'The Fractured Community,' by Kate Crehan

Ch. 3: The Community of Kin

Zambia, prior to independence, was known as Northern Rhodesia. There was a significant prescence of missionaries who helped create a written language to write the Bible from the oral language Kaonde. Europeans discovered copper in the 1920s and began to exploit the nation for its rich minerals, solidifying a copper mining industry. There was a huge labor migration to urban areas for work and protests began in the 1930s. After independence, Zambia's infrastructure began to deteriorate. The North-Western province is sparsely populated and infested with tsetse flies, mkaing it difficult to keep livestock.

Crehan depicts Zambia through Gramsci's definition of the state: "The State is the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules." This chapter talks about kin relationships that create the political and relational power structures within society.

The author talks about kinship (the "imaginary community") and local authority as coinciding aspects of the political sphere. However to the people of Zambia, kinship was very important. In comparison to the West, we have "come to think of kinship and its obligations as occupying its own particular domain." The Kaonde kinship is based on matrilineal descent, meaning that a child will belong to the clan of his or her mother. There are 8 kinship "statuses" such as inanji (mother), mwisho (mother's brother) kolojanji (older sibling) nkasanji (younger sibling), mwana (child) mwipwa (nephew/niece) nkambo (grandparent) or munkana (grandchild). These are the roles that people in society identify with. The colonists found it odd that households were female-headed. Chiefs were also identified as "owning the land" and had "authority over everything that happened within their area" but when the author tried to clarify the chief's role, she found out that "the chief had nothing to do with soiety." This distinction between male and female roles is interesting because last week was a discussion about "Women in Development" and "Gender and Development." In some societies they already have a disctinction of roles and women even hold more power than men. Like the Koande, women carry the family name. Therefore sometimes devlopment discourse assumes that women are unequal and need to climb their way up to meet the level of a man's privelege, but some African socieites have already gotten that down. It is wrong to assume that all cultures will benefit from "gender and development."

Ch. 5 Economic Locaations: Men, Women and Production
Setting: Kibala & Bukama, rural Chizela

Kinship commodoties:
"Hoe blades, metal cooking pots, water containers, blankets and ready made goods came to replace locally produced iron, clay pots, bark cloth, animals skins. Other new items introduced to society were bicycles, Bibles, and soap that became part of rural life." In the 1980s the cash economy started to grow because these new items became a necessary part of rural life. There was pressure between the market principles and kinship principles. For example, kinship-based flow of goods would include the ability to send a young child out for errands, or access to a killed animal for meat.

Roles were expected to be filled regardless of age and they were accepted at any skill level.
Men: clearing the bush, making the fields, built houses, fish & game
Women: day-to-day cultivation, kept house in order, cooked and fed her husband and family, beer

The marriage was based on interdependence. I noticed that women's roles were needed daily, and men accessed them on a daily bases whereas men's roles were more "project by project." Polygymy was common place and the more wives one had, the better one would eat. However the wives this was a disadvantage in some respect becauase she had to compete for her husband's attention etc. Divorce was straightforward, however it was avoided by older men. Divorced or single women could always return to her matrikin.
The author states that "what needs to be emphasized is that men obtained access to their basic staple food through women. Harvesting sorghum was a women's job, and if a young man was not married, he would not grow or harvest it because "'no one was there to harvest it." A man harvesting sorghum was seen to be demeaning for his manhood. Women lacked freedom of mobility as compared to men.

My thoughts: The distinction of roles in Zambian society can probably be found throughout Africa. The author documents their roles were clearly and I doubt that the Zambian people would "classify" themselves the way the author had. Her research had an anthropology feel combined with economics, and I guess the two are very closely related if we wanted to look at the kinship relations and market relations. In conclusion the two are intertwined and men are dependent on women and vice versa.