The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies

by Francesca Bray

Wide-ranging both historically and geographically, The Rice Economies brilliantly addresses a subject of abiding interest to anthropologists, economists, and historians as well as those concerned with development issues and Asian studies. It is the first work to formulate a logical, historical dynamic of development in Asia's rice economies up to the present day. The comparison of mechanized Western farming methods with the more labor intensive, less environmentally destructive Asian methods is of value to environmentalists and economists concerned with the need for sustainable development. In a new preface, the author reflects upon the increasing relevance of the concerns of the book to international environmental issues.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1986

About the author

Francesca Bray is a historian and anthropologist of science, technology and medicine, specialising in China. Bray is particularly interested in how politics are expressed and enacted through everyday technologies (with lots of work on technology, gender and the state), and in the politics underpinning different narratives about technology in national, comparative and global history. Bray has worked at the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, UCLA, the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester, then UC Santa Barbara and, since 2005, the University of Edinburgh.