Shady practices : agroforestry and gender politics in the Gambia / Richard A. Schroeder.

By:

Schroeder, Richard A

Material type: Text

TextSeries: California studies in critical human geography ; 5.Publication details: Berkeley : University of California Press, [1999]Description: 1 online resource (xxxiv, 172 pages) : illustrations, mapsContent type:

text

Media type:

computer

Carrier type:

online resource

ISBN:

9780520924475
0520924479
058528895X
9780585288956

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

Additional physical formats: Print version:: Shady practices.DDC classification:

338.1/096651 21

LOC classification:

DT509.45.M34 S37 1999eb

Other classification:

F343. 57
F343. 57.

Online resources:

Click here to access online

Contents:

The rise of a female cash crop: a market garden boom for Mandinka women -- Gone to their second husbands: domestic politics and the garden boom -- Better homes and gardens: the social relations of vegetable production -- Branching into old territory: the gender politics of Mandinka garden/orchards -- Contesting agroforestry interventions -- Shady practices.

Summary: "Shady Practices is a revealing analysis of the gendered political ecology brought about by conflicting local interests and changing developmental initiatives in a West African village. Between 1975 and 1985, while much of Africa suffered devastating drought conditions, Gambian women farmers succeeded in establishing hundreds of lucrative communal market gardens. In less than a decade, the women's incomes began outstripping their husbands' in many areas, until a shift in development policy away from gender equity and toward environmental concerns threatened to do away with the social and economic gains of the garden boom. Male landholders joined forestry personnel in attempts to displace the gardens and capture women's labor for the irrigation of male-controlled tree crops. This carefully documented microhistory draws on field experience spanning more than two decades and the insights of disciplines ranging from critical human geography to development studies. Schroeder combines the "success story" of the market gardens with a cautionary tale about the aggressive pursuit of natural resource management objectives, however well intentioned. He shows that questions of power and social justice at the community level need to enter the debates of policymakers and specialists in environment and development planning."--Provided by publisher.

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Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-163) and index.

Print version record.

"Shady Practices is a revealing analysis of the gendered political ecology brought about by conflicting local interests and changing developmental initiatives in a West African village. Between 1975 and 1985, while much of Africa suffered devastating drought conditions, Gambian women farmers succeeded in establishing hundreds of lucrative communal market gardens. In less than a decade, the women's incomes began outstripping their husbands' in many areas, until a shift in development policy away from gender equity and toward environmental concerns threatened to do away with the social and economic gains of the garden boom. Male landholders joined forestry personnel in attempts to displace the gardens and capture women's labor for the irrigation of male-controlled tree crops. This carefully documented microhistory draws on field experience spanning more than two decades and the insights of disciplines ranging from critical human geography to development studies. Schroeder combines the "success story" of the market gardens with a cautionary tale about the aggressive pursuit of natural resource management objectives, however well intentioned. He shows that questions of power and social justice at the community level need to enter the debates of policymakers and specialists in environment and development planning."--Provided by publisher.

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