Modernizing Peasant Societies. A Comparative Study in Asia and Africa

Hardback. Very slight wear to D/J. Most countries in Asia and Tropical Africa are, by numbers and occupation, overwhelmingly agricultural; in Asia they resemble in many ways earlier European peasant societies; in Africa the tribal background resembles something even older. It is extremely difficult, as the author suggested in The Best of Both Worlds?, to transfer to them, without great modifications, the institutions and technology of the twentieth-century developed countries. Yet, equally, they are not likely to follow the earlier European stages of growth, for their outer environment is not the fifteenth or eighteenth century but the twentieth. In this book, Guy Hunter describes the unique standard of 'ancient' social structure in a modern world, emphasizing that societies live and grow as a whole; technology and economics are intertwined with politics, administrative standards, education, even fundamental beliefs and values. The author deals mainly with India, Pakistan, and South-East Asia, and with Africa between the Sahara and Zambesi. After describing the background of local life and attitudes, the central section of the book deals with the modernization of the agricultural economy, and the later chapters with the issues - economic, administrative, political, and religious - which both shape and are shaped by the modernizing process. 324 pp. (We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions ,and all types of Academic Literature.).…