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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Peasant Cotton Agriculture, Gender, and Inter-Generational Relationships: The Lower Tchiri (Shire) Valley of Malawi, 1906-1940 |
Author: | Mandala, Elias |
Year: | 1982 |
Periodical: | African Studies Review |
Volume: | 25 |
Issue: | 2-3 |
Period: | July-September |
Pages: | 27-44 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Malawi |
Subjects: | gender relations cotton Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Women's Issues Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment History and Exploration |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/524209 |
Abstract: | During the colonial era, pre-capitalist social and economic institutions in Nyasaland (now Malawi) underwent profound change as the result of the incorporation of the country's societies into the world capitalist economy. This essay explores the change in the day-to-day relationships between men and women and between the elders and the youth in the Tchiri Valley of colonial Nyasaland from 1906 to 1940. The development of cotton as a cash crop was the focus of these changing relationships. This study located the principal dynamics of the cotton economy in local adaptation to the ecosystem, a process which accounts for the success of cotton agriculture before the mid-1930s and its subsequent decline. The peasantry which developed before the mid-1930s was later reincorporated into the world system mainly as wage earners. This altered all earlier gender and intergenerational relationships. Bibliogr., notes, ref., tab. |