 Shady
Practices : Agroforestry and Gender Politics in the Gambia by
Richard A. Schroeder
Shady Practices
is a revealing analysis of the gendered political ecology brought
about by conflicting local interests and changing developmental
initiatives in a West African village. Between 1975 and 1985,
while much of Africa suffered devastating drought conditions,
Gambian women farmers succeeded in establishing hundreds of lucrative
communal market gardens. In less than a decade, the women's incomes
began outstripping their husbands' in many areas, until a shift
in development policy away from gender equity and toward environmental
concerns threatened to do away with the social and economic gains
of the garden boom. Male landholders joined forestry personnel
in attempts to displace the gardens and capture women's labor
for the irrigation of male- controlled tree crops. This carefully
documented microhistory draws on field experience spanning more
than two decades and the insights of disciplines ranging from
critical human geography to development studies. Schroeder combines
the "success story" of the market gardens with a cautionary
tale about the aggressive pursuit of natural resource management
objectives, however well intentioned. He shows that questions
of power and social justice at the community level need to enter
the debates of policymakers and specialists in environment and
development planning.
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