Michael Sofer

Pluriactivity in the Moshav:: family farming in Israel

In the past several years, pluriactivity has become quite widespread among moshav farming households, especially those located within Metropolitan Tel Aviv’s rural fringe. Agricultural income has been on the decline and other sources of income have appeared. This paper has a threefold aim:To identify major patterns of income sources among Moshav’s households; to explain the underlying causes for choosing pluriactivity as an income-producing strategy; and to explain the reasons for the specific choice of pluriactivity patterns adopted. An analysis of the activities of moshavim 1 located in the Sharon Region indicates that the further the moshav from the metropolitan area, the greater the role of agriculture in total family income. Within a pluriactivity strategy, the main additional sources of income are wage employment and small business activity, carried out either on or off the moshav. The main factors stimulating the increase in pluriactivity are the decline in agricultural income and the desire to take advantage of vocational training. This trend is supported by other factors, such as the availability of premises for alternative uses as well as the ease of operating a business from the home. The divergence in pluriactivity patterns may indicate that the frequency of mixing agriculture with other income sources may be a temporary option adopted by households for which agriculture has been a mainstay. Those households may shift away from agriculture in the short or mid-term. We would argue that at present, for the majority of those no longer devoted solely to agriculture, pluriactivity is also aimed at helping to sustain agricultural activity. In such cases, farmers utilise the resources acquired from non-agricultural employment for investment in agriculture, including the upgrading of equipment and other assets. # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Unbalanced embeddedness of ethnic entrepreneurship

Ethnic entrepreneurs’ networks are analysed on the basis of three complementary dimensions: intensity and complexity of networks; power relations; and entrepreneurs’ horizons of awareness. The analysis is based on two theoretical propositions. First, firms located in the periphery are weakly embedded in national markets due to their external depended relations. Second, local firms use the tendency to embed themselves in their home regions as a strategy to improve their position in external power relations. The inquiry of Arab industry in Israel suggests that the form and degree of embeddedness of any given firm is affected by the existence of both separate economic milieus: Arab and Jewish. The findings lead us to suggest two concepts. First, over‐embeddedness, which characterises Arab firms that are highly embedded in the local milieu, operate under the influence of kinship structures and a petrified supportive tissue that downgrades networks into cohesive coalitions opposing structural changes. Second, under‐embeddedness, which characterises firms that manage to develop and maintain wide inter‐ethnic dependent sets of networks, but due to lack of power fail to transform them into more rewarding exchanges.

Arab industrialization in Israel: Ethnic entrepreneurship in the periphery

Previous studies of industrial activity in Arab settlements in Israel have been less than comprehensive. We believe that the lack of interest and data on Arab industry stems from the fact that no real effort has ever been made to further the economic development of these settlements in general and their industrial development in particular. For their economic base, the majority of Arab settlements continue to rely largely on commuting to Jewish employment centers. Nevertheless, over time, industrial entrepreneurship has emerged in Arab settlements. It is against this background that the importance of our work can be seen, for it presents, for the first time and at first hand, a thorough analysis of entrepreneurship and industrialization in the Arab sector in Israel. Arab industrial entrepreneurship in Israel is a unique phenomenon. Most previous studies have examined entrepreneurship among the ethnic minorities which, in recent years, have migrated to the metropolitan centers of developed countries. Israeli Arabs constitute an endogenous ethnic minority which is in transition from a traditional culture, based on a domestic economy, to a modern culture, which is becoming integrated into an advanced capitalist system dominated by a Jewish majority. Moreover, they inhabit highly homogeneous and segregated regions in the national periphery. They are therefore forced to overcome three complementary sets of obstacles in their integration into the larger economy and their attempt to industrialize: lack of experience and expertise in advanced forms of production and marketing; ethnic marginality; and socio-spatial peripherality. We believe the contribution of this book to be fourfold: (1) It is based on a unique case study which may expand the range of case studies available for comparative cross-cultural research; (2) it presents new theoretical formulations regarding issues that remain unresolved in the current literature on ethnic entrepreneurship; (3) it is grounded in intensive field research; and (4) it offers possible guidelines for constructive policy. It is particularly significant that the Institute of Israeli Arab Studies took it upon itself to promote this study.

Core–Periphery Structure in Fiji

The central theme of this paper is that a core – periphery structure which was established in Fiji in colonial times has been maintained in the current independent state. The basic structure has not changed and the nature of the relationships between the capitalist mode of production (as the main component of the core) and the village-based mode of production (as a typical mode of the periphery) are supporting the already polarized economic pattern. The current major mechanisms which operate to maintain the basic structure are the pattern of capital allocation, internal migration, the preservation of the village mode of production, and the monopolistic position of the core. These major mechanisms do not differ significantly from past mechanisms although the specific details may vary somewhat. Changes within the structure may occur through a transformation process, in which some basic modification in the production relations and the production forces of the village mode of production may occur. This is regarded as progress and may improve the position of the periphery in relation to the core but does not cause any change of the basic structure.

The restructuring stages of Israeli Arab industrial entrepreneurship

The current pattern of industrial development in Arab settlements in Israel represents, above all, adaptation to restructuring processes operating throughout the Israeli economy. The result may be viewed as a form of peripheral industrialization of small plants specializing in less-advanced industrial production. The peripheralization process and the fact that Israeli Arab industry has remained marginal to the national economy should be understood in the context of the structural conditions in which Arab entrepreneurship is embedded. The impact of three forces is stressed: government policy, large corporations, and the internal sociocultural properties peculiar to the Arab population in Israel. The resulting form of industrialization is based on restructuring processes formatted as a number of distinctive development stages, which must be understood within the wider framework of Israels economic restructuring. The dominant form of capitalist production affected the transformation of the Israeli Arab economy at each period, from state management to corporate dominance, and currently succeeded by a new accumulation regime affected by globalization processes. Furthermore, majority–minority relations affected it with each pole embedded in its own ethnic milieu. These majority–minority relations, supported by a selective government policy, have since been superseded by the relations conducted between the Jewish-dominated core and the Israeli-Arab-subordinated periphery. The result of this process has diversely affected both economic poles, and continues to influence the form of Arab industrialization, branch selection, and rate of plant openings. Furthermore, the result is a failure by Arab entrepreneurs to penetrate the more privileged sectors of the national economy, partly because of the failure of the Israeli political and economic elite to respond to Arab efforts at expansion into the larger economy.

Uneven regional development and internal labor migration in Fiji

Abstract The phenomenon of labor mobility in Fiji is encouraged by the existing pattern of uneven regional development which creates and contributes to limited economic opportunities. This is manifested by a disparity in the average annual growth rate of the provincial population, which implies migration from the lower income provinces to the higher income provinces. Circular labor migration follows the same path. Gains to the village economy from circular mobility, especially in the remote periphery and the outer islands, take the form of remittances which supplement local income. labor mobility, and particularly its circular form, expresses the interdependency between the capitalist and village modes of production. This mobility is a mechanism whereby the native villagers supply cheap labor for the production of commodities, and at the same time contribute to village households income, and thus enable the native population to satisfy cash requirements beyond local commercial production capacity. Although this mechanism supports the existing core-periphery pattern in Fiji, it may be considered an integrative component in development strategies of small island states.

Opportunities, constraints and pluriactivity in rural Romania during the transition period; preliminary observations

This paper presents some initial implications of the changes brought about by recent economic transformations within the Romanian rural sector during the current transition period. As a case study of those trends, within the context of pluriactivity and constraints to rural development, it looks at some characteristics of agricultural production in the Subcarpathian region of the county of Valcea, an area where collectivisation, and thus its influences, had been partial and limited. The paper links micro and macro view points. At the micro level, it looks at the coping strategies, based on pluriactivity, adopted by rural households under changing economic conditions. At the macro level, the paper discusses some of the possible factors supporting as well as hindering rural welfare levels and agricultural development under current economic conditions.

Analysis of economic networks Geographical information systems as a visualization tool

Abstract This paper offers a simple methodology for the analysis of socio-economic networks, aimed at improving the understanding of wider industrialization processes and the potential of lower-ranked enterprises to advance to higher levels of development. It emphasizes the role of GIS as a visualization tool, the human ability to interpret complex network patterns and the GIS advantage of quick spatial investigation. The methodology involves a breakdown of the overall pattern into sub-patterns performed in a number of stages, each consisting of several steps. Each stage is based on a newly selected factor(s), after the application of the former factor(s) has been completed. After the most visible patterns have been removed, the investigation proceeds to the analysis of the residual patterns. The potential of the proposed methodology is demonstrated by its application to the analysis of sales and purchasing linkages of Arab industrial plants in Israel. The network is expanded into the following main patterns: links to metropolitan core, links to adjacent Jewish towns, intra-settlements links and interregional links.

Migration Dynamics in Romania and the Counter-Urbanisation Process: A Case Study of Bucharest’s Rural-Urban Fringe

Romania is one of the eastern European countries to face a tumultuous history during the second half of the last century. The results of this experience are expressed in the current transformation processes at the macro and micro levels of the economic space. By 1989 with the change in regime, the new political and economic transformation of the country changed the direction and the intensity of the internal migration flows. This chapter presents the rates of the internal migration flows in Romania during the last two decades, concentrating on the counter-urbanisation process and its impact, particularly on the rural-urban fringe. The transition from dependence on farming to a more diversified economic base has transformed this belt into a space of mixed production and consumption. At present, the urban-rural flow of people from the inner parts of the metropolitan area is a dominant flow, where the upper and middle classes of urban dwellers are in search of new life idylls and enhanced amenities available at the fringe. Also, there is an increasing heterogeneity within the rural-urban fringe in economic and social terms. The different social structure is translated into modified residential land-use and its related demand for goods and services that induce the development of new functions.

Revisiting rural places: pathways to poverty and prosperity in Southeast Asia

will already be familiar to readers, Kennedy interestingly discusses less well-known ones. He writes as an historian rather than a geographer, but one contributing to the ‘spatial turn’ recently taken by the historical profession. After an introductory chapter on the two continents, other chapters review the scientific background of exploration, offer a prosopography of explorers, present the role of the gateways and examine the logistics of expeditions. Subsequent chapters focus on the Indigenous intermediaries on whom the explorers depended and their encounters with local societies. The final chapter dwells on the celebrity status of the explorers. There is little to fault in a book based on both unpublished material and contemporary publications, and with a fine and critical perspective on historiographical debates. Different readers may be pleased or disappointed that Kennedy does not delve further into the psyche of the explorers. All readers will appreciate his fluent jargon-free prose. For a volume on exploration, however, the two maps remain somewhat limited; it would be good to see the routes of the explorers. Kennedy stays on track with his discussion of British expeditions, and readers must look elsewhere for the Frenchmen, Germans, Italians and others who ventured out. Comparisons between the exploration of the southern continents and Asia will be a good subject for discussion in tutorial rooms. Kennedy’s own juxtapositions between Australia and Africa are insightful: the differences in exploring a continent destined to host a settler society and one in which Europeans remained a tiny cohort, the variations between travel with camels and horses in Australia and with burdens shouldered by human porters in Africa, the diverging opinions of multiple peoples and cultures. Kennedy casts Australia and Africa as oceans, and he convincingly suggests that the exploration of these great landmasses owed much to the technology and knowledge of eighteenth-century sea voyages. He characterises his explorers as terrestrial sea captains amassing equipment and crew, seeking commissions and finance, enforcing their authority but facing challenges from their own men and others among whom they navigated. Some of the ships sailing across the deserts and jungles of Africa and Australia arrived happily in port; others ran aground. Their history indeed forms the stuff of Boy’s Own chronicles, but in The last blank spaces—the most accomplished book on exploration that has appeared in a long time—the explorer stands at the centre of a web of science, ethics, religion, politics and cross-cultural encounters that altered the history of Australia and Africa, but also of Europe.