The Economics of Rural Households in Russia: Impact of Village Location

An American specialist on Russia's agrarian sector and two collaborators explore the effects of distance to nearby urban markets on the agricultural output and income of Russian rural households. Unlike previous studies that have largely tested such effects on the basis of household distance from relatively large oblast administrative centers, the authors adopt a micro-level scale of analysis, focusing on distance from smaller rayon centers. Comparison of two sample populations (near vs. remote from rayon center) from a larger survey population of 900 households in nine representative regions of Russia reveals marked differences in household incomes, commodity output, and real holdings of land that are statistically verified by a linear regression model. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O18, P32, Q15, Q18. 4 tables, 46 references.     

秦、西汉时期关中农业发展的地域差异

在秦汉定都关中期间,围绕都城的建设与发展,关中内部的农业生产格局发生了较大变化,生产重心日益向东北方向倾斜。西汉后期关中东部渭北地区是关中农业生产的重心;西南部的农耕经济则几乎完全遭到毁灭;西北、东南部的农业生产虽有较大发展,其速度较东北部而言,却相对缓慢。     

雍正引见绿营武官的相关问题

本文在考辨官员引见资料的基础上,结合相关史料,对雍正朝引见的绿营武官的籍贯、民族、身份、年龄等问题作了详尽的数据表列并进行分析,说明了当时选武官轻视武举人、重视战功等现象,揭示了武官的区域分布和民族构成及其与政治社会的关系。     

邓小平与中国社会主义农业改革和发展的“两个飞跃”

"两个飞跃"是邓小平为中国社会主义农业改革和发展设计的伟大纲领。从对"第一个飞跃"的肯定和支持,到对"第二个飞跃"的探索和展望,邓小平始终坚持历史发展的辩证法,不仅科学地规划了"两个飞跃"渐次实现的现实道路,而且为我们积极发展现代农业、扎实推进社会主义新农村建设提供了重要的方法论依据,具有重大而深远的现实意义。     

Prehistoric dental disease and the dietary shift from cactus to cultigens in northwest Mexico

Differences in dental health of prehistoric human groups are commonly attributed to specific subsistence practices, whereby food foragers generally have a lower incidence of dental disease than agriculturalists. Dental health was assessed on a sample of 135 human skeletons from northwest Mexico that date to the Early Agricultural period (1600 BC–AD 200), which coincides with the initial introduction of domesticated cultigens into the region c. 2000 BC. High rates of dental caries (13.5%) and antemortem tooth loss (17.6%) encountered in these prehistoric forager‐farmers from the Sonoran Desert were determined to be the result of the consumption of highly cariogenic local wild resources such as cactus. These patterns mask the degree of reliance on agriculture in the area and highlight the importance of constructing local nutritional histories to better understand the diversity of human diets and their relationships to health and disease. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Marché foncier et systèmes de production agricoles au XIXe siècle: le cas du département de Brescia (Lombardie orientale)

Cet article présente les caractéristiques et l'évolution de la propriété foncière, du marché foncier et des systèmes de production agricoles en Lombardie orientale au 19^e siècle. L'auteur analyse les impacts sur l'exploitation de la terre de la substitution des propriétaires fonciers nobles par des bourgeois; des maladies du ver à soie et des vignobles, de l'arrivée des grains américains moins chers; de l'utilisation d'engrais chimiques et d'équipements modernes. Il montre que si la petite propriété représente toujours près d'un tiers du total et que la magnanerie et la viticulture diminuent, il est relevé une croissance des cultures céréalières et fourragères et des dépenses consacrées aux innovations technologiques. Il signale la rationalisation des cultures, l'amélioration des rendements et de la qualité des récoltes ainsi que des revenus non déclarés pour éviter les impôts et explique pourquoi les investisseurs préfèrent les petits aratori comportant des mûriers et des vignobles. Enfin, il donne à voir que l'organisation des exploitations reste liée au degré de risque pris par le propriétaire (la rente fixe garantie par le bail à ferme payé en argent ou une gestion directe de la propriété) et aux cultures (la présence des vignobles et de la magnanerie favorisant les sharecropping contracts).     

农村现代化道路的理论探源——对马克思、恩格斯关于农民理论的重新审视

中国农村的现代化实践是一场以马克思主义为指导的探索活动。本文力求将马克思主义关于农民问题的相关理论和实证分析结合起来,论述了马克思等关于农民理论的立足点及其发展,分析了农业集体化道路及其挫折,通过对经典理论的重新审视,进而得出对社会主义农业现代化道路的启示.     

Development Imperative,Terrae Incognitae: a Pioneer Soil Scientist 1912–1951

James Arthur Prescott was a prominent soil scientist whose career responded to an increasingly complex, recognisably Australian web of interpenetrating spatial scales, served to promote revolutionary global advances in his chosen field, and in the process negotiated the blurred boundaries between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ research. Encounters with this instructive life suggest that, while resolutions of pivotal anxieties might turn on ineluctably personal qualities, they also reflect a dynamic interplay between international, imperial, national and state contexts. Prescott's innovative contributions to soil science, fruits of a tenaciously consolidated career, influenced resource appraisal and environmental management across a prodigious continental expanse. A sustained focus on local and regional development brought him into contact with a wide range of contemporaries, including pioneering geographers, and culminated in his election to a Fellowship of the Royal Society.     

T.H. Green and the Dissidence of Dissent: On Religion and National Character in Nineteenth‐Century England

Thomas Hill Green (1836–82) has been widely recognized for his contributions to Liberal political‐social theory and for his Liberal partisanship. Historians and political theorists continue to emphasize his advocacy of limited state interference and democratic localism, as well as his anti‐imperialist statements. Recent scholars of English nationalism, national identity and patriotism, including Peter Mandler, Julia Stapleton, Krishan Kumar, H.S. Jones, Roberto Romani and Georgios Varouxakis, acknowledge Green as an acolyte of Giuseppe Mazzini, a Cobdenite and a Little Englander. While they place Green's ideas within a continuum of Victorian Liberal nationalist ideas (blending into Conservatism and socialism during the 20th century), their investigations foster the view that Green placed little value in the nation as a focus of individual and collective identification. In their readings of Green, the abstract ‘community’, free of national peculiarities, was to him the antidote to both individual and national narrowness. However, examination of Green's statements about community, the moral ideal and religion reveals that his theorising was informed by a view of national character different from that of most contemporary liberal intellectuals. Green rejected the ‘Liberal anglican’ view that a national church or clerisy was necessary to guide the development of the English nation. He identified ideas and practices of protestant dissenters as progressive forces in English history and endorsed them as means of national development. Religious pluralism and forms of ecclesiastical organisation promoting democratic localism were to Green among the essential characteristics of Englishness.     

Sustained drought,vulnerability and civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa

With climate change projections indicating a likely future increase in extreme weather phenomena, it is an urgent matter to assess the effect of drought on civil conflict. However, studies of this relationship so far provide inconclusive findings. One reason for this inconsistency is that existing research has not sufficiently taken into account the local vulnerability and coping capacity that condition the effect of drought. In particular, the exposure to sustained droughts undermines alternative coping mechanisms of individuals. Moreover, reliance on rainfed agriculture for income and food provision renders individuals particularly vulnerable to droughts. Based on these observations, I suggest that areas experiencing sustained droughts or depending on rainfed agriculture are more likely to see civil conflict following drought as individuals in these regions are more likely to partake in rebellion in order to redress economic grievances or to obtain food and income. Using novel high-resolution data on civil conflict events in Sub-Saharan Africa from 1989 to 2008, this paper evaluates the relationship between sustained drought, rainfed agriculture and civil conflict violence at the subnational level. In line with the argument, areas with rainfed croplands see an increased risk of civil conflict violence following drought. There is also some support for the proposition that areas experiencing sustained droughts have a higher risk of conflict. The results are robust to a wide range of model specifications.