The changing village in India: insights from longitudinal research
- New Delhi Oxford University Press 2016
- xxi, 498 p.
Table of Contents:
1: Introduction 2: The Story of the 'Slater Village' Studies of Agrarian Change in Tamil Nadu, and Methodological Reflections upon Them 3: Plain Tales from the Plains: A Personal Account of Researching in Rural Bijnor over Three Decades 4: Strengths and Weaknesses of Long Term Village Studies: Reflections on Methods and Research Design from Studies in Bangladesh 5: How Lives Change: Six Decades in a North Indian Village 6: Four decades of village studies and surveys in Bihar 7: A Forgotten 'Revolution': Revisiting Rural Life and Agrarian Change in Haryana 8: Assessing Change: Land, Labour, and Employment in an Eastern UP Village, 1994-2012 9: Thirty Years On: Work and Well-Being in Rural Bihar 10: Rural Tamil Nadu in the Liberalization Era: What Do We Learn from Village Studies? 11: Non-farm Diversification, Inequality, and Mobility in Palanpur 12: Rural Gounders on the Move in Western Tamil Nadu: 1981-2 to 2008-9 13: Changes in Rural Labour Markets in Bihar: 1981-2011 14: Migration from Rural Bihar: Insights from a Longitudinal Study (1981-2011) 15: Public Services, Social Relations, Politics, and Gender: Tales from a North Indian Village 16: Caste and Land Distribution: Results from a Village Resurvey in Maharashtra, 1964-2007 17: Ideas and Substance in Rural-Urban Economic Relations: The Contribution of a Long-term Urban Study in South India
While India has had a long history of village studies, longitudinal studies that have followed the same village or set of villages over time have a special place in the literature on transformation of economic production and social structures in rural areas. This book brings together aspects of change in rural India through recent research based on longitudinal village studies. The revival of village studies in recent years is a testimony to their usefulness in providing answers to questions that elude the narrow confines of mainstream theory and large-scale surveys.
The book addresses three broad areas of concern: the first relates to the method and conceptual framework of longitudinal village studies how information is collected and the ways in which it is used and analysed; the second aims at a broad understanding of villages across different dimensions of economy and society, offering wide and integrated accounts of particular villages; and the third explores particular themes in some detail within this broader framework. By bringing together different contributions from the tradition of longitudinal village studies, the book addresses a range of analytical and policy issues, highlights the problems and potentials of the longitudinal method, and encourages more work in this tradition.