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<StephenWooten@mail.smsu.edu>
THESIS (PhD) ABSTRACT:
Wooten, Stephen
"Gardens are for Cash, Grain is for Life": The Social
Organization of Parallel Production Processes in a Rural Bamana
Village (Mali)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1997)
Alma J. Gottlieb, Advisor
In this dissertation I present a case study of the social
organization of agriculture in a rural Bamana community in
central Mali. Research was conducted during 1992 and 1993-94 on
the Manding Plateau. Using qualitative and quantitative data, I
document a situation in which village residents use one
organizational pattern for food production and another for
market gardening. I provide extensive ethnographic detail on the
organization of labor, land use strategies, agricultural
techniques, and cropping systems within each production domain.
I show that the community's five primary social, residential,
and consumption units (domestic groups) also dominate in food
production. In contrast, I document how individuals and small
groups prevail in the production of fresh fruits and vegetables
for urban markets in Bamako. I provide data on 22 separate
garden production operations. I show that while all individuals
have the right to undertake independent income-generating
activities, gender, age, family position, and family history all
play important roles in determining who exercises this right in
the lucrative gardening sector; with middle-aged married men
dominating. By providing a case study in which these two
production dynamics coexist, I challenge the widespread notion
that the development of commercial agriculture necessarily leads
to the dissolution of complex forms of socio-economic
organization geared toward subsistence production. I argue that
this particular situation is best understood with reference to a
combination of cultural, economic, and social factors. I suggest
that local discourses on individuality/rivalry and
collectivity/harmony reflect a cultural orientation of
integrating what are often cast in the social science literature
as conflicting aspects of life--economic or otherwise. Next, I
suggest that a group strategy toward basic reproduction and an
individual strategy toward income-generation makes sense in
terms of regional political economy and the challenges of
savanna ecology. Finally, I suggest that the pattern of
coexistence between domestic group food farming and market
gardening depends on and strengthens long-standing inequalities
between men and women, and seniors and juniors. This study makes
contributions to Bamana ethnography, the study of agrarian
change in rural Africa, and to literature on West African
development.
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