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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Cocoa as Innovation: African Initiatives, Local Contexts and Agro-Ecological Conditions in the History of Cocoa Cultivation in West African Forest Lands (ca. 1850-ca. 1950)
Author:Chauveau, Jean-PierreISNI
Year:1997
Periodical:Paideuma
Volume:43
Pages:121-142
Language:English
Geographic terms:Ivory Coast - Côte d'Ivoire
Ghana
Nigeria
Subjects:farmers
farm management
cocoa
Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment
Development and Technology
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
History and Exploration
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/40341734
Abstract:This article explains the emergence of the 'Cocoa Belt' in the West African forest zone as a result of a process of peasant innovation in several stages. The definition of these stages draws on the model of the 'diffusion studies' carried out by E.M. Rodgers and by H. Mendras and M. Forsé. The successive phases are distinguished according to the carriers of the innovation: the phase of the pioneers (1880s-1890s), of the innovators (1880s-1890s), of the 'first majority' (general diffusion, 1910s-1920s), and of the 'latecomers' ('massification' of innovation, from the 1930s to the postwar era). This model, however, implies a relative stability of institutional conditions in which the innovators can evolve. It is therefore complemented by an emphasis on changes in these conditions and on the gradual establishment of new institutions and rules in fields as varied as social organization, local power, relations with colonial authorities, tenure regulations, employment of agricultural workers, professional organization of the producers, etc. Focusing on the three main cocoa-producing countries - Ghana, Nigeria and Ivory Coast, the author shows that neither external pressures by markets or governments, nor the bioecological conditions of the 'cocoa cycle' as such, but only the 'translation' of these factors by peasant agency can explain a pattern of change which was anything but linear. Bibliogr., notes, ref.
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