The study of the poultry chain, in particular, became an important focus for observing the integration of agriculture into the food processing industry. However, whereas such a stance may appropriately reflect the declining salience of farming in the international food system, it offers little to illuminate the crises, dislocations and conflicts that accompany the progressive incorporation of rural areas into mainstream capitalist development. This has been largely concerned with an urban or regional perspective despite its significance for our understanding of rural change (see Urry, 1984). This is replaced by, as we have seen, an emphasis upon the ways in which capital accumulation (through active fractions of capital) seeks out exploitable spaces largely associated with the relative quality and costs of human labour power. Much of the research traditionally undertaken on these themes has uncritically accepted the mutually reinforcing ideologies of rurality and domesticity and ignored the centrality of gender relations.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with the theoretical difficulties and suggests ways forward in critical rural research centred on contemporary departures from the categorical logic of petty commodity production. It looks at contemporary social and economic forms of small-scale production in rural areas and their significance in the very different circumstances of countries in southern Europe, Latin America and central Europe. The book provides an important counter to the somewhat stylised account of the links between artisanal producers and corporate capital promoted by theories of 'flexible specialisation' and a post-Fordist era of industrial organisation. It examines the re-emergence of small-scale enterprise in rural Hungary, using the concept of the second economy and stressing its significance for household livelihoods and gross domestic product in a centrally planned context despite, until recently, being officially discouraged.

The social and environmental relations of US agricultural regions, Margaret FitzSimons the rural environment in a post-socialist economy - the case of Hungary, Miklos Persanyi technological change, farm management and the pollution regulation - the example of Britain, Philip Lowe et al the role of agricultural technology in sustainable development, Michael Redclift technological change in a period of agricultural adjustment, Richard Munton et al patterns of research and innovation in the modern agro-food system, David Goodman and John Wilkinson new technologies in the agro-food system and US-EC trade relations, W.Jos Byman environmental risks and the regulation of biotechnology, Joyce Tait.

This sixth volume in a series on rural change, brings together a set of papers developing feminist analyses of the rural condition from a wide range of industrialized countries, informed by the national and local cultural constructions of gender and rurality which they interpret.

Description: Drawing on the expertise of an internationally renowned group of authors, this monograph examines the complex political, social and institutional problems encountered by modern states seeking to manage their agricultural sectors. Using examples from regions around the globe including Scandinavia, New Zealand, China and Germany, the book delves into topics as diverse as agribusiness and corporatism, regulation of agriculture, productivist paradigms, politics of agricultural change, agricultural deregulation, retailing in a regulatory state, managed versus liberalised markets, the national politics of international trade reform and principles of the GATT agreement from the agricultural perspective.