Beyond the “Crisis” in African Food Studies

Mandala, Elias

doi:10.1111/j.1529-921x.2003.00065.x

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Immediately prior to CAPS the MLW ACTia clinical trial was conducted in the Chikwawa district to explore the safety of repeated malaria treatment on young children [31]. The Chikwawa district is rural, low-lying in the Shire Valley, and prone to seasonal flooding and food shortages [32].…”

Section: Study Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Why would they spend all this money and give us these items for free?’: Exploring precarity and power in a cleaner cookstove intervention in rural Malawi

Ardrey

Jehan²,

Desmond³

et al. 2023

PLOS Glob Public Health

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We carried out a qualitative study to gain a deeper understanding of the social context of the Cooking and Pneumonia Study (CAPS) and implications for implementation of clean cooking and similar interventions. Such initiatives are recognised as complex, power-laden processes, which has consequences for outcomes and uptake. However, understanding of how precarious livelihoods and unequal power differentials impact on trials of technology is limited and potentially hampers the achievement of the SDGs including SDG 7, Affordable and Clean Energy. An in-depth exploration of experiences and perceptions of cooking and cookstove use within CAPS was completed using qualitative methods and the participatory methodology Photovoice. Ten CAPS participants from each of five villages participated in Photovoice activities and five village representatives were interviewed. Twelve fieldworkers participated in gender specific focus groups and four were interviewed. A thematic content approach was used for data analysis. The analysis showed that economic and power inequity underpinned the complex social relationships within CAPS impacting on trial participation, perceptions of the cookstoves, and on the potential of the intervention to affect health and other benefits. Power can be understood as relational and productive within the research environment. This is illustrated by an analysis of the role of fieldworkers and community representatives who needed to negotiate resistance to trial compliance decisions, including ‘satanic’ rumours about cookstoves and blood-taking. Transformative approaches that challenge existing power inequities are needed to maximise the success and beneficence of cookstove and other health promoting interventions, and achievement of the SDGs.

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Section: Study Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Why would they spend all this money and give us these items for free?’: Exploring precarity and power in a cleaner cookstove intervention in rural Malawi

Ardrey

Jehan²,

Desmond³

et al. 2023

PLOS Glob Public Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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In Search of Ghanaian Food

Miller

2021

Food and Identity in a Globalising World

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Kumusha and masalads: (inter)generational foodways and urban food security in Zimbabwe

Brouwer

2022

Agric Hum Values

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Understandings of urban foodways in Zimbabwe and other African countries have been dominated by food security frameworks. The focus on material scarcity and measurable health outcomes within these frameworks has often obscured the socio-cultural dimension of foodways and the historical and political structures that have shaped, and continue to shape, everyday relationships with food among different groups of urban residents in cities. Addressing these often-overlooked aspects, this paper looks at intergenerational contestations over foodways in a midsized high-density Zimbabwean town. Presenting results of 6-months ethnographic fieldwork involving participant observation and semi-structured interviews, the paper explores meanings and practices of food in a postcolonial urban setting using three generational groups as a point of departure. These groups are youth (aged 15 to 25 years old), a post-independence generation (aged 26 to 43) and a pre-independence middle-aged generation (aged 43 to 65). Findings show that foodways of the three generations, each having experienced Zimbabwe’s (post-)colonial political economy in different ways, are negotiated through postcolonial socio-ecological relations, urban–rural connections and social hierarchies articulated through urban and rural space. The paper concludes that to understand urban food security in a postcolonial setting, urbanites’ generation-specific life experiences and intergenerational negotiations around historically situated spatial and socio-ecological relations should be considered. The findings could inform urban food security policy to make it more targeted towards the needs of different generational groups as well as more attuned to urbanites’ dynamic socio-cultural foodways and the socio-ecological relations that shape these.

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Beyond the “Crisis” in African Food Studies

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

‘Why would they spend all this money and give us these items for free?’: Exploring precarity and power in a cleaner cookstove intervention in rural Malawi

‘Why would they spend all this money and give us these items for free?’: Exploring precarity and power in a cleaner cookstove intervention in rural Malawi

In Search of Ghanaian Food

Kumusha and masalads: (inter)generational foodways and urban food security in Zimbabwe

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