Full Description
While India has had a long history of village studies, longitudinal studies that have followed the same village or set of villages over time have a special place in the literature on transformation of economic production and social structures in rural areas. This book brings together aspects of change in rural India through recent research based on longitudinal village studies. The revival of village studies in recent years is a testimony to their usefulness in providing answers to questions that elude the narrow confines of mainstream theory and large-scale surveys.
The book addresses three broad areas of concern: the first relates to the method and conceptual framework of longitudinal village studies how information is collected and the ways in which it is used and analysed; the second aims at a broad understanding of villages across different dimensions of economy and society, offering wide and integrated accounts of particular villages; and the third explores particular themes in some detail within this broader framework. By bringing together different contributions from the tradition of longitudinal village studies, the book addresses a range of analytical and policy issues, highlights the problems and potentials of the longitudinal method, and encourages more work in this tradition.
Contents
Preface ; 1. Introduction (Himanshu, Praveen Jha, and Gerry Rodgers) ; 2. The Story of the aSlater Villagea Studies of Agrarian Change in Tamil Nadu, and Methodological Reflections upon Them (John Harriss) ; 3. Plain Tales from the Plains: A Personal Account of Researching in Rural Bijnor over Three Decades (Patricia Jeffery) ; 4. Strengths and Weaknesses of Long Term Village Studies: Reflections on Methods and Research Design from Studies in Bangladesh (Shapan Adnan) ; 5. How Lives Change: Six Decades in a North Indian Village (Himanshu and Nicholas Stern) ; 6. Four decades of village studies and surveys in Bihar (Gerry Rodgers, Sunil K Mishra, and Alakh N. Sharma) ; 7. A Forgotten aRevolutiona: Revisiting Rural Life and Agrarian Change in Haryana (Surinder S. Jodhka) ; 8. Assessing Change: Land, Labour, and Employment in an Eastern UP Village, 1994a2012 (Ravi Srivastava) ; 9. Thirty Years On: Work and Well-Being in Rural Bihar (Praveen Jha and Avanindra Nath Thakur) ; 10. Rural Tamil Nadu in the Liberalization Era: What Do We Learn from Village Studies? (John Harriss and J. Jeyaranjan) ; 11. Non-farm Diversification, Inequality, and Mobility in Palanpur (Himanshu, Peter Lanjouw, Rinku Murgai, and Nicholas Stern) ; 12. Rural Gounders on the Move in Western Tamil Nadu: 1981-2 to 2008-9 (Judith Heyer) ; 13. Changes in Rural Labour Markets in Bihar: 1981-2011 (Janine Rodgers) ; 14. Migration from Rural Bihar: Insights from a Longitudinal Study (1981a2011) (Amrita Datta) ; 15. Public Services, Social Relations, Politics, and Gender: Tales from a North Indian Village (Dipa Sinha, Dinesh Tiwari, Ruchira Bhattacharya, and R. Kattumuri) ; 16. Caste and Land Distribution: Results from a Village Resurvey in Maharashtra, 1964a2007 (R. Ramakumar) ; 17. Ideas and Substance in RuralaUrban Economic Relations: The Contribution of a Long-term Urban Study in South India (Barbara Harriss-White) ; About the Editors & Contributors
