Sow What You Know: The Struggle for Social Reproduction in Rural Sudan

Abstract

The unity between production and social reproduction is under constant threat of dissolution. The practices by which it is maintained or threatened are the stuff of everyday life, and can be witnessed on the ground. A key practice of social reproduction is the socialization and education of children. This piece presents detailed findings on various practices of social reproduction—the production, exchange, and deployment of environmental knowledge—and points to the transformative potential inherent in the mundane practices of work, play, and learning. The village of Howa in Sudan has been incorporated within a state-sponsored agricultural development project and the content, mode of acquisition and utility of children's environmental knowledge has thereby changed dramatically. In addressing these, my larger research goal is to locate instances of rupture, resistance, or reformulation in the face of socioeconomic and cultural-ecological change imposed externally. The study employs ethnographic methods to elicit information on the content and organization of children's environmental knowledge and the means of its acquisition and use. Children contribute significantly to all environmental tasks associated with providing or producing household subsistence. In their work, play, and formal learning activities, they acquire, integrate, and use a substantial body of environmental knowledge, including knowledge of agriculture, animal husbandry, and the use of local resources. The socioeconomic processes of differentiation and commoditization associated with inclusion in the agricultural project increased demands for children's labor and began to dissolve the existing unity of work and play, to dislodge the home as the locus of social reproduction, and to deskill the peasant population. Coupled with static land tenure relations, these changes are likely to lead to significant disjuncture between what children learn and what they will do as adults. The trajectory of economic development may thereby also be altered.

Key Words:

• children
• Sudan
• environmental knowledge
• social reproduction
• household labor
• socioeconomic change