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.
Product details
- Paperback | 264 pages
- 137 x 206 x 15mm | 295g
- 14 Aug 2015
- Oxford University Press Inc
- New York, United States
- English
- Illustrations, black and white
- 0199358680
- 9780199358687
- 1,013,377
Download Sacred Rice : An Ethnography of Identity, Environment, and Development in Rural West Africa (9780199358687).pdf, available at laboraeditions.com for free.
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