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| Title: | The Self in Self-Interest: Land, Labour and Temporalities in Malawi's Agrarian Change |
| Author: | Englund, Harri |
| Year: | 1999 |
| Periodical: | Africa: Journal of the International African Institute |
| Volume: | 69 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 139-159 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Malawi |
| Subjects: | working conditions farm management Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Development and Technology Labor and Employment Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/1161080 |
| Abstract: | This article examines agricultural labour contracts and household-based production in Dedza District, Malawi, on the basis of field research carried out in 1992-1993 and 1996-1997. It shows that communal work parties appear to be on the decline in the area, while small-scale labour contracts, known as 'piecework' ('ganyu' in Chichewa) and invariably entailing a reward in cash or in kind, are the most common means by which 'extra-domestic' assistance is recruited in agriculture. This pattern fits uneasily with the ideas of labour as a commodity and persons as mutually independent individuals. The author argues, however, that big work parties have long been an exceptional mode of labour recruitment, arising from very specific needs, and that the labour performed by relatively small household units represents an institution of the 'longue durée'. He shows that, under such particularism, the 'ganyu' labour arrangements are integral to the constitution of economic actors as moral persons. These observations caution against viewing 'agrarian change' as a uniform and teleological process. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. |
