Title:	Rural Economic Development in Japan
Authors:	Penelope Francks
Keywords:	Rural Economic
Issue Date:	2006
Publisher:	Routledge
Description:	This breakthrough opened the way to research into a whole range of new issues related to the activities of rural producers and the political economy within which they operated. It placed the rural household centrestage and focused new attention on its resource-allocation decisions and technological choices, within the constraints that wider economic and social relations imposed on it. As the ‘black box’ of the household was opened up, issues such as the gender distribution of work and the differing market and credit relationships of different kinds of household came under scrutiny. Moreover, as empirical research on the rural economies of a wide range of developing countries accumulated, it became increasingly clear that agriculture was by no means the only activity by which rural people supported themselves and engaged with the market. Rural households were observed to pursue ‘livelihood diversification strategies’, constructing ‘a diverse portfolio of activities and social support capabilities in their struggle for survival and in order to improve their standards of living’ (Ellis 1998: 4). Such activities might include, alongside cultivation of the household’s holding for subsistence or for the market, household-based non-agricultural work, non-agricultural work within the rural area, or wage-work away from home, involving more-or-less temporary migration and remittances back to the family in the country. Many rural households, in the developed as well as the developing world, could thus be defined as ‘pluriactive’, deriving income from a range of sources within and beyond agriculture.5
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/54582
ISBN:	0–415–36807–3
Appears in Collections:	Rural Development Studies

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