For centuries, new technologies and expanding networks of production and consumption have been changing the face of rural economies in significant ways. Millions of rural dwellers have found survival increasingly difficult and have fled to urban centres. Others have remained: some retrenching, struggling to just subsist, others attempting to innovatively redefine their place within new rural economies.

For the past 30 years, rural economies have largely been ignored by policy makers, but recent growing concerns about food security, environmental degradation, climate change, continued...

This book critically re-examines the currently dominant paradigm of agricultural development policy from historical and comparative perspectives. Examining the experiences of 11 developed countries in their earlier stages of development and the experiences of 10 developing and transition economies in the last half a century, the book offers an in-depth discussion on a range of public policies for agriculture, some currently in use and others forgotten in the mist of history.

After presenting the overarching theoretical framework and a synthesis of findings over the 21...

Ecotourism and natural resource extraction may be seen as contradictory pursuits, yet in reality they often take place side by side, sometimes even supported by the same institutions. Existing academic and policy literatures generally privilege oppositions and transitions between "sustainable" and "unsustainable" development, and as a result, the phenomenon of ecotourism in areas concurrently affected by extraction industries remains understudied. However, such a scenario is in fact increasingly common in resource-rich developing nations in the political-economic context of late...

This book explores the political ecology of agrofuels as an encompassing socio-spatial transformation process consisting of a series of changing contexts, political reconfigurations, and the restructuring of social and labour relations. It includes conceptual chapters as well as case studies from different world regions (North America, Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia) and levels (local, national, transnational).

The Political Ecology of Agrofuels advances a conceptualisation of agrofuels that helps to fill existing research gaps. It covers global food...

There is a striking scarcity of work conducted on rural labour markets in the developing world, particularly in Africa. This book aims to fill this gap by bringing together a group of contributors who boast substantial field experience researching rural wage employment in various developing countries. It provides critical perspectives on mainstream approaches to rural/agrarian development, and analysis of agrarian change and rural transformations from a long-term perspective.

This book challenges the notion that rural areas in low- and middle-income countries are dominated by...

In recent years, Mediterranean agriculture has experienced important transformations which have led to new forms of labour and production, and in particular to a surge in the recruitment of migrant labour. The Mediterranean Basin represents a very interesting arena that is able to illustrate labour conditions and mobility, the competition among different farming models, and the consequences in terms of the proletarianization process, food crisis and diet changes."

Migration and Agriculture" brings together international contributors from across several disciplines to describe and...