Rural Vulnerability to Famine in Ethiopia
1958-77
Prescriptions for rural development abound, but ‘what is frequently lacking is not so much ideas or techniques as the will and the commitment’ to improve conditions. The author describes how, in the complex case of Ethiopia, man can be held responsible for famine –and suggests how he can act to prevent it. This book sets out to demonstrate that the subsistence production system, with the disincentives of oppression and exploitation which keeps peasants and their families permanently at barely subsistence level without any means of averting or coping with the consequences of crop failure, is the system that creates famine in time of peace. A subsistence production system impoverishes peasants and pastoralists as well as the physical environment. It is this fact that occasionally disturbs the delicate balance between the activities and expectations of the peasants and the pastoralists, on one hand, and the process of the physical environment, on the other. When this delicate balance is disturbed famine does not occur automatically, but instead takes several months to mature into a mass killer.
The author urges positive and rational action – for example, the accumulation of data, programmes of research and development, and reform, especially of taxation, can create the conditions necessary for improvement. ‘The world of under development is a world of faith as opposed to critical reason... The pain of thinking can replace the pain of famine.’
Published: 1986
Pages: 208
eBook: 9781780445847
Paperback: 9780946688036
The author urges positive and rational action – for example, the accumulation of data, programmes of research and development, and reform, especially of taxation, can create the conditions necessary for improvement. ‘The world of under development is a world of faith as opposed to critical reason... The pain of thinking can replace the pain of famine.’
| PART I : INTRODUCTION | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Chapter One | |||
| Introduction 3. | |||
| PART 11: THE PROBLEM OF FAMINE | |||
| Chapter Two | |||
| The Problem of Famine in Ethiopia 31 | |||
| Chapter Three | |||
| The Consequences of Famine 55 | |||
| PART III : VULNERABILITY TO FAMINE | |||
| Chapter Four | |||
| The Socio-Economic Conditions of Peasant Life 73. | |||
| Chapter Five | |||
| The Role of the State in Famine 102 | |||
| PART IV : THE EXPLANATIONS OF FAMINE | |||
| Chapter Six | |||
| Conventional Explanations of Famine 121 | |||
| Chapter Seven | |||
| The Analysis of Famines in Ethiopia: A New Explanation 146 | |||
| PART V : CONCLUSIONS | |||
| Chapter Eight | |||
| Conclusion 177 | |||
| Index 189 |
Mesfin Wolde Mariam
In 1990, Mesfin Wolde Mariam founded the Ethiopian Human Rights Council and is now one of Ethiopia's best known human rights activists.
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