Overview
- The only long-term urban study in India, and possibly worldwide
- Multi- and inter-disciplinary, emerging from the thematic discipline of development studies
- Uses a variety of theoretical approaches in a non-technical way, helping to transcend the gulf between economics and other social science disciplines like sociology and anthropology
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: Exploring Urban Change in South Asia (EUCS)
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Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Front Matter
Keywords
- Caste and the weaving industry in India
- Caste discrimination and rural-urban migration
- Caste, gender and religion in urban India
- Decentralisation of Indian governance
- Growth and livelihoods in southern India
- Impact of caste on production relations
- Informal economy and consumption
- Informal economy of India
- Liberalization, mechanization and conflict in India
- Local-global diversification in Arni
- Rural consumption choices in India
- Rural development in Tamil Nadu
- Rural entrepreneurship and social relations in India
- Rural-urban development
- Small towns in India
- Social policy implications of development in Tamil Nadu
- Socialization for wage work
- urban geography and urbanism
About this book
Middle India and Rural-Urban Development explores the socio-economic conditions of an ‘India’ that falls between the cracks of macro-economic analysis, sectoral research and micro-level ethnography. Its focus, the ‘middle India’ of small towns, is relatively unknown in scholarly terms for good reason: it requires sustained and difficult field research. But it is where most Indians either live or constantly visit in order to buy and sell, arrange marriages and plot politics. Anyone who wants to understand India therefore needs to understand non-metropolitan, provincial, small-town India and its economic life. This book meets this need. From 1973 to the present, Barbara Harriss-White has watched India’s development through the lens of an ordinary town in northern Tamil Nadu, Arni. This book provides a pluralist, multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary perspective on Arni and its rural hinterland. It grounds general economic processes in the social specificities of a given place and region. In the process, continuity is juxtaposed with abrupt change. A strong feature of the book is its analysis of how government policies that fail to take into account the realities of small town life in India have unintended and often perverse consequences.
In this unique book, Harriss-White brings together ten essays written by herself and her research team on Arni and its surrounding rural areas. They track the changing nature of local business and the workforce; their urban-rural relations, their regulation through civil society organizations and social practices, their relations to the state and to India’s accelerating and dynamic growth. That most people live outside the metropolises holds for many other developing countries and makes this book, and the ideas and methods that frame it, highly relevant to a global development audience.
Reviews
“It explores the nature of specfic growth processes and how economic development can be understood and not just estimated in terms of metric outcomes. … There is no other comparable study that has this longitudinal depth and focus and it is a highly original contribution to urban studies.” (Adam Pain, Journal of South Asian Development, Vol. 11 (1), 2016)
Editors and Affiliations
About the editor
Barbara Harriss-White is Emeritus Fellow and Professor of Development Studies at Oxford University, Senior Research Fellow in Area Studies, Oxford University, coordinator of the South Asia Research Cluster at Wolfson College, Oxford and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Alone or with others she has written and edited 35 books and over 225 book chapters and journal papers, almost all on India. Her research interests span India’s small towns, agriculture and its energetics, the informal capitalist economy and its regulative politics and policy, and many aspects of deprivation.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Middle India and Urban-Rural Development
Book Subtitle: Four Decades of Change
Editors: Barbara Harriss-White
Series Title: Exploring Urban Change in South Asia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2431-0
Publisher: Springer New Delhi
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature India Private Limited 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-81-322-2430-3Published: 07 August 2015
Softcover ISBN: 978-81-322-2987-2Published: 23 October 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-81-322-2431-0Published: 28 July 2015
Series ISSN: 2367-0045
Series E-ISSN: 2367-0053
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XLVIII, 289
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 51 illustrations in colour
Topics: Human Geography, Development Economics, Urban Geography / Urbanism (inc. megacities, cities, towns)