Highlights from Chapters 3

1
Highlights from Chapters 3 4 of Men Own the
Crops, Women Own the Fields
2
How the precolonial Nso Kingdom/the Fon
established hegemony

• Age-grade societies brought under the control of
  the palace (comparison to the Maasai)
• Tribute in the form of retainers and wives,
  cementing families loyalty to the palace
• Palace as the source of prestige through titles
• Crimes against the fon (adultery, witchcraft)
  were crimes against the state

• Attendants to Fon of Nso, 2006

3
Symbolic capital

• Fons palace, Kimbo, 2006

• Prestige and respect
• In our society, a source of symbolic capital
  might be educational credentials, having a
  particular cool piece of technology
• In Nso, they are titles
• See pictures between chapters 4 5

4
Wealth/Power people

• page 53
• Material wealth gt symbolic capital gt access to
  productive and reproductive labor gt material
  wealth, p. 60

• Some of the Fons wives, 2006

5
Wealth/Power People

• Fon S?m II in 1905 What have I to fear? My
  people are as uncountable as these (p. 47)
• Mtaar lineage heads to S?m II in 1906 A Fon
  exists because of the people. If there are no
  people, there is no Fonship (p.65)

• Fon of Nso, 2006

6
Titled Men

• Fon of Nso, 2006

• Controlled access to land
• Could demand specific amounts of labor from women
  and young men
• Inherited the wealth of the lineage and
  responsible for taking care of it
• Right to arrange marriages

7
Wealth (s?m)

• Wealth attaches itself to power and high status
  (p. 57)
• Wealthy men need to be socialized to help the
  public good
• So they are brought in as councillors to the fon

8
Contemporary Wealthy Men

• Have large households, p.81 and p. 94
• Bind dependents to them in reciprocal obligations
  or patron-client relations example of Peter, p.
  98-99
• The more successful, the more generous he needs
  to be, to protect himself against witchcraft
  accusations, p. 97
• Nigerian films
• Sometimes, these demands too much case of
  Benjamin, p. 99

9
Effects of German Colonial Rule

• Increase in power of the fon at expense of checks
  and balances mtaar lineage powers reduced (p.
  53)
• Corvee labor and colonial taxes collected through
  the fon so long as he acted in accordance with
  colonial policy, his power was reinforced
• Gain in mens power cash crops, wage labor, and
  education
• Mission education created new elites, who took
  titles
• Womens political and economic power undermined,
  p. 70

Medical Personnel, Kimbo Baptist Hospital, 2006
10
Women Work

• We associate womens power with womens
  work/productive work
• Women are like God, p. 51
• Their roles defined around farmwork equivalent
  to our housework in being undervalued, underpaid

11
Women Farmwork Today

• Women are working hard (60 hours a week in
  farming and domestic tasks)
• Losing access to land because land being
  privatized and more scarce
• Children are now in school rather than helping
  with childcare or farmwork/household tasks

12
Households Families

• Households do not equal families, as in our model
  of the nuclear family, p. 78
• Children may live apart from their parents
• Husbands and wives dont share a bedroom and
  dont eat together
• Husband brings male guests home for dinner
• Wives send cooked food to friends and relatives

13
Men Womens Separate Budgeting

• p. 85 on mens and womens roles
• Women responsible for household items
• Men responsible for all school fees, zinc roofing
  sheets, radio, and furniture
• Men can establish large networks outside the
  household through their income womens
  production going into household