Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T16:32:03.026Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The self in self-interest: land, labour and temporalities in Malawi's agrarian change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Harri Englund
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article examines agricultural labour contracts and household-based production in Dedza District, Malawi. Deepening impoverishment seemingly creates conditions for profound social changes. In agriculture, small-scale contracts rather than big work parties mobilise the bulk of ‘extra-domestic’ labour. Although labourers are paid in cash or in kind, they are most often the recruiter's relatives or affines. The pattern fits, therefore, uneasily with the ideas of labour as a commodity and persons as mutually independent individuals. Claims about changing values must be accompanied by careful analyses of personhood. Among Dedza villagers the notion of the self in the idioms of morality discloses social relations as the origins of a person's interests. By recruiting labour, wealthy villagers make their valued relationships visible. These observations caution against viewing ‘agrarian change’ as a uniform and teleological process in which the buying and selling of labour necessarily entail individualism. As an example of how, in any case, moral sentiments are historical phenomena the article examines the predicament of landless refugees in Dedza District. Under conditions of social and material alienation, agricultural labour contracts became exploitation.

Résumé

Cet article examine les contrats de main-d'œuvre agricole et la production des ménages dans le District de Dedza, au Malawi. En apparence, l'appauvrissement croissant crée des conditions propices à de profonds changements sociaux. Dans l'agriculture, ce sont les contrats à petite échelle, et non les grandes équipes de travail, qui mobilisent la masse de la main-d'œuvre “extradomestique”. Bien qu'ils soient payés en numéraire ou en nature, les ouvriers ont le plus souvent une parenté directe ou par alliance avec le recruteur. Ce modéle ne correspond done pas bien à l'idée selon laquelle, d'une part, la main-d'œuvre est une marchandise et, d'autre part, que les individus ne sont pas interdépendants. Toute affirmation concernant les changements de valeurs doit s'accompagner d'une analyse précise de la personne. Parmi les villageois du District de Dedza, la notion du soi dans les idiomes de moralité révèle que les rapports sociaux sont à Porigine des intérêts de l'individu. En recrutant de la main-d'œuvre, les riches villageois laissent transparaître les rapports qu'ils privilégient. Ces observations mettent en garde contre l'opinion selon laquelle la “réforme agraire” est un processus uniforme et téléologique dans lequel Pachat et la vente de main-d'œuvre impliquent ńecessairèment l'individualisme. Pour illustrer comment, dans de nombreux cas, les sentiments moraux constituent des phénomènes historiques, l'article étudie la situation difficile des réfugiés sans terres du District de Dedza. Sur fond d'exclusion matérielle et sociale, les contrats de main-d'œuvre agricole sont devenus une forme d'exploitation.

Type
Suffering and the seld in southern Malawi
Information
Africa , Volume 69 , Issue 1 , January 1999 , pp. 139 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barnes, J. A. 1954. Politics in a Changing Society: a political history of the Fort Jameson Ngoni. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barnes, J. A. 1959. ‘The Fort Jameson Ngoni’, in Colson, E. and Luckman, M. (eds), Seven Tribes of British Central Africa. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bassett, T. 1993. ‘Introduction: the land question and agricultural transformation in sub-Saharan Africa’, in Bassett, T. and Crummey, D. (eds), Land in African Agrarian Systems. Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Berry, S. 1993. No Condition is Permanent: the social dynamics of agrarian change in sub-Saharan Africa. Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Borges, Coelho J. P. C. 1993. ‘Protected Villages and Communal Villages in the Mozambican Province of Tete, 1968-82: a history of state resettlement policies, development and war’. Ph.D. thesis, University of Bradford.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broch-Due, V. 1993. ‘Making meaning out of matter: perceptions of sex, gender and bodies among the Turkana’, in Broch-Due, V.I., Rudie and Bleie, T. (eds), Carved Flesh/Cast Selves: gendered symbols and social practices. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Chirwa, W. J. 1996. ‘The Malawi government and the South African labour recruiters, 1974-92’, Journal of Modern African Studies 34, 623–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crush, J., Jeeves, A., and Yudelman, D. 1991. South Africa's Labour Empire: a history of black migrancy to the gold mines. Boulder CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Davison, J. 1993. ‘Tenacious women: clinging to Banja household production in the face of changing gender relations in Malawi’, Journal of Southern African Studies 19, 405–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
den Ouden, J. H. B. 1995. ‘Who's for work? The management of labour in the process of accumulation in three Adja villages, Benin’, Africa 65 (1), 1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Englund, H. 1996a. ‘Waiting for the Portuguese: nostalgia, exploitation and the meaning of land in the Malawi-Mozambique borderland’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 14, 157–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Englund, H. 1996b. ‘Witchcraft, modernity and the person: the morality of accumulation in central Malawi’, Critique of Anthropology 16, 257–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Francis, E. 1995. ‘Migration and changing divisions of labour: gender relations and economic change in Koguta, western Kenya’, Africa 65 (2), 197–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, R. H. 1990. ‘Rethinking rational choice’, in Friedland, R. and Robertson, A. F. (eds), Beyond the Marketplace: rethinking economy and society. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Geschiere, P. 1995. ‘Working groups or wage labour? Cash crops, reciprocity and money among the Maka of southeastern Cameroon’, Development and Change 26, 503–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, Jeremy. 1997. Localizing Modernity: action, interests and association in rural Zambia. Helsinki: Finnish Anthropological Society.Google Scholar
Guyer, J. I. 1988. ‘The multiplication of labour: historical methods in the study of gender and agricultural change in modern Africa’, Current Anthropology 29, 247–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, J. I. 1992. ‘Small change: individual farm work and collective life in a western Nigerian savanna town, 1969-88’, Africa 62 (4), 465–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, J. I. (ed.). 1995. Money Matters: instability, values and social payments in the modern history of West African communities. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Guyer, J. I. 1997. An African Niche Economy: farming to feed Ibadan, 1968-88. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Guyer, J. I., and Peters, P. E. 1987. ‘Introduction: conceptualising the household’, Development and Change 18, 197–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanlon, J. 1984. Mozambique: the revolution under fire. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Hann, C. M. 1998. ‘Introduction: the embeddedness of property’, in Hann, C. M. (ed.), Property Relations: renewing the anthropological tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hirschmann, D., and Vaughan, M. 1983. ‘Food production and income generation in a matrilineal society: rural women in Zomba, Malawi’, Journal of Southern African Studies 10, 86–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyden, G., and Williams, D. C. 1994. ‘A community model of African politics: illustrations from Nigeria and Tanzania’, Comparative Studies of Society and History 36, 68–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kandawire, J. A. K. 1979. Thangata: forced labour or reciprocal assistance? Zomba: University of Malawi.Google Scholar
Kuper, A. 1993. ‘The “house” and Zulu political structure in the nineteenth century’, Journal of African History 34, 469–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kydd, J., and Christiansen, R. 1982. ‘Structural change in Malawi since independence: consequences of a development strategy based on large-scale agriculture’, World Development 10, 355–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linden, I. 1972. ‘The Maseko Ngoni at Domwe, 1870-1900’, in Pachai, B. (ed.), The Early History of Malawi. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Long, N. 1968. Social Change and the Individual: a study of the social and religious responses to innovation in a Zambian rural community. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Mair, L. P. 1951. ‘Marriage and the family in the Dedza District of Nyasaland’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 81, 103–19.Google Scholar
Mamdani, M. 1996. Citizen and Subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mandala, E. C. 1990. Work and Control in a Peasant Economy: a history of the lower Tchiri valley in Malawi, 1859-1960. Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Marwick, M. G. 1965. Sorcery in its Social Setting. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Mauss, M. 1966. The Gift: the forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies. London: Cohen & West.Google Scholar
Mitchell, J. C. 1956. The Yao Village. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, H. L. 1994. A Passion for Difference: essays in anthropology and gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Moore, H. L., and Vaughan, M. 1994. Cutting down Trees: gender, nutrition, and agricultural change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890-1990. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Mosko, M. S. 1992. ‘Motherless sons: “divine kings” and “partible persons” in Melanesia and Polynesia’, Man (new series) 27, 697–717.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newitt, M. 1995. A History of Mozambique. London: Hurst.Google Scholar
Oilman, B. 1971. Alienation: Marx's conception of man in capitalist society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Omer-Cooper, J. D. 1966. The Zulu Aftermath: a nineteenth-century revolution in Bantu Africa. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Parfit, D. 1984. Reasons and Persons (1989). Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Parry, J., and Bloch, M. (eds). 1989. Money and the Morality of Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peters, P. E. 1997. ‘Against the odds: matriliny, land and gender in the Shire highlands of Malawi’, Critique of Anthropology 17, 189–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phiri, K. M. 1983. ‘Some changes in the matrilineal family system among the Chewa of Malawi since the nineteenth century’, Journal of African History 24, 257–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phiri, K. M. 1984. ‘Production and exchange in pre-colonial Malawi’, in Beinart, W. (ed.), Malawi: an alternative pattern of development. Edinburgh: African Studies Centre, University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Poewe, K. O. 1981. Matrilineal Ideology: male-female dynamics in Luapula, Zambia. London: Academic Press, for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Pottier, J. 1988. Migrants no More: settlement and survival in Mambwe villages, Zambia. Manchester: Manchester University Press, for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Riesman, P. 1986. ‘The person and the life cycle in African social life and thought’, African Studies Review 29, 71–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, J. C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shipton, P. 1994. ‘Land and culture in tropical Africa: soils, symbols, and the metaphysics of the mundane’, Annual Review of Anthropology 23, 347–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strathern, M. 1988. The Gender of the Gift: problems with women and problems with society in Melanesia. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strathern, M. 1998. ‘Divisions of interest and languages of ownership’, in Hann, C. M. (ed.), Property Relations: renewing the anthropological tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Vail, H. L. 1981. ‘The making of the “dead north”: a study of the Ngoni rule in northern Malawi c. 1855-1907’, in Peires, J. B. (ed.), Before and after Shaka: papers in Nguni history. Grahamstown: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University.Google Scholar
Vaughan, M. 1983. ‘Which family? Problems in the reconstruction of the history of the family as an economic and cultural unit’, Journal of African History 24, 275–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verdon, M. 1995. ‘Les Yao du Malawi: une chefferie matrilineaire?’ Cahiers d'etudes africaines 138-9, 477–511.Google Scholar
Wagner, R. 1992. ‘The fractal person’, in Godelier, M. and Strathern, M. (eds), Big Men and Great Men: personifications of power in Melanesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Weiner, A. B. 1980. ‘Reproduction: a replacement for reciprocity’, American Ethnologist 7, 71–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, B. 1985. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Fontana.Google Scholar