Land and labour: women and men in agricultural change, Murang'a District, Kenya, 1880-1984.

Abstract

The motivation behind the research documented here was the observation that an incongruence existed between the experienced reality of agricultural change by women and men, on the one hand, and the theories which explicitly or implicitly informed the formulation, of .agricultural policy in Kenya from the early years of the twentieth century, on the other. The first three chapters examine existing theory, the objective being to develop a framework within which rural structure and process in an area of smallholder agriculture in Kenya could be analyzed. Three areas of theory are discussed: geographical literature as it pertains to the conceptualization of space in Africa; feminist literature in terms of concepts which could bridge the material and ideational spheres; and literature on agricultural development which focuses on the differential relationship of men and women to processes of rural change. From elements of these domains, a theoretical perspective is developed whose central concern is to identify the interrelationship between the sex/gender system and socio-spatial organization/division. The main elements conditioning the sex/gender system are defined as: women and men's relative participation in the central institutions of society and the relationship between these institutions; access to/control over the means and reSQurces of production; how production is organized, within the household and outside it, and whether the forces of production support or undermine relative access to the mea~s of production; gender participation in strategically indispensable labour; how the reproductive sphere is organized; and how this sphere "fits" with that of production. The relative significance of these variables in historical process, and the spatiality of this process, is examined with reference to a model of agricultural change which distinguishes between precolonial, colonial and post-land reform eras in Murang'a District, Kenya. The concept of intra/inter-scalar organization of relations of production, of reproduction, and of productive forces forms the theoretical premise on which the model is based. This, together with the concept of socio-spatial division/separation is used in the context of changes in productive mode to link elements of the sex/gender system with processes of agricultural change. Forms of organization based on kinship on the one hand and on local, extra household bonding on the other, emerge as focal points in the analysis of agricultural change in Murang'a District. Their role in defining contradictions in the rural environment is examined in this context. It is shown, for example, that through time, women have sought, by organizing on a local 'basis, to counter male solidarity based on bonds of kinship and to achieve their own solidarity in order to address the economic and ideational contradictions they face as individuals. Most recently, this has involved the formation of groups whose purposes range from those of rotating savings societies to those of income generation.