bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Provisional notes on the postcolony
Authors: Mbembe Achille 
Published: April 2006

AbstractThe exercise of power in African states since independence—generalised here under the term the ‘postcolony’—has been marked by a liking for ceremonial and by an exhibitionism that is the more remarkable seeing how illusory are the states’ practical achievements. Furthermore, power is exercised with a degree of violence and naked exploitation that has its antecedents in previous colonial regimes. People's response is a ribaldry that revels in the obscene. The general question is why this power, despite its obvious limitations, is seemingly so effective. More specifically, why does the population apparently collude with its government; how can it laugh at the antics of its rulers and yet at the same time join in celebrating them? The argument put forward here along with evidence mainly from Cameroon and Togo is that, if analysis focuses on the detailed processes and rituals of collusion, it becomes clear that there is an intimacy, an almost domestic familiarity, in the relationship between ruler and ruled which effectively disarms both and turns power-play into performance.
Ethnoveterinary medicine in Africa
Authors: McCorkle Constance M. , Mathias-Mundy Evelyn 
Published: April 2006

AbstractLocal knowledge systems have won growing attention and respect within conventional science and in the international development community. Such systems have usually resulted from centuries of local people's empirical observation and experience and typically are highly ecologically sensitive. The information they embody and their associated materials and techniques can be of immense practical value in mounting cost-effective, socio-culturally and politically workable, environmentally benign, and thus sustainable, initiatives to improve human livelihoods and well-being. The present article overviews one pioneering branch of research and development for the continent of Africa: ethnoveterinary medicine. Indigenous healers, ethno-aetiologies, ethnopharmacology and toxicology, vaccination and surgical skills, and selected health-related husbandry practices are described. These data are then analysed from both social scientific and biological-technical perspectives, to identify limitations and potentials in putting African veterinary expertise to work in truly appropriate agricultural development. The authors conclude with recommendations for both immediate and future directions in the study and utilisation of this corpus of valuable, but endangered, knowledge.
Poverty and production in a rural microcosm: Hanover, Cape
Authors: Archer Sean 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn the popular consciousness, South African poverty is a phenomenon of the homeland or urban township and ghetto, more rarely of rural areas in the core economy. Such a perspective is determined largely by the higher visibility of the poor in the former localities in the recent past, for reasons of geography and political sensitivity. This study aimed to redress the balance, starting from two broad premises: first, that the technical and organisational changes in production and the growth of surplus labour observable in Hanover on a microscale are representative of secular trends in commercialised agriculture in the Karoo region as a whole; and, second, that the causes of poverty generation in that region cannot be satisfactorily examined in isolation from the wider political and economic processes within which they are embedded.
Manufacturing dissent: work, gender and the politics of meaning in a peasant society
Authors: Carney Judith , Watts Michael 
Published: April 2006

Introduction: The Manufacturing of DissentThis article addresses the changing nature of farm work in a peasant society in The Gambia, West Africa. The practice of farm labour has been transformed in the most palpable way by the advent of radically new technical and social relations of production associated with mechanised double-cropping of irrigated rice. Technical change, agricultural intensification and a new labour process are, however, all built upon the bedrock of household production, since peasant growers are socially integrated into the new scheme as contract farmers, specifically as contracted sharecroppers. Family labour continues to be the dominant social form in which labour power is mobilised, but under conditions directly determined and shaped by the contractors, namely project management. Irrigated double-cropping of rice production is particularly labour-demanding and makes expanded claims on customary structures of domestic labour recruitment. These new economic practices subject the culturally dominant representations of work, labour obligations and property rights—the constituents of custom and tradition— to the test of social practice. In our examination of Mandinka rice growers we suggest, following T. J. Clark, that ‘society is a battlefield of representations on which the limits and coherence of any given set are being fought for and regularly spoilt’ (Clark, 1984: 6). The introduction of a new production regime has converted rural Mandinka society into a contested social terrain; the primary struggle is a contest over gender and the conjugal contract in which property, or more accurately constellations of property rights, is at stake. By seeing economic life as, among other things, a realm of representations, we argue that the struggles over meaning and the manufacture of symbolic and material dissent in central Gambia—a proliferation of intrahousehold conflicts, juridical battles over divorce in the local courts, renegotiations of the conjugal contract—are the idioms of what Burawoy (1985) calls production politics.
Defunct labour reserve?: Mambwe villages in the post-migration economy
Authors: Pottier Johan 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionDuring the first few months of 1978, at the height of the rainy season, mourning lamentations hardly ever ceased at the mortuary of Mbala General Hospital. Infants and children were dying. Inadequate food intake, malabsorption of nutrients and malarial infection were the main causes of death.Those who survived the ‘hunger months’ of 1978 lived in overcrowded quarters and were fed a diet consisting mainly of diluted maize meal (‘mealie meal’) porridge. They suffered from poor dietary variation and an unprecedented shortage of basic foodstuffs. The small and isolated township of Mbala could not provide for itself; it relied on maize flour imports from the Copper belt and from Lusaka. The arrival of a truckload of flour–the road to Kasama had not yet been tarred– was sufficient to bring the town community to its feet and cause long queues of despairing people.
Social differentiation and pastoralist sedentarization in northern Kenya
Authors: Little Peter D. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphSedentarization is often characterized by increased cultivation, which can result in either a partial or a total transformation from a livestock to a farm-based economy (Barth, 1961; Baxter, 1975; Nelson, 1973; Salzman, 1980). There are many possible permutations along this continuum from livestock to agriculture, and categories based on a sharp dichotomy between them are inadequate; even sub-units within a single ethnic group may show divergent patterns. Recent evidence reveals considerable intra-group variation in pastoral responses to agricultural opportunities (Alverson, 1979; Behnke, 1981; Haaland, 1977; Kjaerby, 1979; O'Leary, 1980). These differences are often in line with the generalization that large cattle herds are more closely associated with pastoralism than with agriculture.
Immigration, land transfer and tenure changes in Divo, Ivory Coast, 1940–80
Authors: Hecht Robert M. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe relationship between land tenure forms and the twentieth-century transformation of agriculture throughout much of Africa from a strong subsistence to a market orientation – and from food crop production to predominantly export crop production – is a topic of great importance both to Africanists and to policy-makers. From a scholarly perspective, contemporary Africa presents an unusual opportunity to study dramatic changes in land use and especially in land tenure, similar to changes which took place in other parts of the world as commercial farming developed. From a policy-maker's point of view, too, the current shift in land tenure has major implications for possible government measures affecting security of tenure and land distribution – and, in turn, patterns of agricultural investment, productivity and output.
Migration in West Africa: a savanna village prespective
Authors: Cleveland David A. 
Published: April 2006

AbstractLocal migration in response to population pressure is part of the history of northeast Ghana. First by physical coercion, then by economic coercion, colonialism drastically changed the pattern of migration to one of long-distance movement from north-east Ghana and the northern savannas in general to southern Ghana. Migration in turn affected social organisation, agriculture and population dynamics n i savanna communities. While colonial policy was not always consistent, one dominant and ultimately effective strategy seems evident: to break up locally self-sufficient economies and societies in order to stimulate the temporary migration of labour from largely subsistence agriculture to work in commercial agriculture, mining and public works in the south. These sectors were directly tied to the European economy for the benefit of Britain. Low wages and poor working conditions encouraged most migrants to return to their savanna villages when they were sick, injured or too old to work.When Ghana gained its political independence from Britain this new pattern of migration had become firmly established and was maintained by changes in the social, economic and transport systems. Data from Zorse and the Upper Region show that migration at any one time takes about 50 per cent of working-age males and 15 per cent of working-age females to southern Ghana for periods of a year or more. Significantly increased dependency ratios mean that as a result of this migration each four remaining working-age adults must support themselves plus four dependants, instead of supporting only three dependants, as would be the case without migration. Since remittances by Zorse migrants are equal to only a small fraction of the value of their lost productive labour, the net effect of migration on the food consumption level of those remaining in the village will be determined by the balance between the increased output required of each remaining working-age adult and the decreased yield required of the total area of arable land. While I do not have all the quantitative data needed to resolve this question, statements by Zorse residents, evidence of chronic undernutrition, a long-term decrease in land productivity due to erosion and lack of organic matter, and serious labour shortages during periods of critical farm activity, suggest that the net effect of migration on Zorse is negative. That is, neither labour productivity nor land productivity is likely to compensate for the higher dependency ratio.While it may be true that migrants vote with their feet, the choice of paths is often determined by forces in the larger system beyond their control. The good news is that indigenous agricultural and demographic knowledge and practices in Africa may provide the starting point for a sustainable future if the patterns established by colonialism and reinforced by ‘modern’ economic development can be changed.
The new pastoralism: poverty and dependency in northern Kenya
Authors: Hogg Richard 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphRecent studies of African pastoralism have come more and more to concentrate on its political economy and to note the increasing social and economic differentiation occurring within pastoral societies. As Swift and Maliki write of West Africa: ‘Since the 1973 drought, there has been an increasing process of proletarianization in the countryside which has particularly affected herders, who are in many places being transformed from independent rural producers into cowboys herding other people's animals on land they no longer control’ (1984: 2). In Kenya this process has become increasingly apparent since independence, as pastoralism has become dominated by a town-based elite (see Dahl, 1979a; Little, 1983, 1985a and b; Ensminger, 1984). In this article I trace the origins of a new kind of pastoralism in northern Kenya, and argue that poverty and dependence is becoming a permanent way of life to many pastoralists.
Self-help: the state and peasant leverage in Kenya
Authors: Holmquist Frank 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe literature on general peasant–state relations in history, in Africa today, or in Kenya in particular, tells us that the peasants have little systematic political leverage over state policy. While I broadly agree with this assessment, I would like to comment on an exception. The changing nature of self-help in Kenya is analysed in order to argue, first, that peasants, in collaboration with other classes in self-help, have had some leverage on state policy and budgets in the realm of basic needs; second, that the fact of peasant initiative and political strength over time has served to alter subtly some aspects of everyday peasant–state relations to peasant advantage; and third, that self-help has historically been a doubleedged political sword. But, before proceeding to the Kenya context, it is essential to review theoretical and empirical aspects of peasant political weakness in contemporary Africa.
Some issues of theory in the study of tenure relations in African agriculture
Authors: Okoth-Ogendo H. W. O. 
Published: April 2006

ProlegomenonWhat has become known as ‘the African agrarian crisis’ is an extremely complex phenomenon. This much is clear from the fact that, despite the very considerable amount of literature which has been accumulated on the subject (Berry, 1984), there is still very little agreement as to its precise nature and dimensions and even less certainty on how to resolve it in the context of national level policies, plans and programmes. What this must mean,inter alia, is that explanations cannot be sought simply in pithy epigrams drawn from grand theories and hastily assembled micro-level data bases.
Environment and access to resources in Africa
Authors: Blaikie Piers 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThis article has been written as a contribution to the future orientation of a research programme on the agrarian crisis in Africa, which has been set up by the Joint Committee on African Studies (JCAS) of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council. The aim of this article is to provide an agenda for research on the environment and access to resources in Africa and is one of four which both provide a review of some of the most important research issues and suggest ways in which they might be tackled.
Continuity and change in the Gwembe Tonga family and their relevance to demography's nucleation thesis
Authors: Price Neil , Thomas Neil 
Published: April 2006

AbstractRecent criticisms of demographic theory and methodology have pointed,inter alia, to the need to take on board advances in cognate disciplines. This case study of the Gwembe Valley Tonga of Zambia highlights the important methodological contribution that social anthropology can make to the sub-discipline of family demography. It provides evidence of the empirical invalidity of the ‘family nucleation’ paradigm, which holds that a shift towards conjugal marriage and nuclear household residence patterns is an inevitable consequence of globalisation, and a precursor of the social and economic changes necessary for the fertility transition. According to nucleation theory, evidence of increased conjugality will be reflected in the reduced symbolic importance of the lineage and ancestors; greater marriage stability; the demise of polygyny and widow inheritance; reduction in the size and significance of bridewealth payments; increasing age of first marriage for women, and decreasing age differentials between spouses. The case study therefore focuses on recent changes in the matrilineal kinship system, notably the emergence of localised lineages, and the extent to which these changes reflect family nucleation (largely but not exclusively in terms of increased conjugality). By analysing household structure and marital residence patterns, including the role played by the husband/father in family affairs, nuptiality (notably bridewealth, divorce and polygyny), inheritance and the role of ancestors, the case study demonstrates that changes in the family and kinship structure in response to local social and economic transformation can be equated not with nuclearisation but with the emergence of a modified form of family and kinship, quite distinct in structure and meaning from the nuclear family.
Loma political culture: a phenomenology of structural form
Authors: Højbjerg Christian K. 
Published: April 2006

AbstractUpper Guinea political culture is often described as a system of dual sovereignty expressed in an idiom of bilateral kinship. The article examines whether this model applies to the Loma, a prototypical Upper Guinea culture. The result is largely negative. Empirical data suggest a more complex distribution of political and religious powers, and the analysis of the correlation between ritual and social structure in Loma society indicates a need to revise the current conceptualisation of Upper Guinea political culture. Thus, while matrilateral alliance is indeed central in shaping Loma social, political and religious organisation, there are certain important limitations on its cognitive potential, particularly when it comes to the influential so-called secret associations.
Who's for work? The management of labour in the process of accumulation in three Adja villages, Benin
Authors: den Ouden Jan H. B. 
Published: April 2006

In the rural Adja region of south-west Bénin there is a labour problem. People who want to expand their businesses need cheap and reliable labour, but such labour is difficult to find and to manage. The sort of ‘big men’ known asalo-su amè dji—those mainly interested in investing in and dominating people—would like to keep up the appearance of being a ‘big man’ with many people under their control, but they cannot avoid the modern temptation of aspiring to personal wealth. Their style of management is to use mainly domestic labour, yet they face problems as the young begin to distrust the intentions of their household heads: the latter are suspected of looking after their own interests, while their followers doubt whether they will get a fair share of the assets when there are so many of them in a large family. Furthermore, sons and dependants find a long, very low-paid ‘apprenticeship’ increasingly unacceptable.There is growing awareness of the difficulties of working with domestic labour and of the splintering effect of redistributing assets between a great many people. A small but growing number want accumulation for themselves and a limited number of descendants. This new style is associated with the sort of accumulators calledeho wu amè, people who try to maximise financial gain. They work with much less family than hired labour (and prefer a much lower rate of polygyny). But hired labour at economic rates is not easy to find and there are organisational problems.
The work of the ancestors and the profit of the living: some Nzema economic ideas
Authors: Pavanello Mariano 
Published: April 2006

This article, based on fieldwork, explores the main economic categories of the Nzema, matrilineal farmers of South West Ghana, with the aim of reconstructing a local economic theory. The starting point is that any economic theory is logically founded in its own principles and that the internal coherence of a theory depends on its ability to represent the interests of the society to which it is applied. The work of ancestors appears as a founding idea in relation to other ideas like that of profit engendered by the work of the living.The author, however, analyses these categories, particularly emphasising the use of terminology in various contexts of daily life and in the economic lexicon as a whole, in order to trace an unitary space in which the logic of a system of thought could be considered. In order to verify the coherence of this system the author conducts a comparative analysis between the Nzema categories and the corresponding western categories organised as different theories such as neo-classical marginalism, Marx's value of work and, finally, Chayanov's theory founded on an utility concept.The central core of the Nzema's theory concerning work and profit is that the work of ancestors, first conceived as the ideological and juridical basis for the rights of their descendants over cultivable land, turns as well into a profit producer to the advantage of the living under the condition that it should be materialised as a means of production like, for example, the coconut trees, which were planted by the ancestors, and now produce a profit for their descendants.
A note on space in the Ethiopian revolution
Authors: Donham Donald L. 
Published: April 2006

AbstractThere have been two major approaches to spatial analysis in social and cultural anthropology. The first insists that distance is culturally categorised, that a person 's experience of space is relative to particular ways of dividing and conceptualising spatial relations. The second approach, most often associated with central-place theory, takes the opposite tack. Distance, in this view, has certain universal predicates; for example, the inherent difficulty of transporting goods with a simple technology means that markets in agrarian societies have a limited set of recurrent features—no matter how space is locally encoded. These two modes of analysis are often taken as mutually exclusive ways of proceeding. In this article it is suggested that neither can be neglected if large-scale transformations like social revolutions are to be understood in their complexity. In the course of developing a pioneering study of the role of peasants in revolutions Eric Wolf offered the beginnings of a general theory. After summarising some of his hypotheses, the author confronts them with data from the Ethiopian revolution as it unfolded during 1975 in an area called Maale.
Militarism, gender and reproductive suffering: the case of abortion in Western Dinka
Authors: Jok Jok Madut 
Published: April 2006

AbstractStudies of reproductive risk under war conditions pay a great deal of attention to statistics of sexual violence inflicted by one warring party upon women of the other. While such attention is justified, it mystifies the risk contained within families and local communities. This article examines the effects of the militarisation of youth in southern Sudan on women's reproductive well-being. The war has caused families to desire many children to make up for the high wartime infant mortality rate. The resultant social breakdown has prompted men to breach the rules of sexuality and sexual taboos to such an extent that women have lost much control over sexual and reproductive decisions. Women in Western Dinka, therefore, agree to conceive unwillingly. They also regard pregnancy as a difficult ordeal. Many, however, terminate pregnancy with unsafe techniques that risk infertility, infection or death.