'Rice features a dazzling variety of methodologies and employs them in an eclectic collection of case studies. Different essays consider quantitative correlations, compare DNA structures from different strains of rice, and make use of historical linguistics, in a truly interdisciplinary collection that includes the work of historians, anthropologists, agricultural scientists, historians of science, and area studies scholars.' Agricultural History
Foreword Giorgio Riello; Preface: global networks and new histories of rice Francesca Bray; Part I. Purity and Promiscuity: Introduction Francesca Bray; 1. Global visions vs local complexity: experts wrestle with the problem of development Jonathan Harwood; 2. Rice, sugar, and livestock in Java, 1820–1940: Geertz's Agricultural Involution 50 years on Peter Boomgaard and Pieter M. Kroonenberg; 3. A desire to eat well: rice and the market in eighteenth-century China Sui-wai Cheung; 4. Rice and maritime modernity: the modern Chinese state and the South China Sea rice trade Seung-Joon Lee; 5. Promiscuous transmission and encapsulated knowledge: a material-semiotic approach to modern rice in the Mekong David Biggs; 6. Red and white rice in the vicinity of Sierra Leone: linked histories of slavery, emancipation and seed selection Bruce Mouser, Edwin Nuijten, Florent Okry and Paul Richards; Part II. Environmental Matters: Introduction Edda Fields-Black; 7. Rice on the Upper Guinea Coast: a regional perspective based on interdisciplinary sources and methods Edda Fields-Black; 8. Reserving water: environmental and technological relationships with colonial South Carolina inland rice plantations Hayden Smith; 9. Asian rice in Africa: plant genetics and crop history Erik Gilbert; 10. When Jola granaries were full Olga F. Linares; 11. Of health and harvests: seasonal mortality and commercial rice cultivation in the Punjab and Bengal regions of South Asia Lauren Minsky; Part III. Power and Control: Introduction Peter Coclanis; 12. The cultural meaning of work: the 'Black Rice Debate' reconsidered Walter Hawthorne; 13. White rice: the Midwestern origins of the modern rice industry in the United States Peter Coclanis; 14. Rice and the path of economic development in Japan Penelope Francks; 15. Commodities and anti-commodities: rice on Sumatra 1915–25 Harro Maat; Index; Bibliography.