Capitalism, Kinship and Gender in the Lower Tchiri (Shire) Valley of Malawi, 1860-1960: An Alternative Theoretical Framework

Mandala, Elias

doi:10.2307/3601482

Cited by 16 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Simply giving individual women title to land, or access, to inputs cannot be transformational to unequal gender relations (see also . Historical literature suggests that colonial regimes introduced the gender and property norms of the Victorian United Kingdom along with the capitalist mode of production, and that these then overlaid a multiplicity of customary arrangements to shape the current landscape of social relations (Mandala 1984;Peters 1997). Therefore, gender relations and inclusion are far more complex than the standard government and donor discourse allows, as is asserted here in a key informant interview with an NGO manager:…”

Section: Dynamics Of Differentiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neither sustainable nor inclusive: a political economy of agricultural policy and livelihoods in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia

Mdee

Ofori

Chasukwa

et al. 2020

The Journal of Peasant Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The food crisis of 2007/8, alongside rapid population growth, and the uncertainties of climate change propelled African agricultural transformation back into the development mainstream. New narratives of 'climate-smart agriculture' and 'sustainable intensification' underlie this contemporary transformation. We present a political economy analysis of agricultural policy and livelihoods in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, and use this to assess the challenge of achieving 'sustainable and inclusive intensification'. We find little evidence that agricultural institutions have the capacity to deliver sustainable intensification in agriculture, or that agricultural policy drives changes in agricultural livelihoods that will make them either more sustainable or inclusive.

show abstract

Section: Dynamics Of Differentiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neither sustainable nor inclusive: a political economy of agricultural policy and livelihoods in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia

Mdee

Ofori

Chasukwa

et al. 2020

The Journal of Peasant Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…During the nineteenth century, the resident Mang’ anja ethnic group, living in the area where the study was conducted, practiced a marriage system of brideservices, within which young, single men were obligated to provide labor to the family of a hoped-for wife for at least one agricultural season (Mandala 1984; see also Mitchell 1956 for a similar finding in the case of the Yao). Gifts were provided during this period to his prospective wife as well as her family as part of the courting and as a demonstration of his intentions (Collier and Rosaldo 1981).…”

Section: The Chibwenzi Relationship and Sex Work In Southern Malawimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the eldest brother within a kin group held sway over women in the family, women wielded much authority over daily life. Agricultural production was largely performed within the immediate family, with a relatively equal appropriation of labor efforts for women and men (Peters 1997); women were heads of villages, and local trade was open to both sexes (Mandala 1984). …”

Section: The Chibwenzi Relationship and Sex Work In Southern Malawimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Mandala (1984) noted, the economy of gender relations changed substantially in some realms of production. Unlike the agricultural sector, non-agricultural production such as fishing or craftsmanship was gender-specific, and vulnerable to changes driven by colonialism, particularly the expansion of markets, and the shift toward a cash economy.…”

Section: The Chibwenzi Relationship and Sex Work In Southern Malawimentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Sex work and the construction of intimacies: meanings and work pragmatics in rural Malawi

Tavory

Poulin

2012

Theor Soc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article focuses on Malawian sex workers’ understandings of exchange and intimacy, showing how multiple historically emergent categories and specific work pragmatics produce specific patterns of relational meanings. As we show, sex workers make sense of their relationships with clients through two categories. The first is sex work; the second is the chibwenzi, an intimate premarital relational category that emerged from pre-colonial transformations in courtship practices. These categories, in turn, are also shaped differently in different work settings. We use narratives from in-depth interviews with 45 sex workers and bar managers in southern Malawi to describe how the everyday pragmatics of two forms of sex work—performed by “bargirls” and “freelancers”—foster distinct understandings of relationships between them and men they have sex with. Bargirls, who work and live in bars, blurred the boundaries between “regulars” and chibwenzi; freelancers, who are not tethered to a specific work environment, often subverted the meanings of the chibwenzi, presenting these relationships as both intimate and emotionally distant. Through this comparison, we thus refine an approach to the study of the intimacy-exchange nexus, and use it to capture the complexities of gender relations in post-colonial Malawi.

show abstract

“…Feminist scholars, for example, argued persuasively that what the literature portrayed as the peasant reality was, in fact, an undifferentiated male reality, shaped in turn by rarefied structural-functionalist assumptions about kinship and the sexual division of labor. Consequently, there was little possibility to conceptualize such issues as the social construction of gender, patriarchy, and the household as a potential terrain of struggle (Bozzoli, 1983a;Mandala, 1982;Mbilinyi, 1982;Strobel, 1982;Staudt, 1986). Students of ecology complained that most researchers had detached peasants from their habitat and ignored critical environmental issues, such as soil types, plant diseases, and rainfall (Chipungu, 1986, Richards, 1983Tosh, 1980).…”

Section: Peasant Agrarian Studies a N D Ruralmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peasants and Rural Social Protest in Africa

Isaacman¹

1990

African Studies Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Peasants are an ambiguous social category. They are difficult to define and their political behavior defies most generalizations. Nevertheless, social scientists, many working outside of Africa, have produced a voluminous literature debating both the critical characteristics and the analytical utility of the term peasant. Some take the view that peasants have been defined so broadly and contradictorily as to render the concept virtually useless and that the notion should either be discarded or referred to only by negation (Dalton, 1972; Hill, 1963; Moore, 1972; Ennew, Hirst, and Tribe, 1977; Friedmann, 1980). Other scholars obviously disagree, having advanced definitions of the essence of peasants and varieties of agrarian change. Culturalists such as Kroeber (1948) and Redfield (1956) highlighted the peasants' folk version of a higher culture. Chayanov (1966) emphasized the demographic cycle of the peasant household, exhibiting a natural pattern of growth and change. Wolf (1966) and Godelier (1973) shifted the focus to the historically derived relationships of domination in which peasants were subsumed. Shanin defined peasants “as a kind of arrangement of humanity” (1973: 76) in which their partial involvement in the market and their partial subordination to the state or appropriating class were their most salient characteristics. These debates were reproduced within African Studies. Those skeptical that the concept had any analytical value initially prevailed. This position was defended most vigorously in a theoretical essay by Fallers (1961) and in Hill's (1963) masterful work on agrarian change in southern Ghana. As late as 1972, Post noted that “most writers either evade this issue or display analytical uncertainty or forthrightly reject the term [peasant]” (1972: 223).

show abstract

Capitalism, Kinship and Gender in the Lower Tchiri (Shire) Valley of Malawi, 1860-1960: An Alternative Theoretical Framework

Cited by 16 publications

References 12 publications

Neither sustainable nor inclusive: a political economy of agricultural policy and livelihoods in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia

Neither sustainable nor inclusive: a political economy of agricultural policy and livelihoods in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia

Sex work and the construction of intimacies: meanings and work pragmatics in rural Malawi

Peasants and Rural Social Protest in Africa

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About