RISK, UNCERTAINTY, AND THE SUBSISTENCE FAPRER:

 Technological Innovation and Resistance to Change

 in the Context of Survival



 Clifton R. Wharton, Jr.
 The Agricultural Development Council, Inc.


 Introduction


A. The Dynamics of Micro-Development: A Prologue

 The transformation of village-level economies is essentially the trans-

formation of peasant farmers. Few peasant farmers in the world are in a state

of pure subsistence where they buy and sell nothing outside of their farms.

However, the linkages which exist in a majority of cases are more heavily con-

centrated at a village economy level than with the wider economy outside of

the village. Contact with the wider economy does exist in most cases, but its

relative importance contrasted with the interface market contacts at the

village level is less. Thus, these village-level economies operate much as

self-contained, self-sufficient economic enclaves with communal goals, institu-

tions and processes designed far more for the preservation of human life than

for development. Since in its earliest phases, sedentary agriculture is a

productive process whose product may be eaten by the producer, there is

inevitably a strong attachment by the peasant farmer to the goals, institutions,

and processes associated with the economy, society, and polity of the village.

 Despite the almost infinite variety of village-level institutions and

processes to be found around the world, they partake of three common character-

istics of importance for change: (a) they have historically proven to be