For centuries throughout large portions of the globe, petty agriculturalists and industrialists have set their physical and mental energies to work producing products for direct consumption by their households and for exchange. This twofold household reproduction strategy, according to both Marxist and neoclassical approaches to development, should have disappeared from the global economy as labor was transformed into a producer as well as a consumer of capitalist commodities. But in fact, during the twentieth century, only the United States and Britain seem to have approximated this predicted scenario. Tens of millions of households in contemporary Asia, Africa, and Latin America and millions more in industrialized capitalist economies support themselves through petty commodity production alone or in combination with petty industry wage labor.
Obliging Need provides a detailed and comprehensive analysis of small-scale peasant and artisan enterprise in the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico. The authors show how commodity production is organized and operates in different craft industries, as well as the ways in which it combines with other activities such as household chores, agriculture, wage labor, and petty commerce. They demonstrate how—contrary to developmentalist dogma—small-scale capitalism develops from within Mexico's rural economy.
These findings will be important for everyone concerned with improving the lives and economic opportunities of countryfolk in the Third World. As the authors make clear, political mobilization in rural Mexico will succeed only as it addresses the direct producers' multiple needs for land, credit, more jobs, health insurance, and, most importantly, more equitable remuneration for their labor and greater rewards for their enterprise.
On Development is, as John Tyler Bonner says, “a book on ideas,” the ideas at stake in the contest to unravel the mechanisms of life. This fluent discussion of developmental biology synthesizes decades of intensive progress in specialized areas of the science: from the dramatic deciphering of the genetic code to detailed analyses of animal behavior patterns. Placing these discoveries in an evolutionary context, Bonner explores the continuities and the transitoriness of individual lives and individual forms.
He begins by discussing the ubiquity among organisms of developmental cycles and their universal properties, including senescence and death. He argues that the life cycle itself is an object of natural selection and shows how, in any species, it reflects the evolutionary tradeoff between energy requirements of the individual and reproductive efficiency of the species. Although nucleic acids are thought to be the ultimate and fundamental source of genetic regulation, Bonner points out that a massive amount of information required for normal development is not directly controlled by nuclear DNA during the life cycle. Each life cycle is governed by some immediate instructions from the genes and by many gene-initiated instructions that were given in previous life cycles and have accumulated in various parts of the fertilized egg. All of these instructions taken together govern the development of a new organism.
Acknowledging the great value of reductionist theories in biology, Bonner constructs his synthetic view of development without resorting to vitalist concepts or to hand-waving explanations. He draws examples and evidence from more than half a century of biological research, from sources as diverse as Spemann and Spiegelman. Certain organisms, such as the cellular slime molds, upon which Bonner himself has conducted a number of original experiments, and the social insects provide crucial examples of dramatic evolutionary increments in biological complexity and offer insight into the control mechanisms that make such advances possible.
For nearly thirty years, from the late 1920s to the late 1950s, the keystone of the entire Soviet collective farm system was the network of MTS (machine-tractor stations) which owned, housed, operated, and repaired heavy farm machinery for the surrounding farms. The MTS played fundamental roles in the development of the political, administrative, and ideological, as well as the economic, foundations of Soviet agriculture. Now, years after the demise of the MTS system, its influence can still be discerned in the structural and operational patterns of the agricultural organization. The story of the MTS, of considerable historical interest in its own right, offers numerous vantage points for studying the evolution of Soviet rule in the countryside. In this exhaustive work Robert Miller analyzes the history of the MTS and relates his findings to the development of Soviet administrative policies.
Using data obtained from provincial Party newspapers, official Soviet documents, fictional literature on village life, and interviews with Soviet agricultural specialists familiar with the MTS, Miller explores the combination of economic and political pressures embodied in the MTS system and traces the growth of a characteristically Soviet approach to the problems of administration. In addition to these broad questions of the interaction of the economics and politics, the author examines several specific problem areas, including the function of ideology in the Soviet domestic decision-making process, the principles and practices of Soviet public administration as applied to agriculture, and the development of patterns of Party control in the countryside.
Miller’s study of the MTS reveals the method of Soviet policy-making and policy-implementation to be highly influenced by the leadership style of such men as Stalin and Khrushchev, though practical economic considerations certainly took precedence in important cases. The author observes that ideologically correct procedure was not always felt to be sufficiently effective in times of crises. Two basic modes of administrative control thus became apparent—one for critical periods and another for relatively “normal” periods. An exceptionally thorough work, One Hundred Thousand Tractors will interest students of comparative politics and comparative public administration as well as Soviet specialists.
Known to the Greeks as opos or opion, as afiun in Persian and Arabic, and fuyung in Chinese, opium is at once a palliative and a poison. Its exotic origins, its literary associations, and the properties that are, often erroneously, attributed to it have ensured an ongoing air of mystery.
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy reveals the long and fascinating history of a powerful and addictive drug and explores the changing fortunes of the modern-day illicit opium trade, especially in the remote regions of Asia. He answers key questions: Why have anti-drug policies failed despite four decades of increasing effort? And what are the shortcomings and limitations of forced eradication, alternative development, "silver bullets," and other quick fixes? In answering these questions, Chouvy draws upon geography, anthropology, politics, and development studies. He shows that the history of opium production is unexpectedly linked to the history of Afghanistan.
A compelling account of a narcotic as old as humanity, Opium offers powerful insights into the complex politics and economics of the poppy in the world today.
Despite deepening poverty and environmental degradation throughout rural Latin America, Mayan peasant farmers in Chiapas, Mexico, are finding environmental and economic success by growing organic coffee. Organic Coffee: Sustainable Development by Mayan Farmers provides a unique and vivid insight into how this coffee is grown, harvested, processed, and marketed to consumers in Mexico and in the north.
Maria Elena Martinez-Torres explains how Mayan farmers have built upon their ethnic networks to make a crucial change in their approach to agriculture. Taking us inside Chiapas, Mexico's poorest state and scene of the 1994 Zapatista uprising, she examines the anatomy of the ongoing organic coffee boom and the fair-trade movement. The organic coffee boom arose as very poor farmers formed cooperatives, revalued their ethnic identity, and improved their land through organic farming. The result has been significant economic benefits for their families and ecological benefits for the future sustainability of agriculture in the region.
Organic Coffee refutes the myth that organic farming is less productive than chemical-based agriculture and gives us reasons to be hopeful for indigenous peoples and peasant farmers.
"This is a pioneering study and represents a major undertaking. . . . Stieg succeeds in making intelligible the diffuse and highly diversified nature of the historical periodical. At minimum, this title should be required reading of all history graduate students in methodology courses. Many senior historians would also benefit from a review of its contents. . . . Information and library science students specializing in scholarly communication should digest the entire study." —Journal of Education for Library and Information Science
For thousands of years, horror of the dead, superstition, and oppressive decrees prevented our ancestors from looking inside the human body; in ancient civilizations, diagnostics were based on imagination and theory, with only limited observation. So people developed suppositions about health and disease without knowing how the liver, heart, brain, and blood vessels looked or functioned. In tracing the history of medical imaging, Doby and Alker establish that it was not until the Renaissance and the detailed drawings of human anatomy by da Vinci and Vesalius that successful internal imaging of the human body was born.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, Roentgen’s discovery of the X-ray provided the first miraculous look into the living body. From that instant, medical imaging developed at an ever-increasing pace, evolving to more recent discoveries in nuclear medicine, CT scanning, and ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging.
As Doby and Alker note, we can expect our efforts to be understood in the future only if we examine past events with an appreciation of the difficulties and challenges that faced our predecessors. Despite almost unbelievable advances in current medical technology, we must still rely on our own resources and common sense as human beings in understanding what technology can and cannot do for us.
A comprehensive set of appendixes pictorially depicting the history of imaging round out the volume.Our Country, The Planet is a wide-ranging discussion of the global environmental crisis that accounts for the positions and perceptions of both developed and developing nations. As president of the World Conservation Union and the only person to have served on all five independent international commissions on global issues, Shridath Ramphal brings to his study a unique perspective and deep understanding of both development and the environment.
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