ABSTRACT
To the economist, with his particular point of view and interest, a study of village life is important largely for the light it may shed on the organization of production and, therefore, on the underlying reasons which explain the range and amount of goods and services which are available to the villagers themselves. This is because the discipline of economics has traditionally been concerned-with “economizing, “ with making the most of resources which are assumed scarce everywhere relative to human wants—even in wealthy societies. Within this frame of reference the problem of development becomes a matter of identifying the available resources and examining the manner in which they are employed to determine (a) whether or not more could be produced by some shift in the factor proportions, and (b) to what extent new techniques, new capital equipment, or new ideas can be easily acquired and adopted with productive advantage to the society. 1 Enough has been said at this point of the manner in which economic activity in the village is organized and conducted to permit some analysis of it from the standpoint of productivity.
