Showing papers in "Development and Change in 1987"

Class gender and the household: the developmental cycle in Southern Africa.

Abstract: This article evaluates the anthropological concept of "developmental cycle of domestic groups" circa 1949 as applied to the small nation-state around South Africa: Lesotho Botswana and the Bantustans. The areas are complicated by extreme diversity of social structure which survey data based on conceptual paradigms may not grasp to be a dynamic process. Lesotho is still an undeveloped subsistence peasant society. Migrant mine workers usually older men bought land with their wages. Younger men are squeezed out of restricted mine jobs and women obtain irregular low paid work. There is a small urban welfare class. In Botswana there is simultaneously in time and concurrently households migration to jobs in mines industry or urban civil service and investment in farmland. There are class strata in these "worker-peasant" households depending on income. Rapid restructuring of family life is stressful and devastating. Neither male or female-extended nor individual-lead family models should be considered typical since either or both spouses may at one time have migrated to find work. In The Bantustans the situation is bewilderingly complex. There is acute poverty malnutrition overcrowding utter dependence on wage earning in white South Africa or welfare. 3.5 million persons have been forcibly relocated in 20 years. New towns black-owned farms reservations squatter sites and refugee camps alternate with pockets of old established residents. Given the need for 3 generations of consistent data and stable classes any conceptual models will be difficult to test.

The hidden abode of reproduction: conceptualizing households in Southern Africa.

Abstract: The role of household structures in the processes of labor-force formation were analyzed in an attempt to demonstrate the critical status of the concept of the "household" for an explication of the structure of the modern world economy and to use southern and South Africa as a locus to illustrate the contribution that the concept of household can make to an understanding of the process of labor-force formation over time. The household constituted by a small group is the unit that ensures the continued reproduction of labor through organizing the consumption of a collective unit of material goods a unit therefore different from the family coresident dwelling groups and kinship structures. The household may encompass these units or be structured along these lines but it may not. Operationally the resources melded under the aegis of the household into a collective consumption fund may be categorized into 5 classes: wage income; consumable goods produced within the household boundaries; income from the market sale of goods; rent; and transfer payments (gifts subsidies). This pooling of resources occurs through a process based on a set of decisions by household members whereby the value of the expenditure of effort for each type of income is considered in relationship to and against other possible income sources. The various and often competing social and economic relations among household members emerge from these decisions. Little is known about how households articulate with larger social and economic structures and particularly with labor force and production processes. The 2 sides of the relationship between households and "external" forces raise 2 questions: what are the substantive channels by which households are embedded into capitalist markets labor forces and production processes; and what social and cultural relations operate to organize both the participation and resistance of households with these broader economic and social structures. 3 issues are examined which are considered central to labor-force formation and reproduction in southern Africa: the early history of the penetration of capitalism; migration to the South African gold mines; and the emergence of labor markets segmented between and within different racial and ethnic groups. The assumption that the formation and reproduction of the southern African labor force has followed a continuous homogeneous pattern early in this century is discredited. A similar assumption of a single pattern for the reproduction of mine labor and urban-industrial labor also is incorrect. Another source of mistaken assertions of the continuity and homogeneity of reproduction patterns is the assumption of the elimination of non-wage contributions to the reproduction of labor as rural African agriculture was destroyed. In conceptualizing households in southern Africa it is helpful to consider general income opportunities as well as state strictures on labor mobility but the crucial feature is the pattern of income pooling a household uses to reproduce itself.

Linking Popular Initiative and Aid Agencies: The Case of Refugees

Abstract: perhaps i t i s more accurate to see l a b e l l i n g as d e s i g n a t i o n . Thus the v a l i d i t y of l a b e l s becomes not a matter of s u b s t a n t i v e o b j e c t i v i t y but of the a b i l i t y to use l a b e l s e f f e c t i v e l y i n a c t i o n as d e s i g n a t i o n s which d e f i n e parameters f o r thought and behavior, which render environments s t a b l e , and which e s t a b l i s h spheres of competence and areas of r e s p o n s i b i l i t y . In t h i s way l a b e l l i n g through these s o r t s of d e s i g n a t i o n s i s p a r t of the process of c r e a t i n g s o c i a l s t r u c t u r e . I t i s people making h i s t o r y by making r u l e s f o r themselves and others to f o l l o w . By t h i s l o g i c l a b e l s are a l s o r e l a t i v e and c o n t i n g e n t s o c i a l c o n s t r u c t s which r e f l e c t p a t t e r n s of a u t h o r i t y and the acceptance of i t i n the context of p a r t i c u l a r events and

Women in the family: cultural change in Avatime Ghana 1900-80.

Abstract: This paper examines the nature of and changes in households and marriage in Avatime. Until about 1920 every Avatime woman was married. Marriage was the inevitable consequence of a series of rituals mandatory for each woman after she reached puberty. The rituals legitimated a womans fecundity and adulthood in the eyes of the gods. "Marriage" was a synonym for the process by which a new household was formed. A household is a conjugal residential unit and a production and consumption unit. Although infrequent polygyny did occur usually because of widow inheritance and divorce. The author compares her findings in 1974 to Barbara Wards work of 1946. In 1974 the author found that residential unit ("Kepame") and household are not coterminous and there is a greater incidence of both female-headed units and 3-generation units. Of the total of "Kupome" (plural of Kepame) 30% were headed by women and 30% contained 3 generations. Women who are working away may send or leave their children in the Avatime villages resulting in the formation of both 3-generation residential units and households. The "traditional pattern" of a household being synonymous with a residential unit is embodied in the expressed ideal of Avatime today. However there is considerable deviation from this ideal. This change occurred because the ritual cycle no longer concludes with marriage rituals. The adult rituals must precede marriage but a woman may be an adult and remain unmarried. The Avatime gods are the harbingers of Avatime culture. In 1946 there was some separation of pregnancy from marriage; now there is no necessary connection between them. A woman can have a child that society considers legitimate because it has both a mother and a father but the woman may still not be recognized as an adult. Only adult women have kitchens hearths and farm plots of their own. Although Avatime is a long established and strongly Christian community cultural ideals take precedence over Christian ideals. In the early 1970s the chiefs of Avatime with the support of the church elders issued a decree that girls who had children or were pregnant must have the adulthood ceremonies performed for them reinforcing that women should only reproduce in a "proper" fashion according to cultural rules.

Matrilineages, Economic Groups and Differentiation in West Africa: A Note

Abstract: In this note I wish to argue that the distribution of production in two West African societies is related to the structure of economic units often referred to inexactly as 'households'. In so doing, I give support to the view of rural differentiation which gives attention to both external and internal factors.' The argument is based on research carried out between 1967 and 198 1 among the Serer of the MBayar region of central Senegal, and among the Agni of the Moronu region in south-east Ivory Coast.* The kinship structure is similar in the two societies: the Serer reckon kinship bilaterally but with a matrilineal emphasis, and the Agni reckon kinship matrilineally. Distribution, however, differs markedly between the two cases. Individuals' economic opportunities within wider kin groups tend to be equalized among the Serer, while marked economic differentiation occurs between large- and small-scale Agni farmers. Distribution at the point of inheritance - i.e. over the life cycle - seems more critical to this process than the annual distribution after the harvest. A comparative exploration of the two cases demands attention to the particular way in which economic groups at the base are articulated with one another. It might be argued that the differences can be accounted for in terms of the economy's productive base. The MBayar region is in the savanna where annual crops (millet and peanuts) are produced on sandy soil; the Moronu region is in a luxuriant forest area where perennial crops (cocoa and coffee) and food crops (such as yam, banana, taro) are cultivated. While these differences in the productive base may be important, they must be looked at within a sociological context in order to reveal the means by which productive economies and domestic structures interact to generate patterns of differentiation.