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THE RECENT TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY IN NAMIBIA AND SOUTH AFRICA HAVE PROMPTED RENEWED CLAIMS BY ADVOCATES OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION (PR) THAT IT IS THE MOST APPROPRIATE ELECTORAL FORMULA FOR PLURAL SOCIETIES IN AFRICA AND ELSEWHERE. THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES VOTING BEHAVIOR AMONG RURAL POPULATIONS, ELECTORAL FORMULAS AND DEMOCRATICIZATION, THE DISTRIBUTION OF SEATS, AND, EXPLAINS DISPROPORTIONALITY. IT NOTES THAT ADVOCATES OF PR AND DEFENDERS OF SINGLE-MEMBER DISTRICTS RUN THE RISK OF TALKING PAST EACH OTHER.

The ways we understand processes of agrarian change are pressing issues for policy makers and development practitioners. Interpreting changes in two agrarian societies in India and Indonesia, the author reveals how transformations to self are critical factors shaping change, as well as under-recognized consequences of development initiatives.

The first systematic attempt to introduce a full range of Japanese scholarship on the agrarian history of British India to the English-language reader. Suggests the fundamental importance of an Asian comparative perspective for the understanding of Indian history

In large parts of the developing world, peasant to industrial worker and rural to urban transition is a huge question mark on the face of the political economies of these societies. In India alone, nearly seventy percent of its 1.2 billion population lives in rural areas dependent on agriculture and allied activities. Though the context is different, the magnitude of the transition is similar in present day China. In many parts of Latin America and Africa, this transition is incomplete. Rural populations continue to persist, even in the times of globalisation - a so called shrinking world - an

Jakimow, Tanya 2015: Decentring Development: Understanding Change in Agrarian Societies. Houndsmills, Basingstoke and Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. xi + 200 pp. $90.00 (hardback), $69.99 (eBook). ISBN 978 1 137 46642 6 (hardback), 978 1 137 46643 3 (eBook).

There is now sufficient historical demographic analysis of India, Japan and China to show that infanticide has traditionally been employed to shape families. The driving force has often been the need to preserve family property from division by inheritance or dispersal by the payment of high dowries, although, especially in China, current subsistence problems have also been important. The practice has often been more frequent among the rich than the poor and may have increased as economic advancement became more possible. Nevertheless, it is probable that high child mortality ensured that most families did not have to practise infanticide, which probably played only a modest role in determining the level of population equilibrium. The factor making infanticide more likely than in hunter-gatherer societies is the possession of land. The Judaeo-Christian-Muslim outlawing of infanticide provided the incentive both to try to eliminate the practice and to record its existence.$$infanticide, historical demography, population control, agricultural societies, land, inheritance, dowry, India, Japan, China.

ABSTRACTBoundary plants lie at the intersections of landscape ecology, social structure, and cultural meaning-making. They typically relate resource rights to social groups and cultural identities, and make these connections meaningful and legitimate. Landscape boundaries such as hedges and fence lines are often repositories for social identities and cultural meanings, and tools for the negotiations and struggles that comprise them. This article surveys botanical boundaries in classic ethnography, outlines social science approaches to boundary objects, and describes new theoretical work on space, place, and agency. It also introduces the concepts of monomarcation and polymarcation to delineate the contrast between technologically simple and socially complex forms of marking land. Three case studies, concerning the social lives ofDracaenain sub-Saharan Africa andCordylinein the Caribbean, illustrate how boundary plants have a particular sort of vegetative agency to turn space into place in culture-specific ways.