Rural sociology research papers on social change in rural area India - explains research methods; analyses popular participation, impact of the green revolution on poverty-stricken rural workers, social role of castes and tribal peoples, credit cooperatives for agricultural workers (harijans), etc.; examines obstacles to rural mobilization; discusses peasant movements and rural worker organizations, the role of rural cooperatives in social development, and approaches to land reform. References, statistical tables.

The rapidly changing nature of life in Canadian rural communities is more than a simple response to economic conditions. People living in rural places are part of a new social agenda characterized by transformation of livelihoods, landscapes, and social relations – these profound changes invite us to reconsider the meanings of community, culture, and citizenship. Social Transformation in Rural Canada presents the work of researchers from a variety of fields who explore the dynamics of social transformation in rural settlements across several regions and sectors of the Canadian landscape. This volume provides a nuanced portrait of how local forms of action, adaptation, identity, and imagination are reshaping aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities in rural Canada. Unlike many previous studies, this work looks at rural communities not simply as places affected by external forces, but as incubators of change and social units with agency and purpose, many of which provide exemplary models for other communities facing challenges of transition.

Poverty in rural India: Is this a permanent condition? Are villagers immobilized by a rigid caste system, limited resources and economic exploitation? This book is about villagers who have done remarkable things with their lives—people who have broken the constraints of poverty and inequality to become innovative and mobile. It is written partly by one villager who found a career doing research on social change. Inside–Outside narrates stories of grassroots change and innovation. These stories are discussed from the combined view of an insider (Baviskar), who grew up in a village in western India, and an outsider (Attwood), who came to study social change in the same region. Telling life stories from people who taught and surprised them, they challenge common stereotypes about Indian villagers—stereotypes of passivity, fatalism, and stagnation. Baviskar’s life and experience of change in his home village exemplify grassroots initiative and innovation. He was born as the son of an impoverished farmer in a drought-stricken village in western Maharashtra. Ability, hard work, and some dramatic twists of fate enabled him to attend college and then complete a doctorate in India’s premier sociology department. In contrast to Baviskar, Attwood is a complete outsider, having grown up in a suburb near Chicago, in the US heartland. He stumbled into anthropology and spent several years in India, doing fieldwork in the region where Baviskar grew up. The two met in 1969; they became friends and began four decades of collaborative research. Here they tell the stories of villagers who changed their own lives and who also, in many cases, changed the lives of others. These stories describe rapid innovation and institution-building in the countryside, challenging an array of common stereotypes about village life in India. Seeking explanations for change, it helps to look at village life from many angles. Inside and outside views are complementary and provide a more complete picture.

The pace of socioeconomic transformation in India over the past two and a half decades has been formidable. This volume sheds light on how these transformations have played out at the level of everyday life to influence the lives of Indian women, and gender relations more broadly. Through ethnographically grounded case studies, the authors portray the contradictory and contested co-existence of discrepant gendered norms, values and visions in a society caught up in wider processes of sociopolitical change. ‘Women, Gender and Everyday Social Transformation in India’ moves the debate on gender and social transformation into the domain of everyday life to arrive at locally embedded and detailed, ethnographically informed analyses of gender relations in real-life contexts that foreground both subtle and not-so-subtle negotiations and contestations.

The doctoral students of the economist and teacher Venkatesh B. Athreya organized a seminar in his honor in January 2016. This book is a collection of the papers presented at that seminar and a few invited contributions on the theme of agriculture and rural India with special emphasis on the experience of economic reforms since the 1990s.