Embodied Engineering: Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali

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Laura Ann Twagira

Embodied Engineering

Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali

Laura Ann Twagira

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English

Ohio University Press
24 December 2021

African history; Gender studies: women; Labour economics; Sustainable agriculture

Series: New African Histories

Foregrounding African women's ingenuity and labor, this pioneering case study shows how women in rural Mali have used technology to ensure food security through the colonial period, environmental crises, and postcolonial rule.

By advocating for an understanding of rural Malian women as engineers, Laura Ann Twagira rejects the persistent image of African women as subjects without technological knowledge or access and instead reveals a hidden history about gender, development, and improvisation. In so doing, she also significantly expands the scope of African science and technology studies.

Using the Office du Niger agricultural project as a case study, Twagira argues that women used modest technologies (such as a mortar and pestle or metal pots) and organized female labor to create, maintain, and reengineer a complex and highly adaptive food production system. While women often incorporated labor-saving technologies into their work routines, they did not view their own physical labor as the problem it is so often framed to be in development narratives. Rather, women's embodied techniques and knowledge were central to their ability to transform a development project centered on export production into an environmental resource that addressed local taste and consumption needs.

By: Laura Ann Twagira
Imprint: Ohio University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780821424681
ISBN 10: 0821424688
Series: New African Histories
Pages: 344
Publication Date: 24 December 2021
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Laura Ann Twagira is an associate professor of history at Wesleyan University. She edited the “Africanizing Technology” special issue for the journal Technology and Culture and was a scholar in residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City.

Reviews for Embodied Engineering: Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali

“Through vivid stories of individual innovation and strategies of survival, Twagira offers a new perspective on twentieth-century biopolitics in Mali. Embodied Engineering adds important critical nuance to understandings of environmental crisis, cultural value, and gendered knowledge production in West Africa.” -- Emily S. Burrill, author of States of Marriage: Gender, Justice, and Rights in Colonial Mali