Suchergebnisse

This is a longitudinal study of structural change in Swedish agriculture during 1992 to 1999/ 2000, in which period the country entered the European Union and its agriculture went through a major economic crisis. The study is unique in drawing on a theoretically grounded typology to describe the agrarian structure and its dynamism. The results show that there has been a great deal of mobility of farming households in the agrarian structure during the period. As expected, the rate of closure has been high. It is remarkable, though, that despite the fluidity, the farm structure remains remarkably stable, but increasingly bimodal: it continues to be dominated economically by a relatively small stratum of family farms, while being numerically dominated by part-time farms and by pluriactive farmers.

One of the most significant social changes over the past 25 years in Tamil Nadu is the entry of women into the local political bodies of Gram Panchayat and Panchayat Samithi through a 33 % reservation system. Simultaneously, women are now to a large extent organised in Self-Help Groups, through which at least some of them can access loans either for small entrepreneurship or simply for smaller emergency/consumption loans. An important background to this is the increased participation of women in the non-agricultural labour market. In this article we report from a 25 year panel study of 213 agrarian households in six villages in Karur and Tiruchirapalli districts.