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The author examines the paradox of very poor households, spending large sums on celebrations. Using qualitative, and quantitative data from South India, the author demonstrates that spending on weddings, and festivals can be explained by integrating an anthropological understanding of how identity is shaped in Indian society, with an economic analysis of decision-making under conditions of extreme poverty, and risk. The author argues that publicly observable celebrations have two functions: they provide a space for maintaining social reputations, and webs of obligation, and, they serve as arenas for status-making competitions. The first role is central to maintaining the networks essential for social relationships, and coping with poverty. The second is a correlate of mobility that may become more prevalent as incomes rise. Development policies that favor individual over collective action, reduce the incentives for the networking function, and increase the incentives for status-enhancing functions - thus reducing social cohesion, and increasing conspicuous consumption. Market-driven improvements in urban employment, for example, could reduce a family's dependence on its traditional networks, could reduce incentives to maintain these networks, and could reduce social cohesion within a village, and thus its capacity for collective action. In contrast, micro-finance programs, and social funds try to retain, and even build a community's capacity for collective action.
Very poor households spend large sums on celebrations. To the extent that these expenditures are central to maintaining the networks essential for social relationships and coping with poverty, these are reasonable expenses. To the extent that they are status competitions, they may merely increase conspicuous consumption.Rao examines the paradox of very poor households spending large sums on celebrations. Using qualitative and quantitative data from South India, Rao demonstrates that spending on weddings and festivals can be explained by integrating an anthropological understanding of how identity is shaped in Indian society with an economic analysis of decisionmaking under conditions of extreme poverty and risk.Rao argues that publicly observable celebrations have two functions: they provide a space for maintaining social reputations and webs of obligation, and they serve as arenas for status-making competitions.The first role is central to maintaining the networks essential for social relationships and coping with poverty. The second is a correlate of mobility that may become more prevalent as incomes rise.Development policies that favor individual over collective action reduce the incentives for the networking function and increase the incentives for status- enhancing functions - thus reducing social cohesion and increasing conspicuous consumption.Market-driven improvements in urban employment, for example, could reduce a family's dependence on its traditional networks, could reduce incentives to maintain these networks, and could reduce social cohesion within a village and thus its capacity for collective action. In contrast, microfinance programs and social funds try to retain and even build a community's capacity for collective action.This paper - a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study the relationship between poverty and collective action. The author may be contacted at [email protected].
January 2001 Very poor households spend large sums on celebrations. To the extent that these expenditures are central to maintaining the networks essential for social relationships and coping with poverty, these are reasonable expenses. To the extent that they are status competitions, they may merely increase conspicuous consumption. Rao examines the paradox of very poor households spending large sums on celebrations. Using qualitative and quantitative data from South India, Rao demonstrates that spending on weddings and festivals can be explained by integrating an anthropological understanding of how identity is shaped in Indian society with an economic analysis of decisionmaking under conditions of extreme poverty and risk. Rao argues that publicly observable celebrations have two functions: they provide a space for maintaining social reputations and webs of obligation, and they serve as arenas for status-making competitions. The first role is central to maintaining the networks essential for social relationships and coping with poverty. The second is a correlate of mobility that may become more prevalent as incomes rise. Development policies that favor individual over collective action reduce the incentives for the networking function and increase the incentives for status-enhancing functions--thus reducing social cohesion and increasing conspicuous consumption. Market-driven improvements in urban employment, for example, could reduce a family's dependence on its traditional networks, could reduce incentives to maintain these networks, and could reduce social cohesion within a village and thus its capacity for collective action. In contrast, microfinance programs and social funds try to retain and even build a community's capacity for collective action. This paper--a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to study the relationship between poverty and collective action. The author may be contacted at [email protected].
This book collects important contributions in behavioral economics and related topics, mainly by Japanese researchers, to provide new perspectives for the future development of economics and behavioral economics. The volume focuses especially on economic studies that examine interactions of multiple agents and/or market phenomena by using behavioral economics models. Reflecting the diverse fields of the editors, the book captures broad influences of behavioral economics on various topics in economics. Those subjects include parental altruism, economic growth and development, the relative and permanent income hypotheses, wealth distribution, asset price bubbles, auctions, search, contracts, personnel management and market efficiency and anomalies in financial markets. The chapter authors have added newly written addenda to the original articles in which they address their own subsequent works, supplementary analyses, detailed information on the underlying data and/or recent literature surveys. This will help readers to further understand recent developments in behavioral economics and related research.
Led by Amartya Sen, Mary Douglas, and Arjun Appadurai, the distinguished anthropologists and economists in this book forcefully argue that culture is central to development, and present a framework for incorporating culture into development discourse. For further information on the book and related essays, please visit www.cultureandpublicaction.org.
Reviews techniques and tools that can be used to evaluate the poverty and distributional impact of economic policy choices. This title describes the most robust techniques and tools, from the simplest to the most complex, and aims to identify best practices. It also addresses an evaluation technique and its applications.
Encompassing chapters that address both unidimensional and multidimensional poverty, this timely Research Handbook explores all aspects of poverty and deprivation measurement, not only detailing broad issues but also scrutinising specific domains and aspects of poverty, such as health, energy and housing. Its succinct and highly focussed chapters, written by a diverse range of authors, employ a combination of theoretical and empirical methodologies to offer well-rounded explorations of complex topics.
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