Rural sociology monograph on social mobility in rural area Bangladesh, based on village studies in three districts - presents theoretical aspects of peasant studies, research methods, etc., and analyses relationship between rural development, population trends and social change, income distribution between households, internal migration, landlessness and increasing poverty. Bibliography p. 342 to 361.

Mobility and migration were not uncommon in Byzantium, as is true for all societies. Yet, scholarship is only beginning to pay attention to these phenomena. This book presents in English translation a wide array of relevant source texts from ca. 650 to ca. 1450 originally written in medieval Greek: from administrative records, saints’ lives and letters by churchmen to ego-documents by ambassadors and historical narratives by court historians. Each source text is accompanied by a detailed introduction, commentary and further bibliography, thus making the book accessible to both scholars and students and laying the groundwork for future research on the internal dynamics of Byzantine society.

The articles in this book, reprinted from the journal Past and Present, are all, in different ways, concerned with the ownership of landed property in medieval England and with those who worked the land. Problems debated include those concerning the keeping intact of the great estates of the Anglo-Norman barons in the face of both inheritance claims and of political manipulation by the crown. Other articles show that the difficulties of knights and lesser gentry were no less complex, as social shifts resulted from economic developments as well as from their military role and their relationships with their overlords. The essays are of as much importance for those interested in the history of politics as to those concerned with the economy and society of medieval England.

This book discusses the historical transformation of the destiny of Chinese peasants under the contemporary political economic conditions, and tries to explore the institutional mechanism behind the formation and maintenance of these conditions. The analysis focuses on the consequences of the great social mobilization brought about by the reform. The phenomenon of migrant workers is the most significant consequence of the change of Chinese peasants’ life courses. The destiny of migrant workers will be the destiny of Chinese peasants. The introduction chapter of this book discusses the historical context and peasants’ fates, their political participation, and citizenship of peasants after they become urban dwellers. Chapter one discusses the social implication and economic consequences of the urbanization of rural population. Chapter two discusses the living conditions for peasants that moved to work in cities, including working environments, living environments, education of their children, and their social networking. Chapter three discusses the challenges that the mobilization of peasants has posed on government policy making and urban managements. Chapter four discusses the latest development in the social mobilization of Chinese peasants.

This dramatic story of land and power from twentieth-century Eastern Europe is set in two extraordinary villages: a rebel village, where peasants fought the advent of Communism and became its first martyrs, and a model village turned forcibly into a town, Dictator Ceauşescu’s birthplace. The two villages capture among themselves nearly a century of dramatic transformation and social engineering, ending up with their charged heritage in the present European Union. "One of Romania’s foremost social critics, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi offers a valuable look at several decades of policy that marginalized that country’s rural population, from the 1918 land reform to the post-1989 property restitution. Illustrating her arguments with a close comparison of two contrasting villages, she describes the actions of a long series of “predatory elites,” from feudal landowners through the Communist Party through post-communist leaders, all of whom maintained the rural population’s dependency. A forceful concluding chapter shows that its prospects for improvement are scarcely better within the EU. Romania’s villagers have an eminent and spirited advocate in the author.”

Originally published in 1982, this book provides an important set of basic materials for students of rural development. Key papers have been chosen and arranged, and the editor has provided a general introduction and passages that link the papers, alerting the student to rival theoretical interpretations and to regional parallels and contrasts. The book provides a basis for the analysis of the processes that make rural societies and economies what they are and substantially determine the changes that take place within them. The papers help the reader to understand the nature of the phenomena with which rural development has to deal, and in doing so to begin to evaluate the interventions of agencies and planners.

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