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The Agrarian
Question in Kenya
by Stephen Orvis
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this Book now
Kenya has been a model of market-based development for many
years, widely touted because of early and significant economic
successes. Recent slowing in the growth of agriculture, however,
has meant slower growth overall. Stephen Orvis argues that a
shortage of labor at the household level—especially
women’s labor—explains this stagnation.
In this important study, Orvis critiques "structural
adjustment" and delineates the ways in which market forces
have been largely responsible for Kenya’s gradual shift
toward a less agrarian society. He also explores the ways in
which market forces have spawned the development of social and
political networks that have little interest in improving
agricultural growth, and he provides the first detailed account
of rural participation in the multiparty electoral process.
Drawing on intensive field work in Kisii District, a densely
populated area in the tea and coffee zones of western Kenya, he
documents the evolution of more than 100 families over three
generations and the last 50 years, plumbing their current and
historical economic strategies. He uses the insights generated by
this micro-analytic exercise to reinterpret a number of other
peasant studies done in Kenya and elsewhere. As a result he is
able to draw convincing implications from his work for a
surprisingly large range of issues central to our understanding
of Kenyan sociology, rural development, and politics, of interest
to Kenya and development scholars alike.
Stephen Orvis is associate professor of
government at Hamilton College.
1997. 223 pp. 6 X 9.
11 tables, notes,
bibliography, index.
ISBN 0-8130-1498-0
Cloth, $59.95
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"Tackles central questions in the literature on African
agrarian social structure and rural development. . . . Remarkably
broad in scope, rich in conceptual and theoretical content, and
it speaks directly to development policy. Few volumes attempt so
much and fewer yet do it as well."—Frank W. Holmquist,
Hampshire College, Amherst
"Provides new insights into debates about agricultural
development in Africa through combining a historical and
comparative perspective with a detailed case study. Reveals the
relationship between inequality and agricultural productivity to
be much more complex than the current wisdom assumes. . . . A
compelling picture."--Victoria Bernal, University of
California, Irvine
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