The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture

Life Beneath the Level of the Marketplace

By (author) Tony Waters California State University, Chico, and Payap University

Publication date:

15 April 2008

Length of book:

272 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

232x156mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780739128367

The story told by The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture begins 8,000 years ago as humans began using the land and weather to provide themselves with food, housing, and clothing. Productive farmers took care of most daily needs within the small conservative world in which they lived. This world organized around small-scale subsistence farming is ending as the ancient world of farmers has given away to that dominated by the modern marketplace. This book is about how the modern market world transformed these remote agricultural farmers. Waters uses diverse examples to illustrate how the modern market economy captured persistent subsistence farmers and forever altered life in 18th century Scotland, 19th century United States, 20th century Tanzania, and indeed, the entire modern world.

Part 1 The Persistence of Subsistence: Life Beneath the Level of the Marketplace
Chapter 2 Why Subsistence Peasants Are Important
Chapter 3 Theoretical Overview: Life Beneath the Level of the Marketplace
Chapter 4 Pre-industrial Scotland, or How Adam Smith Got Workers into His Pin Factory
Part 5 The Persistence of the Subsistence Peasant from the Eighteenth to the Twenty-first Century
Chapter 6 America's Triumphant Subsistence Peasantry 1620-1820, or How Daniel Boone Ran from Ben Franklin's Shopkeepers
Chapter 7 Squatting, Pre-emption, and Nowhere Left to Run: An Ascendant Market Catches Pa Ingalls
Chapter 8 Modern Tanzania and the Long Triumph of Subsistence Farmers
Chapter 9 The Persistent Modern Tanzanian Subsistent Peasant
Part 10 Conclusions: Challenging Development Orthodoxies
Chapter 11 Theoretical Implications: Understanding Economic Growth as a Risky and Recurrent Process
Chapter 12 Modern Development and Subsistence Peasantry

Tony Waters explains how costly economic development can be and how incompatible are the goals of subsistence farmers, yet he states the case for growth fairly too. This is a highly original work, based on Waters' personal experience of Tanzania, illuminated throughout by social science, and buttressed by rich, unexpected case studies of eighteenth-century Scotland and Daniel Boone's America. It will set tongues wagging in the development agencies.