ABSTRACT
Ester Boserup's groundbreaking analysis of the dynamics of agricultural development was one of the highlights of my graduate school reading. I encountered it shortly after its 1965 publication date, in the midst of a controversy at Harvard's Department of Social Relations Anthropology that centered on historical, even accidental vs. functional, that is, causal explanation of social systems. Boserup's thesis seemed to confirm the value of exploring causality.
