Social and Cultural Relations in Economic Action: The Embeddedness of Food Security in Rural Malawi Amidst the AIDS Epidemic

Abstract

In its prescription of how food security among rural households can be attained and how problems such as AIDS can be addressed, the neoclassical utiliarian view envisions individual house-holds making atomistic decisions in the use of their resources, goods, and services (entitlements). In exploring the effect of illness and death on household food security in rural Malawi amidst the AIDS epidemic, I find that the embeddedness view explains more convincingly how rural households secure their food supply and deal with illness and death. This view suggests that individual households' use of their entitlements indeed contributes to household food security and the fight against illness and death, but that such use is shaped by the entitlement system that embodies collective beliefs, rules, expectations, and obligations. Social and cultural relations between households, anchored in the entitlement system, enable households to share their entitlements through reciprocity and redistribution, thereby contributing to collective food security and diffusing the burden of illness and death across households. Rural Malawians are thus not isolated actors envisioned by the utilitarian view but social actors who constantly engage in negotiations with each other, sharing their entitlements, and thus collectively securing their food supply and diffusing burdens. Food security then gets compromised when burdens reach a threshold that fractures social and cultural ties thus disabling households from sharing entitlements. AIDS is a threat to food security in rural Malawi because of its potential to make the spread of illness and death burdens so extensive that households would be unable to share their entitlements.

Sex, money, and premarital partnerships in southern Malawi

“…Its fertility rate is falling, but remains high at 5.9 children per woman. The Balaka district is typical of other Malawian communities; it is rural and poor, and sources of income typify other rural areas in the country (Mtika, 2000). Unlike Malawi's central and northern regional districts, however, in Balaka most communities follow a matrilineal kinship and lineage system, and residence following marriage is usually matrilocal (Peters, 1997).…”

Socio-demographic Implications of HIV/AIDS in Malawi

“…Malawi faces many socioeconomic and demographic challenges, including rapid population growth, low economic growth, high levels of inequality and poverty, food insecurity and a high level HIV/AIDS epidemic [1][2][3][4][5][6]. The economy is agro-based whereby agriculture accounts for 30% of the gross domestic product [7].…”

Life history analysis of HIV/AIDS-affected households in rice and cassava-based farming communities in Northern Malawi

“…Deaths from a variety of causes already were among the most serious threats in rural Malawi prior to the onset of the epidemic (Mtika 2000). These contexts, together with the importance of children and efforts to minimize migration (Ansell and Young 2004), need to be recognised in public health programming.…”