The Gender of Crops in the Papua New Guinea Highlands

Sillitoe, Paul; Howard, Phil

doi:10.2307/3773358

Cited by 17 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…For example, women and children are the main labor forces in traditional homegarden management in Bangladesh (Ali, 2005), but in Yemen, children work less in homegardens (Ceccolini, 2002). In the Wola communities of Papua New Guinea highlands, Eleocharis cf dubia and Ipomoea batatas are cultivated only by women and Musa and Saccharum offinarum only by men (Sillitoe, 2003).…”

Section: Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characteristics and functions of traditional homegardens: a review

Huai

Hamilton

2008

Front. Biol. China

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Traditional agroecosystems play an important role in the conservation of biodiversity and in sustainable development. As a typical type of traditional agroecosystem, traditional homegardens have been receiving increasing attention from scientists, especially ethnobotanists. They are considered as germplasm banks for many crops and other economic plants. They are also a key site for domestication of wild plants. Current ethnobotanical studies on homegardens focus on their structures, floristic composition, and contributions to their owners. Traditional homegardens often show complicated structures, diverse floristic compositions, multiple functions, low input (including labor and money), and ecological and socioeconomic sustainability. The characteristics and functions of traditional homegardens are closely related to many factors, such as their geographic location and the cultural backgrounds and socioeconomic conditions of their owners. Many researches on homegardens are conducted in the tropics. There are few studies on the dynamics of traditional homegardens, especially those located in temperate, arid and semi-arid zones. The dynamics of homegardens and the factors affecting these processes will be a fruitful field for future research.

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Section: Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characteristics and functions of traditional homegardens: a review

Huai

Hamilton

2008

Front. Biol. China

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“…Rights or powers are associated with duties or "bundles of obligations" -which extend beyond the obligations of individuals to be generous or not to steal -and which are embedded in social, behavioral and cosmological norms about social roles that form the basis for and legitimate customary rights regimes around plants, as much anthropological research has shown -e.g., men may be vested with the obligation to be generous and to exchange resources such as food within the community, whereas women, but not men, may have the obligation to produce the crops that men exchange (e.g. Sillitoe 2003).…”

Section: Conceptualizing Plant Rights Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Leach 1992;Pottier 1999;Quisumbing 1995;Sillitoe 2003;Padmanabhan, forthcoming) that are commonly associated with each sex's obligations to provide certain subsistence products, but that may also be associated with other gendered cultural constructs, for example that certain crops are "feminine" or "masculine" by nature and are classified as such linguistically (Sillitoe 2003). Further, it may not be plant species per se, but rather particular plant products such as timber, fuelwood, fruit, fodder, and craft materials that are associated with a specific sex, which influences rights to plants and to the spaces where these grow.…”

Section: Gender and Rights To Plantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are there Customary Rights to Plants? An Inquiry among the Baganda (Uganda), with Special Attention to Gender

Howard

Nabanoga

2007

World Development

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Debates around Common Property Resources and Intellectual Property Rights failto consider traditional and indigenous rights regimes that regulate plant resource exploitation, establish bundles of powers and obligations for heterogeneous groups of users, and create differential entitlements to benefits that are related to social structures.Such rights regimes are important to maintaining biodiversity and to human welfare; failing to recognize them presents dangers. The case study investigates the gendered nature of informal rights to selected tree and plant species that are distinct from, but related to, customary rights to land and trees, and are embedded in cosmology and social norms.

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“…The use of the grammatical gender indicates the social perception and, simultaneously, hints of specific usage of certain plants, whereby fruits are regarded as female and construction material like wood as male. In his analysis of the gender of crops among the Wolas in the Papua New Guinea highlands, Sillitoe (2003) deconstructs the division of plants into male and female categories. The grammatical sex is an indicator for the social gender of the plant.…”

Section: Negotiations At Intrafaces Over Soup and Staplementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The deliberate inversion makes an important point related to its central place in the diet. As Sillitoe (2003) has demonstrated, plants are labelled with categories of gender to fulfil a function in the organization of social life. The distinction between male and female does not result from the characteristic of the crop itself, but arises from certain needs related to the ideas of manhood and womanhood in specific ethnic settings.…”

Section: Negotiations At Intrafaces Over Soup and Staplementioning

confidence: 99%

The making and unmaking of gendered crops in northern Ghana

Padmanabhan¹

2007

Singap J Trop Geogr

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In rural West Africa, the gendered division of labour extends to labelling certain crops as ‘male’ or ‘female’. With the introduction of new varieties of crops and technologies, these constructions of gendered plants undergo a process of renegotiation at social intrafaces. This process of attaching meaning to new features in cultivation results in the remaking of gendered crops. These negotiations, in turn, have an effect on the construction of gender in specific ethnic and environmental settings, unlinking labour from its gendered connotations and, thus, unmaking the social meaning and creating room for manoeuvre. Based on fieldwork among the Dagomba and Kusasi people in northern Ghana, this study examines how gendered responsibilities and access to the cultivation of crops are linked and expressed in obligations related to the cultural ideal of a proper meal, in this case consisting of the food categories (male) staple and (female) soup, which serve as the blueprint for assigning crops to a specific gender.

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The Gender of Crops in the Papua New Guinea Highlands

Cited by 17 publications

References 4 publications

Characteristics and functions of traditional homegardens: a review

Characteristics and functions of traditional homegardens: a review

Are there Customary Rights to Plants? An Inquiry among the Baganda (Uganda), with Special Attention to Gender

The making and unmaking of gendered crops in northern Ghana

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