Socioeconomics of Agriculture

This open access book applies for the first time emerging concepts of socioeconomics to analyse an economic sector, namely agriculture. It considers the rational choices of all actors in the system (just as agricultural economists do) and their cultural preferences and constraints (just as rural sociologists do). Socioeconomic concepts are subsequently used to structure agricultural issues with regard to the three governance mechanisms (hierarchy, markets, and cooperation), and different agricultural systems are presented and compared. The book will be of interest to social scientists with various backgrounds, and seeks to break down the barriers of single-disciplinary thinking.

Provides an entirely new perspective on the primary sector and rural areas Illustrates the added value of classifying governance mechanisms Collects and builds upon many important recent empirical findings and theoretical models

Autorentext
Stefan Mann, born in 1968, studied Agriculture in Halle, Edinburgh and Newcastle. He heads the Socioeconomics research group of the Swiss Federal Research Station Agroscope, teaches Socioeconomics of Agriculture at ETH Zurich and is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Social Economics. He holds a PhD in Agriculture and one in Economics.