the child-woman ratios in the 34 municipalities from 1960-70 indicated among other findings that the proxy used for the influence of participation in an old age pension system had a significantly negative effect on fertility. An increase in social security participation from 0 to 50% would appear to reduce the child-woman ratio by more than 1/10. Despite the simplicity of the testing procedure shortcomings in the available data and the possibility of specification bias the results indicate that the security motive may be important and requires further empirical and theoretical research.

Models of Service Delivery

Abstract: In order for an account of models of service delivery in rural areas to have meaning, it is necessary to know something of the rural context and the issues involved that have given rise to those particular models. Rural people, and those professionals authorized to serve them, have of necessity invented a number of ingenious methods for providing the services that have been needed. It has not always been easy, and problems remain, but there have been some innovative models developed especially for rural mental health services. Because psychologists have been extensively involved in mental health services (in contrast to the other human services) and because much experience has been amassed by federal, state, and local government officials in attempting to meet rural mental health needs, this chapter will proceed from the perspective of mental health services. This is not to say, however, that many, if not most, of the same issues and problems would not also apply to the provision of other human services in rural areas.

Psychiatric Services in Rural Areas: A Sociological Overview

Abstract: This sociological review of the literature analyzes the delivery of psychiatric services in rural America. Nonsocial, demographic, socioeconomic, interpersonal, and ideological influences are considered. Factors encouraging change in the psychiatric service system (for example, shifting demographic realities, new environmental stimuli, and progressive attitudes toward social reform) contrast with, and vie against, factors favoring the status quo (for example, conservative attitudes, resistances to change, and limited resources). It is against this backdrop of instability that psychiatric service needs develop and are acknowledged--or effectively ignored--by the psychiatric service system in rural communities.

Population and the Peasant Family Economy in Proto-Industrial Japan

Abstract: Proto-industrialization or "industrialization before industrialization" is a concept that has attracted the attention of economic historians and is defined as growth in peasant industry whose production was geared to the market outside the region in an age prior to the industrial revolution. The model of European proto-industrialization may be interpreted as a theory of structural transformation and suggests how population started to grow in 18th century Europe and how the association observed between peasant industry and changes in nuptiality reflected the break up of the traditional homeostatic link between family and land. The model stresses the significance of regional specialization. Yet its significance does not simply lie in the fact that rural industrialization in 1 area stimulated food crop production in another area. It also provided more and more favorable conditions in purely agricultural areas for large scale capitalist farming with hired labor and also gave rise to de facto proletarianization in rural industrial areas. Such differing trends in turn resulted in contrasting population movements in those areas. The objective in this discussion is to examine whether or not the theory of European proto-industrialization thus interpreted is applicable in the case of Japan where domestic industries spread over the countryside in the 18th and 19th centuries to an extent comparable to that in England and other European countries in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is argued that despite an extensive growth of rural industry in 19th century Japan no clearcut regional specialization took place that the structural effect of rural industry on demography was weak and that the internal structure of the traditional family economy seemed hardly scathed. The division of labor between the sexes within the farm household remained persistent even where rural industry had taken hold. Further the intensification of rural industry was not followed by a decline in the marriage age of women. Differences between Japanese and Western patterns are best understood by examining the initial conditions for proto-industrialization. Most important are differences in ecological conditions before the proto-industrial age. Population density in Japan at the beginning of the 18th century was already far higher than that in the most densely populated areas of 18th century Europe and this must have had a marked influence on the course of agricultural progress the interaction pattern of proto-industry and demography and the nature of the peasant family economy.

Food production and income generation in a matrilineal society: rural women in Zomba, Malawi

Abstract: This article sets out to describe the various food-producing and income generating patterns found in rural households in the Zomba district of Malawi. The study focuses on women but it necessarily links women closely to their own households and the wider family groupings, characterised by matrilineal inheritance and matrilocal marriage, of which they are part. ' Over 90 per cent of Malawians live in the rural areas and the country's people are overwhelmingly dependent on smallholder agriculture for food. Wage employment and exports are also provided very largely by the agricultural sector. People in Zomba, one of the twenty four districts in the country, have perhaps greater access to urban wages and markets as the former colonial and post-colonial capital is situated at the centre of the district and remains a relatively busy market, commercial, administrative and educational centre. But much of the district is rural and it includes a wide range of agricultural environments and cropping patterns. Zomba is not one of the Malawian districts in which smallholders produce a very considerable surplus for export, but local farmers, working intensively on small plots of land, still mainly with hoes, manage to produce and sometimes sell a wide range of crops. As a recent study by Kydd and Christiansen has shown, the economy of Malawi has undergone important structural changes since independence.2 Not least as a result of government policy in the spheres of pricing, loans, land expropriation and protection, marketed output from the estate sector has overtaken that from the

Youth Job Structure and School Enrollment, 1890-1920.

Abstract: Explanations of early growth in American school enrollment alternatively point to rural-cultural beliefs or urban-economic antecedents. Research suggests that urban labor markets encouraged youth to stay in school longer, especially into the early 1900's, as job opportunity structures began to exclude young people. However, more recent study indicates that early grammar school enrollments rose most quickly in rural areas, and began decades before widespread industrialization. This evidence suggests that the momentum initially sparked by Protestant cultural commitments in rural America, and the persistence of school-institution building, may be sufficient to explain later growth of youth enrollments in secondary grades. Our study disaggregates enrollments of children (ages 5-14) and older youth (14-19) to examine whether urban factors-especially job opportunity structures-help explain youth enrollment growth in the 1890-1920 period, after controlling for child enrollment rates. Multivariate analyses first examine the influence of urban factors-manufacturing output, school expenditures and social heterogeneity reflected by immigrants' illiteracy levels-on youth enrollment rates. Then, within this general pattern of urbanization, the analysis examines enrollment effects of variable labor markets confronting young people, in terms of the proportionate size of blue-collar, white-collar and, for women, teaching job sectors. Differential labor structure effects on youth enrollment patterns are examined separately for states and cities, and between young males and females.

Impact of viral respiratory diseases on infants and young children in a rural and urban area of southern west virginia

Abstract: Acute viral respiratory disease occurring in children residing in the community of Huntington, West Virginia (urban children) or in the hollows surrounding Huntington (rural children) was evaluated from September 1978 through March 1980. Cohorts of ambulatory children residing in each area were studied for the occurrence of mild to moderate respiratory disease. All children admitted to hospitals were evaluated for the occurrence of severe viral respiratory disease. Respiratory secretions were obtained from children for isolation of viruses. Epidemics of illnesses occurred simultaneously in the urban and rural groups of children. Among both the urban and rural ambulatory children, adenoviruses were the most common viruses isolated, and respiratory syncytial virus was the second most common viral pathogen isolated. Among the urban and rural hospitalized children, respiratory syncytial virus was the most common virus isolated. The distribution of the diagnoses, pneumonia, bronchiolitis, or croup, was similar among the urban and rural children who required hospitalization. The risk of hospitalization because of respiratory disease was found to be one in every 20 children during the first four years of life, and the estimated risk of hospitalization because of respiratory syncytial virus infection was one in 30. No differences were detected in the incidence of severe viral respiratory disease among children residing in urban or rural areas in southern West Virginia.

Protecting Rural Cultural Landscapes: Finding Value in the Countryside

Abstract: Cultural landscapes are a significant portion of this country's landscape heritage. As the federal government's principal agency charged with the preservation and management of historic and cultural resources, the National Park Service has implicit responsibility for a variety of cultural landscapes. This paper suggests a method for analyzing and evaluating those landscapes within the framework of existing NPS management policies. Of primary importance is the understanding that cultural landscapes exist within a larger natural setting, are part of that natural landscape, and embody many components. It is the interrelationship of these components, as a set, which defines and characterizes any single cultural landscape.

Urban Amenities and Rural Sufficiency: Living Standards and Consumer Behavior in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1643–1777

Abstract: By the mid-eighteenth century, tidewater Chesapeake households at all levels of wealth were both able and willing to buy a wide range of non-essential consumer goods either previously unavailable or long considered unimportant. The use of amenities and often luxuries as props for increasingly elaborated and differentiated life styles was not a result of country folk imitating city consumption patterns, however. Urban life styles did produce new spending habits, but the vast majority of the population who lived in rural areas managed to improve their consumption levels without altering traditional patterns of resource allocation.

Farm size, land ownership, and fertility in rural Egypt.

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a household level analysis of land availability and fertility variation among farm families in rural Egypt. Data were drawn from a survey conducted in 2 predominantly rural governorates in Lower Egypt in 1978 Beheira and Kafr El Sheikh. They were purposely selected in an attempt to obtain areas representing a range of socioeconomic and demographic conditions. The analytical model that underlies the study postulates that fertility variation in rural areas is influenced by family access to land for cultivation purposes and the conditions governing that access as well as socioeconomic and demographic control variables. Among the 561 households sampled the mean value for land ownership was .47. The mean value for household income measured in Egyptian pounds was 112.83 with a standard deviation of 84.76 pounds. The females had been employed 9.7% of the years since marriage. On the average women had completed less than 3 months of formal education--.32 years. Access to land cultivation was significantly related to the other variables. Land ownership increased with farm size. Family income was closely linked to cultivated area. Landless laboring families had the lowest fertility. Wives of landless laborers were on the average younger slightly better educated and less likely to have worked for wages since marriage. The results support the hypothesis that the amount of land available to the family for cultivation is positively related to fertility. Land ownership was negatively related to children ever born. Per capita family income also exerted a negative influence on the number of children ever born. This indicates that income levels were such that the positive nutrition-induced income effect on fertility does not seem to prevail. Age at marriage was negatively associated with fertility and was statistically significant. The strongest variable was the womans age.

Socio-economic impact of rural electrification in developing countries: a review of evidence

Abstract: ILO pub-WEP pub. Literature survey of the economic implications and social implications of rural area electrification in developing countries and its role in rural development - deals with power generation, power consumption, use and cost benefit analysis of electricity and its impact on economic growth, agricultural production, industrialization, employment opportunity, income, poverty, quality of life, rural migration, rural women and birth rate; notes economic aid provided by World Bank and ADB. Bibliography and statistical tables.

La ville antique et l'organisation de l'espace rural : villa, ville, village

Abstract: Ancient Towns and the Organisation of Rural Space : Villa, Town and Village The author seeks to further the discussion on the relationship between town and country in Roman antiquity by taking into account the findings of urban geography and sociology on the one hand, and those of rural archaeology on the other. Despite the fact that Roman towns drew the bulk of their ressources from landed income, the relationship they maintained with rural space was an active one. Whereas recent authors have tended to emphasize the parasitic character of ancient towns, advances in archaeological knowledge concerning the Roman countryside have brought to light the organizational role of the towns. The creation and development of villa networks, and their disappearance in late antiquity -when they were replaced by a different, village-centered organization of the countryside were the tangible signs of two forms of organization of rural space by two societies : a countryside organized by the town acting through the villa network, and a countryside faithful to the tradition of village-centered organization. This division corresponds to that between the Roman world and the native world.

Sound change and social structure in a rural community

Abstract: Most studies of sound change in the United States have focused on the social strata of urban societies. In the American cornbelt, however, the most important social distinctions are horizontal rather than vertical. A fundamental ethnic division dating back to original settlement of the area opposes town and countryside dwellers. A study of fifty-one speakers in a rural area of Illinois shows fronting and raising of (aw) to be considerably more advanced among countryside dwellers than among town residents. Furthermore, the countryside population underwent a profound social and economic change during the past half century as large numbers of subsistence farmers abandoned the land and rural life altogether, leaving behind a smaller number of farmers whose larger operations meant that the economic and social status of the average farmer considerably improved. An examination of town and countryside age groups from the data base shows that an increase in the fronting and raising of (aw) took place primarily in a single generation most affected by the change in the farm population. At least temporarily, fronted and raised (aw), despite an overt nonstandard status documented in more than a century of speech and language textbooks, suddenly acquired a new prestige – spreading even to town populations – along with a reassertion of rural values and rural life. (Sound change, social structure, rural society, American English, sociolinguistics, dialectology)