Tim Jenkins

Putting postmodernity into practice: endogenous development and the role of traditional cultures in the rural development of marginal regions

Abstract Post-modernity has led to a re-evaluation of tradition. This paper considers one aspect of this re-evaluation — the role of traditional cultures and their implications for a rural development process which is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable in the marginal regions of Europe. The links between traditional cultures, territoriality and sustainability suggest that a culturally homogeneous world is an unattractive prospect in sustainable development terms. Actor-network theory is explored as an approach which can be used to inform policy, in particular by conceptualising how a re-valorisation of cultural resources can provide local actors with strategic capacity for endogenous development and for the harnessing of extra-local forces in a market economy. Against this background, current European Union agricultural policy directions are considered, and an alternative approach is proposed under which traditional cultures are explicitly treated as resources in the creation of rural development networks. Such networks treat territorial locality as an asset, facilitate the animation of local and regional development, and connect localities and local actors with wider national and international markets and development frameworks. The rural development path for marginal regions that emerges integrates tradition with the imperatives of the postmodern world in which economic rationality is combined with an appropriate degree of local developmental control.

Chinese Traditional Thought and Practice: Lessons for an Ecological Economics Worldview

Abstract This paper argues the need for a moral dimension, lacking in the neo-classical paradigm, to humanitys relationship with the natural world. Against this background, it reviews Chinese philosophical/religious traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, neo-Confucianism, and popular religious practice. The Chinese worldview derived from these traditions is based on ideals of harmony, human perfectibility and systemic fit within natural systems and processes. However, it also contains strong worldly and utilitarian elements at the popular level, and environmental degradation in modern China is explained in terms of recent increases in the importance of the pragmatic over the ideal. The paper concludes that Chinese traditions offer conceptual resources for ecological thinking by placing economics within a wider socio-ecological fabric, emphasising soft technologies, challenging meta-economic assumptions, and encouraging systemic wisdom.

Democratising the global economy by ecologicalising economics: The example of global warming

Abstract The aim of this paper is to show that continued reliance on an unreconstructed neo-classical economic model for human progress is largely responsible for an economic development path which is both unsustainable and undemocratic. Using the topical issue of global warming as an illustration, it is argued that the ecological isation of the economics discipline challenges the foundations of this strategy and promises, among other benefits, a more democratic global economic organisation. The data analysed in this paper suggest that the damage of global warming is directly attributable to economic activity, the benefits of economic growth go to the economically articulate, and the disbenefits in terms of environmental damage are borne by the economically inarticulate. Mainstream economics gives no answer to, and becomes a method for evading, this moral problem. The data also show that huge increases in energy efficiency are required if a basically unchanged world economic system is to be sustainable. Nevertheless, the predominant goal of development policy is to ignore the problem of scale and to promote an economic model of urbanised development in the “developing” countries which carries the implication (and the promise) that the rates of resource consumption typical in “developed” countries can be achieved globally. An alternative development model is presented which includes the recognition that, in ecological terms, “developed” countries are in debt to “developing” countries, largely because of the way in which economic growth is measured gross of externalised social and environmental costs. A method is suggested for calculating part of this ecological debt for individual countries, thus going some way towards quantifying the extent of the distortions in the current global political economy and the unsustainability of the present economic order.

Sustainable energy use for smallholder agriculture: a multi-objective programming approach

Smallholder agriculture has made an increasing use of subsidized mechanization and energy inputs to reduce short-term risks in semi-arid conditions in north-west India. However, geographic patterns of production and scale of mechanization are straining resources and increasing the risk of serious degradation of natural resources. In this paper, the possibility of maximizing the revenue and energy returns in the agricultural sector at village level to fulfil the food, fuel, and feed requirements of the village has been attempted. This paper describes the energy flows through four subsystems of smallholder agricultural village: crop system; non-crop land uses; livestock systems; and households in a semi-arid region in India. By employing a multi-objective programming model, changes in agricultural activities required to optimize energy use are estimated so that economic conditions and local energy utilization of the village can be improved and energy import kept to a minimum.

Book Reviews : David ZWEIG, Freeing China's Farmers: Rural Restructuring in the Reform Era. Armonk, NY and London: M.E. Sharpe 1997. Distributed by Eurospan, London. xvii + 365 pp. ISBN: 1-56324-837-9 (hc), 1-56324-838-7 (pbk). Price: US

jurisdiction (whether or not they were active workers). Membership of the &dquo;collective&dquo; was not based on labor, but on official ascription through the hukol registration. Changing, as Zhu does, the label from &dquo;collective&dquo; to &dquo;state&dquo; does nothing to explain the specific nature of rural landownership in China. Various regulations from the 1950s until the 1980s establish procedures for state units taking possession of rural land. Although compensations given to farmers did not reflect

62.95 (hc), US

This book is part of the trade and development series edited from the National Center for Development Studies at The Australian National University. Its nineteen chapters, grouped into five sections entitled &dquo;Feeding the People&dquo;, &dquo;Marketing and Price Reform&dquo;, &dquo;Internationalization&dquo;, &dquo;regional Issues&dquo; and &dquo;Institutional Change&dquo;, are prefaced by a short introductory summary and provide a comprehensive coverage of the book’s theme. The 22 contributors are almost equally balanced between Chinese and Australian affiliations. The book itself is excellently presented with a wide-ranging bibliography and useful index.

24.95 (pbk)

The most straightforward example of Liu’s approaches which end contradicting each other is the appendix. Contrary to most of her sources, Liu has decided to classify any and all Japanese translations of Western concepts involving combinations of characters that also appear in classical Chinese texts as &dquo;Return Loans: ’Kanji’ Terms Derived from Classical Chinese&dquo;. Most other studies of the subject let their decision whether or not to include a word into the category &dquo;return loan&dquo; or in the category &dquo;loanword&dquo; depend on whether or not the meaning of the classical compound undergoes significant changes in the process. For Liu, as is made clear on p. 260, &dquo;so-called meaning&dquo; is not a category to be taken seriously and therefore she ends up with a very long list of &dquo;return loans&dquo;, some of which display such vast differences in meaning between the classical occurrences of the combination and the Japanese usage of it, that one wonders whether the Japanese translators were at all aware of the existence of the classical Chinese compound. Again, a focus on practice (how did the Japanese actually go about translating their concepts?) would have made the argument more convincing. Summing up, I should repeat that my overall impression of Liu’s book is very positive indeed. Even if it is not very rigid in its methodology, and despite the fact that it seems to suffer from contradictory theoretical points-of-departure, it is one of the best books on modern Chinese literature that I have seen in the last five years. As I hope the above review has made clear, it is a study that offers something for everyone. One can appreciate this hook whether one considers oneself a cultura critic, a linguist, a comparatist. a narratotogist, a literary theorist or a historian. It asu contains useful information for students at the higher levels, although I would