For 25 years, population growth has outpaced increases in agricultural production in Sub-Saharan Africa. The lack of food and the degradation of agricultural land have forced policymakers to reassess agricultural strategies for the region. This paper provides such a reassessment by identifying policies and investments that have worked and those that have not. The author sets out the common elements required for agricultural and rural development throughout the region. The strategy presented in this paper comprises elements from several development sectors, including transport, water supply, education, finance, and the environment. The author makes five broad recommendations to promote Region: adoption of policies to promote private sector farming and agricultural marketing, processing, and credit development and distribution of new technologies inclusion of farmers in decisions affecting their livelihood development of infrastructure and social programs in support of agriculture improved management of natural resources Projections of the likely effects of the proposed policies and investments are included. Tables throughout the text present statistics on agricultural growth rates, commodity prices, and deforestation in the region. An annex contains more general tables, with information on population growth and fertility rates, land use, agricultural exports, and droughts. The strategies suggested in this paper will be of interest to policymakers, academics, and to development practitioners involved in African agriculture.
This book proposes a comprehensive theory of the loss of religion in human societies, with a specific and substantive focus on the contemporary United States. Kevin McCaffree draws on a range of disciplines including sociology, psychology, anthropology, and history to explore topics such as the origin of religion, the role of religion in recent American history, the loss of religion, and how Americans are dealing with this loss. The book is not only richly theoretical but also empirical. Hundreds of scientific studies are cited, and new statistical analyses enhance its core arguments. What emerges is an integrative and illuminating theory of secularization.
Few of us, amidst our daily chores and responsibilities, consider how mundane infrastructures—from electrical grids to sewage systems—have developed over millennia in ways that enable everything we cherish, from democracy to technological innovation to individual liberty. But what drives the evolution of this infrastructure? And why is infrastructure so critical to human flourishing? In this book, the most innovative and interdisciplinary study of cultural evolution ever produced, new concepts are explored, new histories are brought into contact and new ground-breaking insights are defended. What makes creativity unique in human societies is not only our capacity to generate and modify our diverse individual intuitions about the social and physical world, but also our capacity to form and leave groups fluidly in a dancing rhythm of oscillation across the expanse of history. This book walks the reader carefully through these processes, with clear concepts and an approachable writing style.
The world of sport offers a deep - and often-overlooked - source for the study of deviance and its development. Deviance and Social Control in Sport challenges preconceived understandings regarding the relationship of deviance and sport and offers a conceptual framework for future work in a variety of sociological subfields." "Drawing on their research in criminology and deviance in the discipline of sociology, Michael Atkinson and Kevin Young provide a textured understanding of sport-related deviance through the application of various approaches to deviance in a sport context. Using extended case studies, the authors examine the subject of deviance through examples that are popular, understudied, or emerging." "The text explains how forms of wanted and unwanted rule violation are produced by and mediated through social contexts in and around sport. By considering networks of social relationships and how they produce, define, and police rule violation and rule violators, Deviance and Social Control in Sport offers a nuanced and integrated explanation of sport deviance that accounts for the behaviors and practices of both individuals and teams."--BOOK JACKET.
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