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Family farms represent important components of food systems and rural areas. The aim of the book is to develop a conceptual framework guiding further research and policy design to enhance food systems' capability to sustainably meet societal expectations, with a valorisation of the role of family farming.
Projecting win-win situations, new economic opportunities, green growth and innovative partnerships, the green economy discourse has quickly gained centre stage in international environmental governance and policymaking. Its underlying message is attractive and optimistic: if the market can become the tool for tackling climate change and other major ecological crises, the fight against these crises can also be the royal road to solving the problems of the market. But how ‘green’ is the green economy? And how social or democratic can it be? This book examines how the emergence of this new discourse has fundamentally modified the terms of the environmental debate. Interpreting the rise of ...
This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Sustainable Agriculture–Beyond Organic Farming" that was published in Sustainability
In most countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the fall of communism opened up the possibility for individuals to acquire land. Based on Katherine Verdery's extensive fieldwork between 1990 and 2001, The Vanishing Hectare explores the importance of land and land ownership to the people of one Transylvanian community, Aurel Vlaicu. Verdery traces how collectivized land was transformed into private property, how land was valued, what the new owners were able to do with it, and what it signified to each of the different groups vying for land rights. Verdery tells this story about transforming socialist property forms in a global context, showing the fruitfulness of conceptuali...
"In 2000 the book Robotic Milking, reflecting the proceedings of an International Symposium which was held in The Netherlands came out. At that time, commercial introduction of automatic milking systems was no longer obstructed by technological inadequacies. Particularly in a few west-European countries, systems were being installed at an increasing rate. However, it was recognised that the changeover from 'traditional' to automatic milking affected the farming operation, herd management and control of milk quality profoundly and that many of the implications were still unknown. So, new challenges in various fields of dairy farming and new research areas emerged. Since this previous Internat...
This second annual survey by the Open Media Research Institute presents some 100 contributions on political developments in the 27 countries of the former socialist bloc. Sections on individual countries include a map, key statistics, brief discussions of domestic and foreign policy issues, excerpts from important documents, and profiles of major personalities. Some contributors provide general articles on regional economic developments and the processes involved with building democratic institutions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
This book analyzes the transition of Russia's agro-food sector from a centrally planned system to a market-oriented one. The chapters set out to explain the initial conditions of transition, describe the measures undertaken, survey the current situation, and offer perspectives on how best to continue with the reform. Hence, the book not only provides insights into Russia's food economy, it also gives very valuable information about the process of transition and the question: What next? Within the Russian context, the food economy is of special importance, due to the relatively high share it represents in the economy and its importance for employment. Furthermore, the privatization and the re...
This book develops new perspectives on the cultural politics of climate change and its implications for responding to this challenge.
This Companion offers an unprecedented overview of anthropology’s unique contribution to the study of politics. Explores the key concepts and issues of our time - from AIDS, globalization, displacement, and militarization, to identity politics and beyond Each chapter reflects on concepts and issues that have shaped the anthropology of politics and concludes with thoughts on and challenges for the way ahead Anthropology’s distinctive genre, ethnography, lies at the heart of this volume
Poverty as Subsistence explores the "propertizing" land reform policy that the World Bank advocated throughout the transitioning countries of Eurasia, expecting poverty reduction to result from distributing property titles over agricultural land to local (rural) populations. China's early 1980s land reform offered support for this expectation, but while the spread of propertizing reform to post-communist Eurasia created numerous "subsistence" smallholders, it failed to stimulate entrepreneurship or market-based production among the rural poor. Varga argues that the World Bank advocated a simplified version of China's land reform that ignored a key element of successful reforms: the smallholders' immediate environment, the structure of actors and institutions determining whether smallholders survive and grow in their communities. With concrete insights from analysis of the land reform program throughout post-communist Eurasia and multisited fieldwork in Romania and Ukraine, this book details how and why land reform led to subsistence and the mechanisms underpinning informal commercialization.