Ester Böserup: Difference between revisions

Browse history interactively ← Previous edit Next edit →Content deleted Content addedVisual WikitextInline

Revision as of 11:35, 20 January 2008 edit217.136.101.163 (talk)No edit summary← Previous edit		Revision as of 13:55, 14 February 2008 edit undo82.69.64.163 (talk) ←Redirected page to Ester Böserup Next edit →
Line 1:		Line 1:
			#REDIRECT ]
	{{merge\|Ester Böserup\|Talk:Ester Boserup#Merger proposal\|date=November 2007}}

	'''Ester Boserup''' (] - ], ]), born ''Børgesen'', was a ] ] and ] who studied economical and agricultural development. She worked at the ] and other international organizations and wrote several books.

	Boserup's most notable work is ''The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure'' (Chicago, Aldine, 1965, ISBN 0-415-31298-1). This book presented a "dynamic analysis embracing all types of primitive ]." In doing so, she upended the assumption dating back to ] time (and still held in many quarters) that agricultural methods determine ] (via food supply). Instead, she shows that population determines agricultural methods. A major point of her book is that "necessity is the mother of invention".

	She argued that when ] is low enough to allow it, land tends to be used
	intermittently, with heavy reliance on fire to clear fields and fallowing to restore fertility (often called ] farming). Numerous studies have shown such methods to be favourable in total workload and also efficiency (output versus input). In Boserup’s theory, it is only when rising population density curtails the use of ]ing (and therefore the use of fire) that fields are moved towards annual cultivation. Contending with insufficiently fallowed, less fertile plots, covered with grass or bushes rather than forest, mandates expanded efforts at fertilizing, field preparation, weed control, and irrigation. These changes often induce agricultural innovation but increase marginal labour cost to the farmer as well: the higher the rural population density, the more hours the farmer must work for the same amount of produce. Therefore workloads tend to rise while efficiency drops. This process of raising production at the cost of more work at lower efficiency is what Boserup describes as "]".

	The theory has been instrumental in understanding agricultural patterns in ], although it is highly simplified and generalized.

	Ester Boserup also complemented the discourse surrounding development practises with her 1970 work "Woman's Role in Economic Development" (London, Earthscan, 1970, ISBN 1-85383-040-2). The work is "the first investigation ever undertaken into what happens to women in the process of economic and social growth throughout the ]". According to the foreword in the 1989 edition by ], "It is committed and scholarly work that inspired the UN Decade for Women between 1975 and 1985, and that has encouraged aid agencies to question the assumption of gender neutrality in the costs as well as in the benefits of development".<!-- p.1 in the aforementioned book, 1989 edition -->.


	==External links==
	* Economic History net's review of

	{{DEFAULTSORT:Boserup, Esther}}
	]
	]
	]
	]
	]

	]
	]
	]

Revision as of 13:55, 14 February 2008

Redirect to:

Ester Böserup