Polly Hill's provocative book examines the disastrous gulf that separates development economics from its sister discipline, economic anthropology. Working with material from the rural tropical world, much of it collected at first hand in West Africa and South India, Dr Hill demonstrates in the first, polemical part of her book, how unreliable and western-biased assumptions most development economists base their theoretical work. She shows in particular that misleading official statistics are handled uncritically, that the significance of innate rural inequality is consistently ignored and the revered concepts such as the 'population explosion' are in anthropological terms largely meaningless. The longer, second part of the book illustrates the enormous relevance and potential of economic anthropology for economists by looking in turn at the true complexity of farming households, labour and inheritance; at debt, social stratification and economic inequality, and at problems connected with the sale of land, the role of women and migration. Taken overall, Development Economics on Trial represents a powerful and urgent plea for co-operation.
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This argument demonstrates how unreliable and Western-biased are the assumptions on which most development economists base their theoretical work. It illustrates the relevance and potential of economic anthropology for economists.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
The vogue word peasant suddenly entered general usage in relation to the rural tropical world in the late 1960s. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
rural tropical world, bonded labouring, usufructural rights, annual labourers, periodic market places, pledged farm, rural periodic markets, migrant cocoa farmers, swollen shoot disease, circulatory migration, populated localities, tropical economies, cocoa farming, cocoa farms, plough animals, crop mixtures, economic anthropologists, richer farmers, bush fallow, joint households Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
West Africa, Tamil Nadu, Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, Adam Smith, All-India National Sample Survey, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Green Revolution, Upper Volta, Kofi Pare, Promissory Notes, Special Report New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
The vogue word peasant suddenly entered general usage in relation to the rural tropical world in the late 1960s. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
rural tropical world, bonded labouring, usufructural rights, annual labourers, periodic market places, pledged farm, rural periodic markets, migrant cocoa farmers, swollen shoot disease, circulatory migration, populated localities, tropical economies, cocoa farming, cocoa farms, plough animals, crop mixtures, economic anthropologists, richer farmers, bush fallow, joint households Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
West Africa, Tamil Nadu, Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, Adam Smith, All-India National Sample Survey, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Green Revolution, Upper Volta, Kofi Pare, Promissory Notes, Special Report New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 63
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20
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- Lenin Collected Works V 2 by Vladimir Ilyi Lenin on page 4, and Back Matter
- Development of Capitalism in Russia, The by Vladimir I. Lenin on page 4, and Back Matter
- Inside the Third World: The Anatomy of Poverty; Third Edition (Penguin Politics) by Paul Harrison in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Perceiving Women by Shirley Ardener on page 140, and Back Matter
- Agriculture and Economic Development (The Johns Hopkins Studies in Development) by Professor Subrata Ghatak on page 9, and Back Matter
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- The Sociology of Post-Colonial Societies: Economic Disparity, Cultural Diversity and Development by J. E. Goldthorpe in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Economics and the Historian by Thomas G. Rawski on page 248, and Back Matter
- Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity by Timothy Mitchell in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Power of Development by Jonathan Crush in Back Matter
- Culture Matters: Essays In Honor Of Aaron Wildavsky by Richard J Ellis in Back Matter
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