Improving Traditional Rural Technologies

This book contends that large numbers in the Third World will become reliant on traditional rural technologies over the next thirty to forty years. Because of its emphasis on improving the typically low productivity of these technologies, the appropriate technology constitutes an essential part of any adequate policy response to this growing problem. But because this approach neglects a range of issues - such as the heterogeneity of poverty and dynamic intersectoral linkages - that determine the impact of improved technologies on the poor, it is not a sufficient response. The author is concerned therefore to advocate a broader analytic framework than is normally associated with the appropriate technology movement. On this extended basis a number of important conclusions for policy are drawn at the micro, meso and macro levels of intervention. Jeffrey James is author of "The Transition to Egalitarian Development" with Keith Griffin and "Consumer Choice in the Third World".