Abstracts section
| Published date | 01 November 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.4230150214 |
| Date | 01 November 2006 |
PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT,
VOL.
15, 189-1 94
(1
995)
Abstracts
Section
The abstracts selected for this issue have in common the themes of
Rural
Development,
Small
Enterprises
and
Gender Issues.
Topics included among the Rural Development abstracts include participatory rural
appraisal and the consequences of diminishing state intervention in agriculture. Non-
agricultural themes such as non-farm income and rural industrialization are also
included. Related to these are the Small Enterprise abstracts since many small en-
terprises are encouraged
as
one form of rural development.
Gender Issues is topical since the latest issue of the
IDS
Bulletin
(January, 1995) was
devoted to gender relations and environmental change.
Most
of its articles have a more
sociological than public administration relevance, but those selected here illustrate the
areas in which this topic influences much of development administration
policymaking.
For further details, or copies
of
these journals, readers must write to the relevant
journal-NOT to
Public Administration and Development.
The journals’ addresses are
provided after the abstracts.
Rural
Development
STATE INTERVENTION IN CUBAN AGRICULTURE: IMPACT ON ORGANIZATION
AND PERFORMANCE
Jose
Alvarez
University of Florida, Belle Glade, USA
Ricardo A.
Puerta
Miami, Florida, USA
As the state intervention decreases
over
Cuba’s agricultural production units, the quantity and
quality of output seem to increase despite a decreasing access to factors of production and other
resources. The degree of perishability of the commodity, the need for immediate refrigerated
storage
or
further processing work against on assumed scale
of
preferences for farmers, and
appear to be responsible for some discrepancies found in statistics concerningproductivity in the
state and nonstate sectors. The recent creation of Basic Units of Cooperative Production on
former state farms is an implicit recognition of the failure of this type of agricultural organiz-
ation. The next step ought to be a liberalization policy concerning markets and prices that could
solve Cuba’s agricultural production crisis.
(World
Development,
22(1 l), 1663-1675 (1994).)
PARTICIPATORY RURAL APPRAISAL (PRA): ANALYSIS
OF
EXPERIENCE
Robert
Chambers
Institute
of
Development Studies, Brighton, UK
The more significant principles of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) concern the behavior
and attitudes of outsider facilitators, including not rushing, ‘handing over the stick’, and being
self-critically aware. The power and popularity of PRA are partly explained by the unexpected
analytical abilities of local people when catalyzed by relaxed rapport, and expressed through
0
1995
by John Wiley
&
Sons, Ltd.
To continue reading
Request your trial