Rice is the most widely consumed and ecologically adaptable cereal on earth, and in the first part of the book Hanks provides us with a synthesizing account of its history, the nature of its cultivation, its adaptablility, and the social and energy requirements necessary for its production. The originality of the book, however, resides in its second half, where Hanks describes the successive transformations in the production of rice and the impact of these transformations over a period of 120 years on the the people of Bang Chan, a communtiy of 1,700 persons locationed just 22 miles northeast of Bangkok. It is Hanks' sense of history, his sensitivty to the noetics and poetics of the human involvement with rice, its effects on family histories and individual careers that accords this book its scholarly distinction.
Publication Details
- Published: 1972
- Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
- ISBN-10: 0824814657
- ISBN-13: 978-0824814656
- Dewey Decimal: 306.3
- ECHO Library: 306.3 HAN