1st Edition
Rethinking African Agriculture How Non-Agrarian Factors Shape Peasant Livelihoods
Rethinking African Agriculture argues that rural communities in Africa are still shaped by non-agrarian factors both in livelihood strategy and social formation.
This volume renews and deepens the research on the African peasantry by offering a fresh perspective drawn from the hitherto largely unknown Japanese research on the subject. The ethnographic fieldwork focuses not only on the micro environment of the producers but also the broader historical context in which they live and work. The contributors argue that, in comparison with other regions of the world, Africa has never passed through an agrarian revolution that would effectively change the mode of production from within. Modernization efforts from the outside have fallen far short of the ambition to transform agriculture in Africa. Rural Africa is still largely a natural society characterized by "non-agrarian" features as evident in people’s livelihood, social organization, and farming systems.
This book will be of interest to social scientists and anthropologists focusing on African development, agriculture and agrarian societies,
1. Peasant Agriculture in Africa: Science meets History
Goran Hyden
2. Missing out on the Agrarian Revolution: African Peasantry in Historical Perspective
Tadasu Tsuruta
3. Economy of Affection in Africa: The Informal Basis of Development
Goran Hyden
4. Farming Practices among African Hunter-Gatherers: Diversifying without Loss of the Past
Haruna Yatsuka and Kazunobu Ikeya
5. Shifting Cultivators as Generalist Managers: The Threat of ‘Saving the Rain Forest’
Kenta Sakanashi, Kazuhiko Sugimura and Tadasu Tsuruta
6. Unique Features of African Agro-pastoralism: Adapting Life and Sharing Wealth in Fluid Environment
Yuichiro Fujioka, Yudai Ishimoto and Tadasu Tsuruta
7. Food Sharing among Commercial Rice Growers: Persistence of the Subsistence Ethic in Kenya
Noriko Ito and Tadasu Tsuruta
8. Longstanding Imprints of Natural Society: Towards a New Science of Agriculture in Africa
Kazuhiko Sugimura
9. Making Innovations Socially Inclusive: Lessons from the Bemba in Zambia
Yuko Sugiyama
10. General Conclusions: Implications for Research and Policy
Goran Hyden, Kazuhiko Sugimura and Tadasu Tsuruta
Biography
Goran Hyden is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Department of Political Science, University of Florida, USA.
Kazuhiko Sugimura is a Professor at the Center of Arts and Sciences at Fukui Prefectural University, Japan.
Tadasu Tsuruta is a Professor in rhe Faculty of Agriculture at Kindai University, Japan.
