Social Relations and History of Farming in West Africa

该项目将记录上沃尔特州布基纳法索农业的变化。研究人员将结合民族志田野调查和档案研究，分析过去殖民地农业实践和社会关系的变化。该项目将研究社会关系的转变、农场管理的改变和当地农业的生产趋势与建立有效的行政和扩大市场之间的联系。将分析工作组组成的变化、工作工具的所有权模式以及工人和任务的性别模式。在研究的民族志部分，人类学研究人员将得到民俗学家的协助，民俗学家将研究农业系统变化的口头叙述。这项研究很重要，因为在非洲，农业的变化及其对社会关系的影响还没有得到很好的理解，而这些变化是激进的。了解非洲过去的经验将有助于我们改善未来的经验，并提供一个比较，帮助我们了解和改善我们自己国家农业的社会关系。

This project will document the changes in farming in Burkina Faso, Upper Volta. The researcher will combine ethnographic fieldwork with archival research to analyze the changes over the colonial past in farming practices and the social relations entailed. The project will study the links between the transformation of social relations, modifications in the management of farms and production trends in local farming with the establishment of effective administration and the broadening of markets. Changes in the composition of work groups, the ownership patterns of work tools, and the gender pattern of workers and tasks will be analyzed. During the ethnographic portion of the research the anthropological researcher will be assisted by a folklorist who will study the oral narrative accounts of farming system changes. This research is important because changes in agriculture and their impact on social relations are not well understood in Africa, while the changes have been radical. Understanding the past African experience will help us improve that experience in the future as well as provide a comparison that will help us understand and improve the social relations of farming in our own country.