Monograph on subsistence farming and social change among small farmers and tenant farmers in Africa - includes historical account of the peasantry under colonialism and examines rural area social stratification, agricultural production according to social system, impact of land tenure and export-oriented commercial farming, rural women, state intervention and peasant movements, etc. Maps and references.
African peasant groups and their historical evolution are described in this set of original essays. The editor reviews definitions of what a peasant is, and the circumstances of African peasantry in the light of developing political economy theory. The papers that follow deal with such topics as the determinants of the African peasant's place in society, land holding, the adoption of a cash crop economy, and the African peasant under different types and phases of foreign domination.
This remarkable history foregrounds the most marginal sector of the Roman population, the provincial peasantry, to paint a fascinating new picture of peasant society. Making use of detailed archaeological and textual evidence, Leslie Dossey examines the peasantry in relation to the upper classes in Christian North Africa, tracing that region's social and cultural history from the Punic times to the eve of the Islamic conquest. She demonstrates that during the period when Christianity was spreading to both city and countryside in North Africa, a convergence of economic interests narrowed the gap between the rustici and the urbani, creating a consumer revolution of sorts among the peasants. This book's postcolonial perspective points to the empowerment of the North African peasants and gives voice to lower social classes across the Roman world.
African Society Today: Peasant farmers and the state in Africa: Disaster in rural sub-Saharan Africa has become a regular, almost annual event in recent years. In 1985 it was estimated that 10 million Africans left their homes and fields because they were unable to support themselves and that an additional 20 million were reported to be at risk of debilitating hunger.
Brings together broadly synthetic essays of interpretation that illuminate both the rethinking of history and paradigm that has taken place within the fields of African and Latin American history and the resonances between these fields. Three of the essay have previously been published in scholarly journals; three essays and a postscript were written expressly for this volume. Paper edition (unseen), $15.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Giordano Sivini has been an international aid consultant for over twenty-five years. Here he channels a 1960s and 1970s idealistic political commitment into fieldwork and the sphere of development from the 1980s to the present. Sivini writes with both passion and cynicism about his experiences with the numerous African aid projects he has been involved with over the years.While the fathers of independence of British and French decolonization wanted to change the colonial conditions of exploitation, Sivini finds that their good intentions have been shipwrecked. Ironically, the longer Sivini served as an aid consultant, the more he found himself dismayed at the various projects that were under way or slated to begin. He perceived some of the projects as grotesque, and, almost all ineffective. The money was wasted on such ventures not because of a particular government's interest in the social effects they would have on the local populace, but because of the direct and indirect benefits the government would receive.Sivini sees international development aid as its own market: development is a commodity that takes the form of large and small projects, and is traded for loans and gifts to generate political and economic advantages for the institutional participants in the exchange. Ultimately, governmental and aid projects often stimulate resistance from the local populace as agencies upset their usual system of production by regimenting peasants to produce for the market, then appropriate the cattle of nomadic pastoralists, villagizing and resettling peasants in areas of high productivity, and exploiting laborers in large farms. This creates social disintegration, mass migration in urban informal economy, and poverty.This is a dynamic and moving analysis of foreign aid that will be of interest to students of African studies, governmental programs, rural development, and political economy.
