Donald C. Wood – författare

Following the Second World War, a massive land reclamation project to boost Japan’s rice production capacity led to the transformation of the shallow lagoon of Hachirogata in Akita Prefecture into a seventeen-thousand-hectare expanse of farmland. In 1964, the village of Ogata-mura was founded on the empoldered land inside the lagoon and nearly six hundred pioneers from across the country were brought to settle there. The village was to be a model of a new breed of highly mechanized, efficient rice agriculture; however, the village’s purpose was jeopardized when the demand for rice fell, and the goal of creating an egalitarian farming community was threatened as individual entrepreneurialism took root and as the settlers became divided into political factions that to this day continue to struggle for control of the village. Based on seventeen years of research, this book explores the process of Ogatamura’s development from the planning stages to the present. An intensive ethnographic study of the relationship between land reclamation, agriculture, and politics in regional Japan, it traces the internal social effects of the village’s economic transformations while addressing the implications of national policy at the municipal and regional levels.

Volume 41 of Research in Economic Anthropology explores a wide range of topics of interest to economic anthropology. The opening paper presents a novel approach to anthropological-economic infrastructural research in England, specifically London’s Thames Tideway Tunnel. The volume’s first section consists of four papers that are tied together by two common threads: the roles of money in social ties between people, and moral concerns regarding these and other roles and uses of money in society. The section covers commercial surrogate mothers in Russia, social welfare provision in Pakistan, the management of a communal fund within a school alumni association in South Korea, and a credit scheme’s impact on women in Nigeria.  

Part two focuses on two basic necessities of human life—food and clothing - examining a New Zealand food security initiative that rescues “waste” food, modern transformations of a pre-owned clothing market in Hamburg, Germany, and Muslim fashion retail business in the same country’s capital city, Berlin.

Finally, the volume closes with a third section that fixes an anthropological lens on contemporary developments in Latin America, analyzing the larger fair trade movement and its particular manifestations and implications in Oaxaca, Mexico, the cost-effectiveness of the reintegration of ex-combatants in Colombia, and patron-client relations in Brazil and how these have been politically perceived and presented by domestic and foreign intellectuals and academics, respectively.

Volume 41 of Research in Economic Anthropology explores a wide range of topics of interest to economic anthropology. The opening paper presents a novel approach to anthropological-economic infrastructural research in England, specifically London’s Thames Tideway Tunnel. The volume’s first section consists of four papers that are tied together by two common threads: the roles of money in social ties between people, and moral concerns regarding these and other roles and uses of money in society. The section covers commercial surrogate mothers in Russia, social welfare provision in Pakistan, the management of a communal fund within a school alumni association in South Korea, and a credit scheme’s impact on women in Nigeria.  

Part two focuses on two basic necessities of human life—food and clothing - examining a New Zealand food security initiative that rescues “waste” food, modern transformations of a pre-owned clothing market in Hamburg, Germany, and Muslim fashion retail business in the same country’s capital city, Berlin.

Finally, the volume closes with a third section that fixes an anthropological lens on contemporary developments in Latin America, analyzing the larger fair trade movement and its particular manifestations and implications in Oaxaca, Mexico, the cost-effectiveness of the reintegration of ex-combatants in Colombia, and patron-client relations in Brazil and how these have been politically perceived and presented by domestic and foreign intellectuals and academics, respectively.

Volume 43 of Research in Economic Anthropology covers an extensive range of important topics with an equally wide geographic perspective.

Grounded in fieldwork undertaken in West Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America, articles are broadly concerned with money, commerce, and wealth, with special concentrations on health, work, and uncertainty. Featured topics include:

Exploring the interconnectedness and uncertainty of today’s economic world, this volume thoughtfully considers core themes, current trends, and possibilities for the future.