Milk and honey : technologies of plenty in the making of a Holy Land / / Tamar Novick

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910901881603321
• Autore: Novick Tamar
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Cambridge, MA : , : The MIT Press, , 2023
• ISBN: 0-262-37456-0; 0-262-37455-2
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (320 pages)
• Collana: Inside technology
• Disciplina: 338.1/6
• Soggetti: Agricultural innovations - Israel - History; Agricultural innovations - Palestine - History; Agricultural innovations - Religious aspects; Agriculture - Religious aspects; Technology - Religious aspects
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Nota di contenuto: Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey -- Interlude: Bygone Buffalo and Lingering Value-A Prehistory of Plenty -- 1 Bible, Bees, and Boxes: Technologies of Movement and Obstruction -- 2 Getting Their Goat -- 3 The Rise and Fall of Hebrew Shepherding -- 4 Holy Cow! Milk Yield and the Burdens of the "New Jewess" -- 5 Urine and Gold: Infertility Research and the Limits of Plenty -- Conclusion: The Synesthetic Experience -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.
• Sommario/riassunto: An innovative historical analysis of the intersection of religion and technology in making the modern state, focusing on bodily production and reproduction across the human-animal divide. In Milk and Honey, Tamar Novick writes a revolutionary environmental history of the state that centers on the intersection of technology and religion in modern Israel/Palestine. Focusing on animals and the management of their production and reproduction across three political regimes -- the late-Ottoman rule, British rule, and the early Israeli state -- Novick draws attention to the ways in which settlers and state experts used agricultural technology to recreate a biblical idea of past plenitude, ; literally a "land flowing with milk and honey," through the bodies of animals and people. Novick presents a series of case studies involving the management of water buffalo, bees, goats, sheep, cows, and people in Palestine/Israel. She traces the intimate forms of knowledge and bodily labor -- production and reproduction -- in which this process took place, and the intertwining of bodily, political, and environmental realms in the transformation of Palestine/Israel. Her wide-ranging approach shows technology never replaced religion as a colonial device. Rather, it merged with settler-colonial aspirations to salvage the land, bolstering the effort to seize control over territory and people. Fusing technology, religious fervor, bodily labor, and political ecology, Milk and Honey provides a novel account of the practices that defined and continue to shape settler-colonialism in the Palestine/Israel, revealing the ongoing entanglement of technoscience and religion in our time.

Pathways to Prosperity in Rural Malawi / / Andrew Dabalen

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910964023003321
• Autore: Dabalen Andrew
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Washington, D.C. : , : The World Bank, , 2017
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (166 pages)
• Collana: Directions in Development;Directions in Development - Poverty
• Disciplina: 307.14
• Soggetti: Rural development - Malawi; Malawi Rural conditions
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters.
• Nota di contenuto: Executive Summary -- Recent Trends in Growth, Poverty, and Shared Prosperity in Rural Malawi -- Agriculture and Poverty -- Nonfarm Self-Employment Activities and Poverty -- Social Protection and Poverty -- Toward a Dynamic Rural Economy -- Appendix A. Official Development Assistance and Government Expenditures for Education and Health -- Appendix B. Daily Caloric Consumption per Capita of the Rural Poor -- Appendix C. Correlation between Price Inflation of Maize and Food ; Insecurity -- Appendix D. Variability of Food Staple Prices in Malawi and Comparator Countries -- Appendix E. Agricultural Productivity, Public Spending, and Poverty Reduction -- Appendix F. Determinants of Agricultural Productivity in Malawi, 2010-13 -- Appendix G. Characteristics of the Rural Poor and Nonpoor -- Appendix H. Review of Public Work Programs in Low-Income and Lower-Middle-Income Countries -- Appendix I. Household Participation Rates in the Malawi Farm Input Subsidy Program, by Landholding and Poverty Status -- Appendix J. Effects of a Cash (Instead of an In-Kind) Transfer on Poverty in Malawi, 2010 -- Appendix K. Cross-Country Decompositions on Sectoral Employment and Productivity.
• Sommario/riassunto: By most accounts, rural Malawi has lacked dynamism in the past decade. Growth has been mostly volatile, in large part due to unstable macroeconomic fundamentals evidenced by high inflation, fiscal deficits, and interest rates. When rapid economic growth has materialized, the gains have not always reached the poorest. Poverty remains high and the rural poor face significant challenges in consistently securing enough food. Several factors contribute to stubbornly high rural poverty. They include a low-productivity and non-diversified agriculture, macroeconomic and recurrent climatic shocks, limited non-farm opportunities and low returns to such activities, especially for the poor, and poor performance from some of the prominent safety net programs. The Report proposes complementary policy actions that offer a possible path for a more dynamic and prosperous rural economy. The key pillars of this comprise macroeconomic stability, increased productivity in agriculture, faster urbanization, better functioning safety nets, and more inclusive financial markets. Some recommendations call for a reorientation of existing programs such as the Malawi Farm Input Subsidy Program (FISP) and the Malawi Social Action Fund Public Works Program (MASAF-PWP). Others identify promising new areas of intervention, such as the introduction of digital IDs and biometric technologies to enhance the reach of mobile banking and deepen financial inclusion. Finally, and importantly, the report recommends the scaling up of investments on girls' secondary education to curb early child marriage and early child bearing among adolescents. This will empower women at home and work and bend the trajectory of fertility rates in rural areas in order to boost human development and reduce poverty.