Shady Practices: Agroforestry and Gender Politics in The Gambia

الغلاف الأمامي
University of California Press, 01‏/10‏/1999 - 206 من الصفحات
Shady Practices is a revealing analysis of the gendered political ecology brought about by conflicting local interests and changing developmental initiatives in a West African village. Between 1975 and 1985, while much of Africa suffered devastating drought conditions, Gambian women farmers succeeded in establishing hundreds of lucrative communal market gardens. In less than a decade, the women's incomes began outstripping their husbands' in many areas, until a shift in development policy away from gender equity and toward environmental concerns threatened to do away with the social and economic gains of the garden boom. Male landholders joined forestry personnel in attempts to displace the gardens and capture women's labor for the irrigation of male-controlled tree crops.

This carefully documented microhistory draws on field experience spanning more than two decades and the insights of disciplines ranging from critical human geography to development studies. Schroeder combines the "success story" of the market gardens with a cautionary tale about the aggressive pursuit of natural resource management objectives, however well intentioned. He shows that questions of power and social justice at the community level need to enter the debates of policymakers and specialists in environment and development planning.

من داخل الكتاب

الصفحات المحددة

المحتوى

1 Introduction
1
A Market Garden Boom for Mandinka Women
21
Domestic Politics and the Garden Boom
39
The Social Relations of Vegetable Production
61
The Gender Politics of Mandinka Garden Orchards
78
6 Contesting Agroforestry Interventions
105
7 Shady Practices
130
Notes
137
Works Cited
149
Index
165
حقوق النشر

طبعات أخرى - عرض جميع المقتطفات

عبارات ومصطلحات مألوفة

مقاطع مشهورة

الصفحة xiii - UNICEF United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund USAID United States Agency for International Development VORADEP Volta Region Agricultural Development Programme WDC Workers...
الصفحة 14 - ... by environmental degradation. At the same time, in the course of their everyday interactions with nature, they acquire a special knowledge of species varieties and the processes of natural regeneration. (This would include knowledge passed on to them by, for example, their mothers.) They could thus be seen as both victims of the destruction of nature and as repositories of knowledge about nature, in ways distinct from the men of their class. The former aspect would provide the gendered impulse...
الصفحة 13 - Feminist political ecology treats gender as a critical variable in shaping resource access and control, interacting with class, caste, race, culture, and ethnicity to shape processes of ecological change, the struggle of men and women to sustain ecologically viable livelihoods, and the prospects of any community for "sustainable development.
الصفحة 14 - ... knowledge passed on to them by, for example, their mothers.) They could thus be seen as both victims of the destruction of nature and as repositories of knowledge about nature, in ways distinct from the men of their class. The former aspect would provide the gendered impulse for their resistance and response to environmental destruction. The latter would condition their perceptions and choices of what should be done. Indeed, on the basis of their experiential understanding and knowledge, they...
الصفحة 14 - ... political structures within which these constructs are produced and transformed. Nor does it address the central issue of the means by which certain dominant groups (predicated on gender, class, etc.) are able to bring about ideological shifts in their own favour and how such shifts get entrenched, Fourth, the ecofeminist argument does not take into account women's lived material relationship with nature, as opposed to what others or they themselves might conceive that relationship to be. Fifth,...
الصفحة 14 - Third, even in the realm of ideological constructs, it says little (with the exception of Merchant's analysis) about the social, economic and political structures within which these constructs are produced and transformed. Nor does it address the central issue of the means by which certain dominant groups (predicated on gender, class, etc.) are able to bring about ideological shifts in their own favour and how such shifts get entrenched.
الصفحة 13 - Second, it locates the domination of women and of nature almost solely in ideology, neglecting the (inter-related) material sources of this dominance (based on economic advantage and Political power). Third, even in the realm of ideological constructs, it says little (with the exception of Merchant's analysis) about the social, economic and political structures within which these constructs are produced and transformed. Nor does it address the central issue...
الصفحة 13 - Arizpe 1993a and b; Thomas-Slayter 1992;Joekes 1995; Jackson 1985, 1995; Mackenzie 1995). This approach begins with the concern of the political ecologists who emphasize decision-making processes and the social, political, and economic context that shapes environmental policies and practices. Political ecologists have focused largely on the uneven distribution of access to and control over resources on the basis of class and ethnicity (Peet and Watts 1993). Feminist political ecology treats gender...

نبذة عن المؤلف (1999)

Richard A. Schroeder is Director of African Studies and Assistant Professor of Geography at Rutgers University.

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