ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2, it was suggested that one of the key reasons why some scholars have demanded a rethinking of the agrarian question is the growing mismatch between spatial categories (rural—urban) and sectoral categories (agriculture—industry). Not only is there a vital human landscape of rural—urban relations, as people oscillate between country and town and between farm and factory, but increasingly the factories themselves are infiltrating rural areas. Moreover, rural entrepreneurs are diversifying into (predominantly) craft-based industries and urban-based enterprises are employing villagers to carry out piecework in their homes. In some cases, craft-based industries are expanding and linking in with global markets, in the process making the transition to becoming small-scale capitalist industrial enterprises. Finally, all this is occurring in a context where urban centres — so-styled extended metropolitan regions (EMRs) — are intruding into and merging with rural areas. In short, people's lives, the articulation of agriculture and industry, and the nature of the rural and urban economies are becoming increasingly complex and interlinked. For Watts and Goodman, studies of rural industrialisation in the developing world and on rural non-farm work represent 'some ot the most exciting recent work in agrarian studies' (1997: 16).
