This article describes the transformation of the agricultural economy that took place as a result of the disintegration of the state provision of marketing in Uganda in the 1970s and 1980s. In this context, the article examines how the commercialization of food crops is constructing new relations of gender within agricultural production. In the transformation caused by the commercialization of food crops, men appeared to have gained total control over food production, causing the gender relations to move from a complementary to a patriarchal system. Closer examination, however, reveals an increased significance of marital bargaining and a movement from established gender roles to more negotiable relationships. The evidence underscores the continued significance of differentiated socioeconomic status to women's bargaining potential in gender relations.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Bohannan, P.
, and G. Dalton. 1962. Markets in Africa.Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
2.
Boserup, E.
1970. Women's role in economic development.London: George Allen and Unwin.
3.
Brain, J.
1976. Less than second-class: Women in rural settlement schemes in Tanzania. In Women in Africa, edited by N. Hafkin and E. Bay, 265-84. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
4.
Bryceson, D. F.
1993. Liberalizing Tanzania's food trade: Public and private faces of urban marketing policy.London: United Nations Research Institute (UNRISD).
5.
Bukh, J.
1979. The village women of Ghana.Uppsala, Sweden: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies.
6.
Carney, J.
, and M. Watts.1991. Disciplining women? Rice, mechanization, and the evolution of Mandinka gender relations in SeneGambia.Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society16:651-81.
7.
Fallers, L. A.
1965. Bantu bureaucracy: A century of political evolution among the Basoga of Uganda.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
8.
Holmboe-Ottesen, G.
, and M. Wandel. 1991. “Wife, today I only had money for pombe”—Gender and food: Women's bargaining power and agricultural change in a Tanzanian community. In Gender and change in developing countries, edited by K. A. Stølen and M. Vaa.Oslo: Norwegian University Press.
9.
Jamal, V.
1991. The agrarian context of the Ugandan crisis. In Changing Uganda, edited by H. B. Hansen and M. Twaddle, 78-97. London: James Currey.
10.
Kandiyoti, D.
1991. Bargaining with patriarchy. In The social construction of gender, edited by J. Lorber and S. Farrell, 104-18. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
11.
Lorber, J.
1994. Paradoxes of gender.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
12.
MacGaffey, J.
1987. Entrepreneurs and parasites: The struggle for indigenous capitalism in Zaire.New York: Cambridge University Press.
13.
MacGaffey, J.
1991. The real economy of Zaire: The contribution of smuggling and other unofficial activities to national wealth.London: James Currey.
14.
Melhuus, M.
1988. Gender, culture and appropriate technology: A conceptual framework. In Mobilizing appropriate technology: Papers on planning aid programmes, edited by M. S. Ganser, 40-50. London: IT Publications.
15.
Mwaka, V.
1990. The diffusion of irrigation farming in Iganga and Kamuli districts. In The agrarian question and technological change in Uganda, edited by E. Nabuguzi, 259-301. Kampala, Uganda: Makerere Institute of Social Research.
16.
Nabuguzi, E.1993. Peasant response to economic crisis in Uganda: The case of rice farmers in Busoga.Review of African Political Economy56:53-67.
17.
Okeyo, A. P.
1980. Daughters of the lakes and rivers: Colonization and land rights of Luo women. In Women and colonization, edited by M. Etienne and E. Leacock, 186-213. New York: Praeger.
18.
Oppong, C.
1981. Middle class African marriage: A family study of Ghana in senior civil servants.London: George Allen and Unwin.
19.
Population and Housing Census, 1991. 1992. Iganga District, Statistics Department, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Entebbe, Uganda.
20.
Sørensen, P. 1992. The voice from the field: Agricultural transformation in Busoga, Uganda. Master's thesis, Institute of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen.
21.
Stølen, K. A.
, ed. 1991a. Introduction: Theoretical perspectives on gender and social change in developing countries. In Gender, culture and power in developing countries, edited by K. A. Stølen, 7-14. Oslo, Norway: Center for Development and the Environment (SUM), University of Oslo. Occasional Papers.
22.
Stølen, K. A.
1991b. Introduction: Women, gender and social change. In Gender and change in developing countries, edited by K. A. Stølen and M. Vaa, 1-10. Oslo: Norwegian University Press.
23.
Tinker, I.
1981. New technologies for food-related activities: An equity strategy. In Women and technological change in developing countries, edited by R. Dauber and M. Cain, 51-88. Boulder, CO: Westview.
24.
Whitehead, A.
1981. “I'm hungry, Mum”: The politics of domestic budgeting. In Of marriage and the market: Women's subordination in international perspective, edited by K. Young, C. Walkowitz, and R. McCullagh, 88-111. London: CSE Books.
25.
Whitehead, A.
1990. Food crisis and gender conflict in the African countryside. In The food question: Profit versus people? edited by H. Bernstein, B. Crow, M. Mackintosh, and C. Martin, 54-68. London: Earthscan Publishers.
26.
Whyte, M.
1987a. Crisis and decentralization: “Indigenous development” in Eastern Africa.Centre for African Studies, University of Copenhagen. Working Papers 1987/1.
27.
Whyte, M.
1987b. Development in Eastern Africa.Centre for African Studies, University of Copenhagen. Working Papers 1987/2.
28.
Whyte, M.
1990a. One food or many: The social and cultural context of food production in Uganda and Kenya. Paper presented to African Studies Association Annual Meeting, 2 November, Baltimore.
29.
Whyte, M.
1990b. We have no cash crops any more: Agriculture as a cultural system, 1969-1987. In The creative communion—African folk models of fertility and the regeneration of life, edited by A. Jacobson-Widding and W. van Beek, 307-22. Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology.
30.
Whyte, M.
1990c. The process of survival in South-Eastern Uganda. In Adaptive strategies in African arid lands, edited by M. Bovin and L. Manger, 121-45. Uppsala, Sweden: The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies.
31.
Wilson, F.1985. Women and agricultural change in Latin America: Some concepts guiding research.World Development13:1017-35.
