THE MAN DALA OF A MARKET: A STUDY OF CAPITALISM AND THE STATE IN MURANG'A DISTRICT, KENYA
Résumé
the changes which have taken place during the course of this century in relation to the development of the state and capitalism. The market-place is viewed in terms of the relationships between four main trading groups. These are maize and beans, clothes and manufactured goods, fruits and vegetables, and livestock and bananas. The first section of each chapter begins by locating each trading group in terms of its demographic and economic features; gender, age, marriage status, education, church membership, capital, scources of capital, mobility, assets investments and so forth. It then develops the characteristics which individuate each group with reference to cultural and historical data from the community of which the market is a part.
Together, the data from the market and from the surrounding community allow the uncovering of four ontological perspectives each with a dominant ethos and dynamic. The next two sections of each chapter utillise these four ontologies as theoretical frames from which to examine the processes of state and capitalist development in the areas in which the market is located. Each chapter finishes by returning to the market-place where the ontological dynamics which have emerged are contextualised in the transformative process of action and agency in the lives of individuals.
The treatment of the market as a site of ontological resonance allows for the development of a set of theoretical models which are informed both by my own background and anthropological understandings and by the understandings of the people among whom my fieldwork was based. This leads to a theoretical framework which goes some way towards transcending the dichotomies of theory and practice, of objectivity and subjectivity, with which social anthropology has, for sometime, been concerned
Domaines
Science politique
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