ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the geography, ecology, climate, resources, population characteristics, settlement patterns, town environments, transport and infrastructure patterns, and other dimensions of the rural environment in which the Ethiopian society and Chilalo social system. The project, the Chilalo Agricultural Development Unit, began in late 1967. Provincial elites are well aware of the utility of cooperatives in gaining low-cost credit and green revolution inputs. Using more familiar but essentially similar terms, the functional subsystems are the cultural system, community organization, political administration and politics, and economy of rural Chilalo. The cumulative effect of the factors is a restrictive, self-seeking, narrowly responsive local government system. The successful implementation of growth could facilitate the occurrence of other dimensions of change, but the facilitation is carefully controlled by the polity, the stratification system, and the culture. The conclusion that Chilalo was a blocked and inequitable society has been recognized by the young Marxist-oriented military men who have seized the power of Haile Selassie.
