This thesis addresses the problem of the cultural change in the Israeli Kibbutz, its relevance to the Kibbutz ideology and its implication on Management patterns in the Kibbutz. The thesis is based on four hypotheses. Two of the hypotheses address the cultural changes and two address the changes in management patterns. The cultural change is hypothesised by assuming a change in life style and a change in the attitude to work as a value. The change in management patterns is hypothesised by assuming a change, at a policy level, of resource allocation and a change in the decision making process. The research includes several stages: • A literature research which established the historic cultural and ideological roots of the Kibbutz movement. • A collection of general statistics of the Kibbutz movement. • Five case studies - An in depth analysis of five individual Kibbutzim. A model of the Kibbutz values and principles is developed and used in analysing the changes in values and principles in the Kibbutz. The outcome of the research reveals that the Kibbutz is changing from an ideology based commune, which prefers values over matter and is ready to sacrifice individual freedom for the ideals, to a more bureaucratic organisation alming for profits that prefers individual freedom on equality and communality. The Kibbutz movement is turning from an agrarian closed system to a technically advanced community with open economy and culture. The research outcomes enhance Bertalaruy's claim that a culture within a culture has to change in order to survive. It also demonstrates that a cultural change is an incremental change. What seems to be a radical change is an aggregate result of several incremental changes. It is suggested that a radical change can not be implemented successfully in an organisation unless broken to incremental changes.

The focus of this study is the property rights theories tested in the context of Modern China’s rural areas. It is divided into three parts: Part I presents the theoretical framework, concepts. These form the analytical tools. Part II briefly describes the three big transformation of rural arable land ownership in modern China. This is a particular case in which the theoretical framework can be tested. In Part III of this study I apply the analytical framework developed in part I to understand the puzzles and problems described in part II. This is the application of theory to the history and reality. In this research, I show that the change of property rights is central to political, economic and social change in that particular society. As a formal institution, property rights provide an incentive or disincentive structure for a particular economy. The contrasting economic performance in modern China’s agriculture can be well explained by the underlying force— the property rights institutional arrangement. The stagnation and decline of Chinese economy and universal poverty is conditioned by the disincentive structure of the Commune System. While the specular economic growth and its relief of poverty is driven by the incentive structure of the Household Responsibility System (HRS). The success of the HRS is in that it is not only a government institutional arrangement but also a communal institutional arrangement in its origin. The rules created by the peasants themselves are legitimized by the central government as property rights. It really matter who creates the property rights and for whom. This research attempts to enrich our knowledge in social science. It challenges the conventional and standard political and economic theory used to explain Chinese puzzles in its economic growth and social development. In the theoretical sphere, it contributes mainly to the literature of Marx’s theory of property, Honoré’s concept of ownership and Ostrom’s theory of common-pool resources and institutional change. In the practical sphere, it contributes to our understanding of the radical and complex change in Modern China’s rural areas.

In this thesis four topics are studied empirically. These are the level and pattern of consumption, production efficiency, tenancy and rural-urban migration. The analysis is based on data collected from some villages in rural Sudan and other published data. In the study of consumption, the demand for goods and services as related to the income level of households is analysed. The analysis reveals how consumers allocate marginal increases in their income among the various goods. Income elasticities were also estimated and the price elasticities are derived for a number of commodity groups using an extended version of the linear expenditure system. The perceived minimum subsistence expenditures on some commodities were estimated. The implication of the magnitude of the estimated subsistence level on food for poverty and policy of economic development were then discussed. In this part of the study we also deal with the income distribution which is an important determining factor of the structure of demand. The relationship between size of farm and output per acre is an important issue in production efficiency. We investigate this relationship and draw the implications for land distribution and land reform. One conclusion which emerges from the analysis is that efficiency and equity can be reconciled by the creation of a cooperative movement that could make available the agricultural inputs that farmers are lacking now and which enables risks in production to be undertaken jointly by those who participate in it. In tenancy it is argued that its incidence can be explained largely by imperfections in the market for some factors. One such factor which is found to be positively correlated with land lease is the labour power which is available in the family. The availability of tractor service, hired largely by well-off households, is also found to be positively related to land hire. Rural-urban migration is discussed within the broad framework of the socio-economic factors prevailing in the rural community at large and by focusing attention on some specific factors that are reflected at the household unit. Among the latter we examine the relationship of migration to the output and land holding per capita. The influence of other factors such as income earned outside the family farm, largely through the process of rural-rural migration, education and mechanization is also tested.

The historical geography of farming in the West Central Region of Scotland has been under-researched. Generalisations based on research relating to other parts of the country are misleading because the development and forms of agriculture in the West Central Region were distinctive. Traditionally this is an area of dairy farming which, during the research period (c.1850-1930) was characterised by small family labour farms. The concentration of small farms, on which the faming family and a few hired workers formed the core labour-force, and where the distinctions between employer and employed were less than on the large arable farms of the East, had consequences for rural social structure, mitigating the effects of capitalism. Through a small set of family labour farms, and the families associated with them, the thesis takes a grassroots approach to exploring the pattern of life on the farms of the Region, with particular regard to gender relations. The survival of such farms, contrary to Marxist expectations is investigated, along with the resilience of the farms during the period of ‘The Great Agricultural Depression.’ Glasgow, the economic capital of the Region, underwent phenomenal growth during the nineteenth century, and had a massive impact upon local agriculture. Glasgow and its satellite towns were a market for agricultural produce, and a source of imported livestock feed, and fertilisers. The fashions, in the town, for consumer goods and non-traditional foodstuffs spread out to the surrounding Region, and interaction between town and country was facilitated by the development of the railways. The significance of farm location in relation to Glasgow is assessed.