Sacred Rice: An Ethnography of Identity, Environment, and Development in Rural West Africa (Issues of Globalization:Case Studies in Contemporary Anthropology) - Softcover

Davidson, Joanna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199358680 ISBN 13: 9780199358687

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2015

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Joanna Davidson is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Boston University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199358680
• ISBN 13: 9780199358687
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264