Rural–urban interactions, agriculture and wealth: a southeast Asian perspective

Abstract

The forces of economic and social change are reworking rural areas of the developing world, sometimes fundamentally so. Agriculture is being squeezed by nonagricultural pursuits, aspirations are increasingly informed by a wish to avoid farming and the ‘household’ is being restructured as the genders and generations contest and renegotiate their respective roles. The diversification of the household economy and the interpenetration of rural and urban have created multiple hybridities where individuals and households shift between agricultural and industrial pursuits and cross between rural and urban areas. Farm is in thrall to nonfarm, and industry is often dependent on ‘rural’ labour. Drawing largely on work from southeast Asia, the article reviews these changes to rural life and livelihood, discusses their impacts on agriculture and reflects on their implications for rural development.