Sacred rice : an ethnography of identity, environment, and development in rural West Africa /
Sacred Rice explores the cultural intricacies through which Jola farmers in West Africa are responding to their environmental and economic conditions given the centrality of a crop - rice - that is the lynchpin for their economic, social, religious, and political worlds. Based on more than ten years...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Oxford University Press,
[2016]
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| Series: | Issues of globalization.
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| Summary: | Sacred Rice explores the cultural intricacies through which Jola farmers in West Africa are responding to their environmental and economic conditions given the centrality of a crop - rice - that is the lynchpin for their economic, social, religious, and political worlds. Based on more than ten years of author Joanna Davidson's ethnographic and historical research on rural Guinea-Bissau, this book looks at the relationship among people, plants, and identity as it explores how a society comes to define itself through the production, consumption, and reverence of rice. It is a narrative profoundly tied to a particular place, but it is also a story of encounters with outsiders who often mediate or meddle in the rice enterprise. Although the focal point is a remote area of West Africa, the book illuminates the more universal nexus of identity, environment, and development, especially in an era when many people--rural and urban - are confronting environmental changes that challenge their livelihoods and lifestyles. -- |
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| Physical Description: | xiii, 249 pages : illustrations, maps ; 21 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-235) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780199358687 (pbk. : alk. paper) 0199358680 (pbk. : alk. paper) |