In light of rural Asia's 30-year population increase, this book reviews trends and patterns in the quality of life, identifies and analyzes options for private and public policies for the improvement of the quality of life, and assesses the prospects for the quality of life in the context of globalization, privatization, and technological change.

This study looks at the social and economic status, family and workforce roles, and quality of life of women in the rural sectors of monsoonal and equatorial Asia, from Pakistan to Japan, where life often is characterized by unemployment, underemployment, and poverty.

The rural tourism sector has become a key driver for social and economic growth and a major source of income for developing and low-income countries in many parts of Asia. Rural tourism is progressively viewed as a solution, increasing the economic viability of marginalised areas, stimulating social regeneration and improving the living conditions of rural communities. Responsible rural tourism promotes conservation of the natural environment, protects the authenticity of culture, and offers socioeconomic opportunities and benefits for local communities. This book encompasses case studies from a range of Asian countries and examines both successful and failed attempts in developing responsible rural tourism, and the learnings that we can adopt and adapt for future responsible rural tourism in the region. It will be of interest to students, researchers, stakeholders and policymakers in tourism.

Within the overall scope of a long term study being conducted at the Institute on rural development, an advance summary is provided of the salient factors governing women's lives in the family and their role in production in monsoonal and equatorial Asia. Reasons are suggested for major differences in the status of women in Southeast Asia as compared with those of South and East Asia. Cultural factors influencing female education, size of family, activities in production and earning ability are discussed. Actions necessary to meet the most pressing current and future needs of rural women are indicated.

In Revisiting Rural Places, scholars return to sites of their earlier research in Southeast Asia to examine how the rapid pace of change in the countryside affected places, spaces and people that they originally studied decades ago. Each of the 14 core chapters is organized around a change that, based on broader trends, the authors did not anticipate: a new longhouse in Sarawak, the urban forests of Java, the assertion of an ethnic minority identity in Northern Thailand, the re-shaping of class relations and identities in the Philippines, and the uncontested sell-off of farmland to cacao entrepreneurs in Sulawesi. These outcomes pose a challenge to conventional understandings of how the countryside is being re-shaped, and to what effect. The accounts in this volume map out diverse pathways to poverty or prosperity. Families who seemed trapped in poverty decades ago have prospered owing to non-farm and educational opportunities. Others have unexpectedly been thrust into relative deprivation by industrial agriculture, rural industrialization, or destructive natural resource extraction. The breadth of the material makes this unique and exceptionally rich account of rural change a valuable classroom tool as well as an important source of information for a broad spectrum of institutions and other stakeholders, from the World Bank to NGOs and rural activists.

Using examples from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, the book considers what scholarship has defined as a village within the rapid changes taking place in rural Southeast Asia.

This publication released on the occasion of the International Year for Sustainable Tourism for Development 2017, focuses on community empowerment and poverty alleviation through rural tourism development. The report shines a light on rural tourism development in the Asia Pacific region with fourteen specific case studies that show how communities have adapted a sustainable approach to rural tourism that stimulates economic growth, creates employment and improves the livelihood of communities.