This book is a compilation by authors who have written a synthesis of accumulated experiences in their social science fields offering their personal recommendations for actual rural development interventions. The book's unified approach will include the component studies of the social organization of productive systems, typology of development projects, stages in the project cycle, and incorporation of information about World Bank assisted projects.

"This is a useful and important volume. Sociologists working in applied rural development will find their experiences and ideas buttressed by this book. Graduate students contemplating field work in international development will find the anthology essential."--Contemporary Sociology

"This is must reading for sociologists concerned with moral development."--Thomas Rudel, Rutgers University

"Those who have any expertise on involuntary migration will probably already be familiar with Scudder's and Cernea's arguments, but it is convenient to have them pulled together here and each has continued to evaluate how their formulations stand the test of further research."--Journal of Refugee Studies

"The second edition of this book owes its publication to the spread and success of the first edition....The new edition strengthens the argument that sociological analysis brings and increment of professional precision to the thinking and practice of induced development."--World Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology Abstracts

"A major compilation of knowledge about a variety of rural development efforts and participation of the intended beneficiaries in that development....A fountain of information on the sociology and anthropology of the relation of primary sector economic activities--pastoralism, fishing, irrigated and settlement agriculture--to collective social organization."--Environmental Management