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Book chapter | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The process of survival in southeastern Uganda |
Author: | Whyte, M.A. |
Book title: | Adaptive strategies in African arid lands |
Year: | 1990 |
Pages: | 121-145 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Uganda |
Subjects: | Luyia agricultural development |
Abstract: | This paper examines the ways in which local strategies for survival are shaped by cultural practice. It is based on material from Bunyole in southeastern Uganda, where the case of the Nyole was studied in 1969-1971, 1978 and 1987. In recent years the process of survival in this part of Uganda has involved coping with the consequences, not of environmental catastrophe but of State collapse. Until 1970 the Nyole economy was characterized by a cotton-millet agricultural system in which cotton represented a cash crop, and millet represented subsistence. In 1971, with the coming to power of Amin, this local economy began to disintegrate and cotton disappeared as an important crop. Instead, subsistence crops grew in importance. The most important crop to develop during the 1980s was wet rice. The author argues that the most important change following the breakdown of the State was the diversification of agriculture and the individual specialization undertaken by different producers as they adapted to market mechanisms. Bibliogr., notes. |