Rural Development Path Research Articles

Measurement and Path Selection of Rural Development Level in Enclave Areas: A Case Study of Jingyuan County, Gansu Province

The development of rural areas is a significant component in social and economic activities. It is very important for optimizing the allocation of rural production and living factors, promoting the integration of urban and rural areas and sustainable development to identify the characteristics and main types of regional rural development. In this paper, 169 villages in Jingyuan County were selected as the research object, and the evaluation index system of rural development level was constructed from the perspective of “Factor-structure-function”. The rural development level and spatial structure characteristics of Jingyuan County were analyzed by using rural development index, regional function index, nearest neighbor index, and exploratory spatial data analysis, and the types and specific paths of rural development were determined. The results showed the following: Rural development of Jingyuan County is at a low level, which is characterized by “high in the south and low in the north”. The level of rural development shows significant spatial dependence in the global space, and the spatial agglomeration characteristics are obvious, which are manifested as strong agglomeration dominated by resource endowment and cultural function and weak agglomeration dominated by production function and location relationship. The local space is characterized by stable high value and high value (H-H), low value and low value (L-L) bidirectional agglomeration. According to the spatial characteristics of the rural development level, the “4 + 10 + 6 + 2” system of rural development type identification in Jingyuan County was constructed, and finally it was determined that policy leading and characteristic protection are the dominant types of rural development. Based on this, this paper put forward specific paths and development models of different types of rural development in Jingyuan County from seven dimensions: industry, population, land, tourism, space, culture and ecology, so as to provide ideas and references for the integration of urban and rural areas, the implementation of rural revitalization strategy, and sustainable development in the western poverty-stricken areas.

An Archaeological Perspective on Rural Development and Rural Poverty

Rural people and places have deep histories that provide insight into present situations and future potentials. Archaeological and ethnohistorical research in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, Mexico, reveal a high degree of rural demographic and economic development associated with an intensive and productive agroecosystem during the century before the Spanish conquest of AD 1521. What made this possible, here and in many respects in Late Postclassic Mesoamerica generally, were political and economic institutions rather distinct from Old World experience. The case illustrates that there are alternative paths of rural development.

The production of family agriculture affected by mining in the Central Region of Minas Gerais and the wrong paths of rural development on a family farming basis

O presente artigo busca analisar a importância da produção material da agricultura familiar na região central de Minas Gerais, nos municípios de Conceição do Mato Dentro, Alvorada de Minas e Dom Joaquim, e como o projeto minerário “Minas Rio”, levado a cabo pela multinacional Anglo American desde 2008, compromete a disponibilidade de recursos das comunidades atingidas, interferindo nos processos de desenvolvimento rural em bases familiares. Este trabalho é resultado de pesquisa interdisciplinar desenvolvida entre 2015 e 2016 que teve como objetivo assessorar entidade de apoio à agricultura familiar na região a partir da caracterização das comunidades atingidas. As coletas de dados foram realizadas por meio de entrevistas realizadas nas unidades de produção familiares, bem como de agentes de desenvolvimento rural nos três municípios pesquisados. O conjunto de resultados encontrados mostrou que apesar da região ser caracterizada pela presença marcante da agricultura familiar, com potencial para alavancar o desenvolvimento em bases sustentáveis, através de produção rica e processos de beneficiamento tradicionais, o projeto minerário na região afetou as famílias agricultoras no que toca ao acesso aos recursos naturais, sobretudo hídricos, bem como provocou um esvaziamento do campo, alterando drasticamente os rumos do desenvolvimento rural em bases sustentáveis e territoriais. Há, contudo, uma indicação no resultado do estudo de que as famílias desenvolvem estratégias e diversas maneiras de resistir e permanecer em suas terras.

China’s Household Tradition and Its Rural Development Path: With Reference to Traditional Russian and Indian Village Communities

Sources of tradition that produce a lasting influence upon modern society are fundamental to that society’s development. Among Eastern sources of tradition, the village systems of Russia and India are very unlike the Chinese household system, a system that served as the foundation for China’s unique path of rural development. This system includes the following features: the organization of agricultural operations on the basis of household operations; an economy where agriculture, industry and commerce complement each other on the basis of their integration at the household level; forms of agricultural cooperation based on mutual assistance and cooperation among households; and a system of rural governance based on the joint governance by household and state. In China’s rural development process, the household system, though at one time discarded, still constitutes the institutional backdrop for current and future rural development.

Mediated and unmediated market dependence in the Flemish countryside in the nineteenth century: two paths of rural development

Recently, several studies have cast new light on the relative roles of commerce and exchange in rural areas. This article examines the importance of extra-local trade in two contrasting regions of the nineteenth-century Flemish countryside, Oudenaarde and Saint-Nicolas. In the first region, the size distribution of holdings was such that market dependence was ‘mediated’; rural output circulated via reciprocal personal relationships. In the second region, market dependence was ‘unmediated’ and rural producers were more directly involved in the market. The article also highlights the complexity of the commercialisation of the countryside, and the need to move beyond the traditional opposing views that have long dominated the debate on the commercialisation of the countryside.

Ciągle niewygodna klasa. Środkowo-europejscy post-chłopi w kraju i za granicą w dobie neoliberalizmu

The paper builds on the author’s intimate knowledge of Eastern European village life over four decades. Before, during, and after socialism, villagers (“peasants” ) have always been incorporated into wider structures, while at the same time challenging standard social science theories. Their greater ability to reproduce themselves “outside the market” is the basis of their distinctiveness; this corresponds to a persisting distinction between town and countryside and has implications for political mobilization. The paper develops binary comparisons at two levels: first, between capitalist and socialist paths of rural development; second, within the latter, between the productive symbiosis accomplished in socialist Hungary and the stagnation of non-collectivized Poland. Some of these latter contrasts have persisted in new forms in the era of EU membership. Finally, the author expresses some personal nostalgia for the days when rural community studies constituted the bedrock of ethnographic writing about this region.

Putting postmodernity into practice: endogenous development and the role of traditional cultures in the rural development of marginal regions

Post-modernity has led to a re-evaluation of tradition. This paper considers one aspect of this re-evaluation — the role of traditional cultures and their implications for a rural development process which is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable in the marginal regions of Europe. The links between traditional cultures, territoriality and sustainability suggest that a culturally homogeneous world is an unattractive prospect in sustainable development terms. Actor-network theory is explored as an approach which can be used to inform policy, in particular by conceptualising how a re-valorisation of cultural resources can provide local actors with strategic capacity for endogenous development and for the harnessing of extra-local forces in a market economy. Against this background, current European Union agricultural policy directions are considered, and an alternative approach is proposed under which traditional cultures are explicitly treated as resources in the creation of rural development networks. Such networks treat territorial locality as an asset, facilitate the animation of local and regional development, and connect localities and local actors with wider national and international markets and development frameworks. The rural development path for marginal regions that emerges integrates tradition with the imperatives of the postmodern world in which economic rationality is combined with an appropriate degree of local developmental control.

Politics and Paths of Rural Development in China: The Village Conglomerate in Shandong Province

O w NE OF THE most significant aspects of the economic and social development in rural China since the mid-1980s has been the rise of the conglomerate (VC hereafter). As the most significant and rapidly-growing institution in rural China, where most (73 percent) of China's population still lives, the VC is important in its own right. Moreover, its development has raised broader questions regarding the paths and politics of rural development in China in the 1990s and beyond. Given the large rural population in China, the success of China's modernization program is contingent upon its rural development. If China can find in the VC a structure of promoting economic growth and maintaining social and political stability, the VC's promise cannot be overestimated. If the VC turns out to be a major source for economic, social and political disruption in rural China, the VC's threat cannot be underestimated. The VC's development has also provided a good comparative study of the paths and politics of rural development between Mao's era and the post-Mao era, two of the most important periods of rural development in the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Avillage conglomerate (xiangzonggongsior zonghang) is a comprehensive economic organization under unified leadership whose membership is restricted to a specific village. The VC is a direct descendant of the collective economic activities of the brigade level of the commune system, but as will be elaborated below, it operates in a transformed economic environment. The individual activities of the under the VC fit under the statistical category of village enterprises (VE, xiang qiye), though this category is not restricted to VC projects. This paper is based on primary research on the VCs in Shandong