From less than three dozen in 1949, the number of small hydropower stations in the People’s Republic of China grew to nearly ninety thousand by 1979. By the early 1980s, these stations were distributed across nearly 1,600 of China’s 2,300 counties. In 770 counties, small hydropower was the primary source of rural electricity generation. This article offers a history and assessment of these developments, unsettling our traditional emphasis on large-scale hydroelectricity. The article begins by reconstructing the PRC’s enormous investments in small hydropower from the 1950s to the early 1980s. This reconstruction, the first of its kind in the English language, not only helps reassess key periods and events in the history of the PRC but also establishes the position of small hydropower in the hydraulic history of the twentieth century. The article then turns to a discussion of the claimed impacts of small hydropower. As electricity became available for the first time in many parts of the Chinese countryside, it affected patterns of economic and social activity for hundreds of millions of people. Finally, the paper explores what the case of small hydropower can offer to conceptual and theoretical problems surrounding development, innovation, and the environment. Returning to the long-standing debate over scale and development, China’s experience with small hydropower reminds us of the important role played by smaller-scale, appropriate, and self-reliant technologies in global energy history.

The global trend towards heightened protection for geographical indications (GIs) has been bolstered by the incorporation of anti-evocation provisions in various bilateral and regional trade agreements, primarily led by the European Union (EU). While these anti-evocation measures have raised GI protection to an unprecedented level, they also place limitations on the freedom of expression and competition for other market players. This article conducts a critical analysis of the necessity of those restrictions by evaluating the justifications for implementing anti-evocation protection. Specifically, the analysis centres on the formal justifications put forth by law enforcement authorities and their direct contribution to enforcement errors and inconsistencies. Furthermore, inherent limitations within these justifications are also identified. Clarifying the rationale for anti-evocation protection and establishing a clearly defined scope of protection, substantiated by sound justifications, could effectively mitigate errors and inconsistencies in law enforcement and minimize any undue impact on the public interest. Countries that have adopted or are considering adopting anti-evocation protection, following the EU's lead, should exercise caution to avoid similar pitfalls.

This analysis introduces a conceptual framework for economic enfranchisement and studies its effect on an individual’s likelihood to set strong financial goals. A conceptual and empirical model is developed to investigate how economic enfranchisement influences an individual’s likelihood to set a goal and the strength of that goal. The empirical analysis employs an ordered probit to account for the two-stage goal-setting and goal strength decision process. Results show that economic enfranchisement has a significant effect on an individual’s likelihood to set financial goals where more enfranchised individuals are more likely to set strong goals than their disenfranchised counterparts.

The aim of the study was to analyze the role of small-scale dairy farms in central Mexico in combating rural poverty from a gender perspective. Specifically, it was determined whether these production systems generated sufficient income for alleviating poverty and purchasing the basic food basket. Two hundred and twelve farmers were selected through snowball sampling. To maintain a gender perspective, female-headed farms were considered as an independent group, and male-headed farms were grouped according to multivariate statistics. Two official indicators of poverty were considered in the economic analysis: income and the extreme poverty line. Factor analysis identified four factors that explained 66.10% of accumulated variance. The cluster analysis identified five groups of farms headed by males. Then, a comparative analysis was carried out for the six groups, including the female-headed group (FG). The economic analysis revealed that, if 52% of income are production costs, groups 1, 2, 3, and 4 generated sufficient gross income to purchase the basic food basket to the household of the area. However, the FG and group 5 did not generate sufficient gross income to purchase the food basket. In contrast, if 70% of income are productions costs, only groups 1 and 4 generated sufficient gross income. It can be concluded that small-scale dairy farms generate sufficient daily income under certain conditions for the purchase of the basic food basket and, therefore, help to fight poverty in rural families, especially in groups 1 and 4. In the case of the FG and groups 2, 3, and 5, dairy production along with the diversification of productive activities and backyard activities supports the livelihoods of rural families. It is recommended that existing gender norms be further explored because these could directly influence the motivation of farmers, particularly female producers, to adopt or reject agricultural and livestock technologies.

While processes of land-use change have triggered conflicts across Asia, our knowledge of the responses of affected communities is largely based on case-studies. This review essay addresses this challenge by reviewing and synthesizing 49 studies of conflicts between rural communities and companies in order to identify salient characteristics of anti-corporate activism in Indonesia. We find that, in contrast to the ‘rightful resistance’ observed elsewhere, the strategies employed by rural communities in Indonesia are remarkably “rightless” as both their discourse and their conflict resolution efforts are marked by a remarkable irrelevance of laws, regulations and courts. Communities frame their claims mostly in terms of customary laws while largely relying on informal mediation by local authorities. We attribute this “rightless” character of land-use change conflicts to the weak legal protection of land rights in Indonesia and the relative powerlessness of communities in the face of collusion between authorities and companies.

Most accounts of East Asian economic growth have focused on the role of developmental states in successful industrialization. This article expands and challenges that framework by showing that rural policy was different from industrial policy. A key finding is that for more than a century, East Asian states have relied on mass mobilization campaigns rather than on technocratic planning and market-conforming institutions to achieve rural development. Based on case studies of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China, the author argues that three main factors explain the rise of campaign states: revolutionary traditions, rural populism, and policy learning. A brief assessment of outcomes illustrates the payoffs and costs of campaigns and the practical considerations that drive them. The author’s analysis offers a new perspective on the East Asian model and disputes the widely held view that campaigns are tragic exercises in social control, demonstrating instead that they were central to the region’s rural transformation.

Stakeholder preferences for the conservation of cacao agroforests are scarcely known. Here, a revealed preference model was used to estimate the value that smallholders place on the conservation of their cacao agroforests in coastal Ecuador. Variables in the model included plot-level data (the gender of those who owned and managed the plot, profit, land title and years of ownership) and household demographic data (ages, educational levels and wealth indicators). Households were willing to give up some profit to conserve agroforests especially if they had managed the plot longer. Furthermore, when women were included in the management of a plot, the household was more likely to conserve the cacao agroforest, but the gender of the person who owns the plot had no effect on the probability of conserving the agroforest. These findings provide further evidence of the gender differences in preferences for agroforests and that more inclusive land-use decisions may lead to the use of more sustainable farming practices. They also demonstrate that policies that encourage inclusive land ownership do not necessarily ensure equal gender participation in plot decision-making and management.

This study investigates the effects of a local information campaign on farmers’ interest in a rural development programme (RDP) in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The results suggest that while our intervention succeeded in informing farmers, it had a negative, albeit only marginally significant, effect on the reported possibility of using future RDP support. This puzzling result can be attributed to increased awareness of administrative burden associated with RDP participation. An additional heterogeneity analysis suggests the negative effect is driven by unprofitable farmers who are averse to any administrative encumbrance, for whom upfront cofinancing of an RDP is untenable.

While much of the scholarly work on the development of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in China focuses on their relations with the state, this paper adopts an anthropological approach to explore previously understudied peasant–NGO relations through the lens of a village-level post-earthquake recovery project in Sichuan. The findings highlight three main types of gaps between the NGO and local villagers: the gaps between the villagers’ immediate needs and the NGO's long-term development plan; the gaps between the villagers’ pragmatic concerns and the “building a new socialist countryside” campaign; and the gaps between the private and collective economies. In spite of the project's unsatisfactory outcome, the NGO did not consider the project a failure. We argue that these gaps were, to a great extent, attributable to the continuing development of the institutional values of NGOs, which guide the transition of Chinese NGOs from traditional charities to modern philanthropic organizations.

Compared to their urban counterparts, the rural poor are more likely to be employed, more apt to be members of married-couple families, less likely to be children, less likely to be minority, and more likely to have assets but a negative income. This paper examines poverty rates and factors that affect mobility in and out of poverty among major categories of the rural poor. Particular attention is paid to farm workers and the rural farm population in the South. It endeavors to identify both structural conditions that perpetuate rural poverty and government interventions that ameliorate human suffering and break the cycle of poverty reproduction.

Abandonment has become a performative idiom in Andean Peru, where it retains its purchase despite the investments of the state. Local development is tied to the desire to be governed. In spite of prolonged state presence, the villages’ relationship to authorities is continuously and persistently figured as one of abandonment: villages are abandoned because someone is deliberately holding them in such unfortunate conditions. To figure abandonment in village politics is to draw on this idiom as an effective means of both communicating the historical experience of governance and putting forward morally grounded claims to local authorities. The idiom of abandonment is therefore both effective and affective as a critique of governance and a claim to citizenship.

The rural public may not only be concerned with the consequences of land management; residents may also have systematic preferences for policy instruments applied to management goals. Preferences for outcomes do not necessarily imply matching support for the underlying policy process. This study assesses relationships among support for elements of the policy process and preferences for management outcomes. Preferences are examined within the context of alternative proposals to manage growth and conserve landscape attributes in southern New England. Results are based on (a) stated preferences estimated from a multi-attribute contingent choice survey of rural residents, and (b) Likert-scale assessment of strength of support for land use policy tools. Findings indicate general but not universal correlation among policy support indicators and preferences for associated land use outcomes, but also confirm the suspicion that policy support and land use preference may not always coincide.

In this study we attempt to understand the relationship between regional growth in population, employment, and per capita income, and farmland development in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. A spatial simultaneous equations model is estimated using county-level data. Results indicate that while county income growth and agricultural land value increases in neighboring counties increase the rate of farmland loss, growth in county agricultural land values, increases in agricultural land density in neighboring counties, and increases in agricultural income per farm reduce farmland losses. Farmland protection policies were not significant in reducing agricultural land development. This approach, focused on regional growth, provides insight into linkages between growth and agricultural land development that can potentially enhance land use planning.

I analyze the determinants of county-level broadband availability to gauge the extent to which the rural-urban broadband gap has narrowed and the factors that underlie that narrowing. Using data that have been collected by organizations tracking and promoting broadband in Kentucky and North Carolina, I find that in both states the rural-urban availability gap has indeed narrowed substantially, although there appears to be a limit on the extent to which broadband service will extend into the least densely populated counties. Among rural counties, availability rates increase systematically with the size of the county's urbanized population.

The search for engines to power rural economic growth has gone beyond the traditional boundaries of the food and fiber sector to industries such as tourism and to schemes such as attracting metropolitan workers to commuter communities with rural amenities. A group that has been somewhat overlooked is retirees, who may wish to trade in urban or suburban lifestyles for a more peaceful rural retirement. An industry that has been neglected is the health care industry, which is the most rapidly growing industry nationally and of particular interest to retirees and aging populations. This paper examines the importance of rural health care services in attracting migrants age 65+ to rural counties in Michigan. Results indicate that the number of health care workers has a positive effect on net in-migration, and that this effect is large and statistically significant for the 70+ age group. Implications for rural development strategies are discussed.

During the farm crisis of the 1980s we began to better understand the inherent faults of an industrialized food system. Despite large gains in productivity, efficiency, and economies of size, thousands of farms were in foreclosure. Many farmers were overly extended in debt. Others were in trouble because of a combination of factors such as drought, low crop prices, high input prices, and the lack of competition in the marketplace. The end result was the loss of thousands of farmers and a subsequent decline in many rural communities.

At the same time, a new vision of an enduring agriculture emerged. It was called sustainable agriculture. This new paradigm became attractive because it focused on solutions to the problems of the day. Sustainable agriculture offered hope to farmers that were willing to differentiate their product and add value to it, deal with ecological costs by using sustainable best management practices, and work to create equity in food system employment. Forming new links with consumers is enabling farmers to set their prices, and consumers are willing to pay to know more about their food.

Quasi-experimental techniques were developed to provide decision-making tools for documenting the impacts of developmental highways in rural areas. Regression discontinuity analysis (RDA) with limited observations was used to compare economic changes in highway counties to those in adjacent and non-adjacent control counties. The RDA models found statistically significant changes in population, per capita income, and taxable sales related to highway development. The study found that some counties benefitted from developmental highways, some were unchanged, while some experienced economic decline. RDA models with adjacent controls had better explanatory powers while those with non-adjacent controls were more sensitive to highway-related changes in economic activity. When significant non-highway activities were present, adjacent control models may have understated highway-related impacts, while non-adjacent control models may have overstated these impacts. Arguments for using adjacent and non-adjacent experimental designs are discussed.

Local labor market characteristics are theoretically relevant to the determination of off-farm earnings of farm operators, but the empirical analysis of these effects has been hindered by a lack of appropriate data. This study employs the new census public use micro-data sample, PUMS-D, to investigate the effect of local labor market characteristics on off-farm earnings of farm operators. The PUMS-D data allow local characteristics to be defined on a labor market area basis, rather than on a political boundary basis. For a sample of Georgia farm operators, local labor market size, unemployment rates, and industrial structure were found to have significant impacts on off-farm employment and earnings.