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| Title: | Disciplining Women? Rice, Mechanization, and the Evolution of Mandinka Gender Relations in Senegambia |
| Authors: | Carney, Judith A. Watts, Michael |
| Year: | 1991 |
| Periodical: | Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society |
| Volume: | 16 |
| Issue: | 4 |
| Period: | Summer |
| Pages: | 651-681 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Senegal Gambia |
| Subjects: | Manding agricultural policy women rice Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration Labor and Employment Development and Technology agriculture Cultural Roles Historical/Biographical |
| Abstract: | This paper details a 150-year process of agrarian change in a peasant society that has experienced repeated efforts to intensify the labour process. The case study is drawn from a social history of Mandinka rice growers in Senegambia and repeated governmental efforts to intensify rice production in the Gambia River Basin over the past half century. The central question in this project was: who was to work, under what conditions? The authors first decribe the construction of the female farming system in the 19th century as part of a wider process of meeting the need to intensify food production. Then they trace the series of strategies to reduce reliance on imported rice and, after World War II, efforts to implement mechanized double-cropping under irrigated conditions. They argue that this succession of State interventions designed to increase rice output animated intrahousehold struggles over access to and control over land and labour. Women's labour was not abruptly displaced by technological innovation but became part of a complex series of local conflicts and renegotiations over the conditions of work. Notes, ref. |
