Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890-1990: Gender, Nutrition and Agricultural Change ... Zambia, 1890-1990 (Social History of Africa)

by Megan Vaughan (Author), Megan Vaughan (Author), Henrietta L. Moore (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  1994

  $32.38

  What are the problems of rural food supply in southern Africa today and how have they arisen historically? In part this book is a reconstruction of an African agricultural system over one hundred years; in part it is an examination of the construction of knowledge about a rural African people. The first half of the book focuses on the chitemene agricultural system of the Bemba known as slash and burn. The authors show that chitemene involves a great deal more than the cutting and burning of trees. The second half addresses the question of labour migration and its effects on the agricultural production of the area, re-visiting the colonial debate with new evidence. The authors provide a critical re-assessment of Audrey Richards' classic work, Land, Labour and Diet: An Economic Study of the Bemba Tribe and assess the ecological, social and political impact on a rural society undergoing rapid change. North America: Heinemann