Contemporary problems of economic and social change have obliged social scientists from different fields to learn much about each others' work as well as about the specific problems they are together seeking to solve. The bearing of economic conditions on the character of a social system has become more apparent to anthropologists, and, similarly, economists have become more aware of the relevance of social factors to economic decisions. This pioneering book is at the point of contact between these two disciplines, presenting detailed studies from many societies of the interaction between social and economic relationships. The studies in this volume--all by social anthropologists --focus on the formation and management of capital, since this process is central to the economic functioning and growth of all societies. With this central theme, the essays cover a very wide geographic range and an equally wide range of social and economic structures. The book begins with an essay by Firth, who provides an extended outline discussion of the main problems and issues to be covered, and ends with an essay by Yamey, who provides summarizing comments and queries. The volume will be especially useful to those concerned with the problems and prospects of economic and social change in underdeveloped areas, in addition to economists and anthropologists concerned with what each can learn from the other.

The formation and management of capital are among the central issues in economic growth, especially in 'under-developed' countries, and form the main theme in this volume. The societies examined vary widely, both geographically and also in terms of types of social and economic structures. First published in 1964.

This study of the so-called Green Revolution in the rice bowl region of Malaysia aims to provide an interpretation of recent changes in the Malaysian agrarian structure, and to make an analytical and theoretical contribution to the long-standing intellectual debate on the agrarian question. By joining the micro-world of household social structure and economy to the macro-world of changes in production relations, it traces out a specific trajectory of agrarian development in Malaysia.

One of the more perplexing problems of economic development is helping subsistence farmers break away from production simply for home consumption to become commercial farmers, producing more and more for sale in the marketplace. Although subsistence farms occupy 40 percent of the worlds cultivated land and support half of mankind, facts about them and programs to increase their output are scattered. Subsistence Agriculture and Economic Development provides a unique overview of these difficulties and their significance to economic development. It is the first book to subject subsistence agriculture to rigorous multi-disciplinary examination and to bring to light new theory and empirical evidence directed toward solving the problem.This volume contains original chapters by forty leading social scientists and agricultural specialists who summarize contemporary theory, fact, and policy on the problems of developing agriculture from subsistence to a commercial basis. Each contributor speaks from one or more of the relevant standpoints of economics, sociology, agronomy, political science, anthropology, and social psychology. There emerges a clear, meaningful picture of the subsistence farmer and the problems involved in changing his attitudes, methods of production, and economic and social environment.Broad in scope, documented with pertinent case studies, and far-reaching in its guidelines for future research and policy, this work should be read by all concerned with increasing food production and with economic development. This is an area of special concern in the uses of food products as the basis for new energy resources - an issue of increasing importance in the advancing use of ethanol as a fuel drawn from corn products.