The Problem with Empowerment: Social Reproduction and Women’s Food Projects in Jordan

Abstract

In Jordan, many women’s small food businesses and nonprofit projects have been supported as a sustainable rural development strategy. The prevalence of these projects in bazaars and festivals in Jordan indicates their prominence. Most studies of these projects have framed them in terms of microfinance or development goals such as women’s empowerment. The framework of empowerment has been widely critiqued, however, for its Western-centric assumptions about gender and economy. Instead, this article asks how women in rural food producing businesses and organizations are shifting social reproduction. By centering the question on social reproduction, or the work—paid or unpaid—that sustains life, food production for sale is not de facto more valuable than food production for the family. Through this focus on social reproduction, I found that rural women’s food projects often used their rural woman identity to build food projects that changed the social and spatial contexts of how they provided for their families. These changes depended heavily on how they engaged with development networks, how they organized or participated in producers’ organizations, and how they produced and sold their food. Analyzing food production as part of broader social reproduction calls attention to the nonmarket consequences of these food projects such as impacts on social relationships, identity, and food as sustenance. Identifying these nonmarket consequences is essential to better understanding how rural development efforts affect the social and economic fabric of rural life without assuming a priori what that life should look like.

作为一项可持续的农村发展战略, 约旦对很多女性开办的小型食品企业和非营利性的项目提供了支持。这种类型的项目常见于约旦的集市和节日活动, 这也体现出了它们的重要性。在对这些项目进行的研究中, 大多都是以小额贷款或发展目标 (例如增强妇女权能) 为研究构架的。然而, 赋权框架因其以西方为中心对性别和经济进行假设而广受批评。本研究采用了不同的研究角度, 探讨了农村食品生产企业和组织中的女性是如何改变社会再生产的。由于研究侧重于社会再生产或维持生活的有偿或无偿的工作, 因此用于出售的粮食生产实际上并不比家庭自用的粮食生产更有价值。通过关注社会再生产, 我发现面向农村女性的粮食计划经常通过农村女性的身份来制定食品计划, 这些计划改变了女性为家庭付出的社会和空间背景。这些变化在很大程度上取决于她们与发展网络的互动方式、组织或参与生产者团体的方式、以及生产和出售食品的方式。将食品生产作为更广泛社会再生产的一部分进行分析时, 需要关注这些粮食项目在非市场领域中的结果, 例如对社会关系、身份以及作为自用食物的影响。为更好地了解农村发展行动如何影响农村生活的社会和经济结构, 而不是先验验假定可能的生活状态, 找出这些非市场后果至关重要。

Numerosos negocios pequeños de alimentos y proyectos sin ánimo lucrativo de las mujeres de Jordania han sido apoyados como estrategia sustentable de desarrollo rural. El predominio de estos proyectos en bazares y festivales de ese país es indicio de su importancia. La mayoría de los estudios sobre esos proyectos los enmarcan en términos de microfinanza o de los objetivos del desarrollo en lo que tienen que ver con el empoderamiento de las mujeres. Sin embargo, el marco del empoderamiento ha sido ampliamente criticado por sus supuestos de corte occidental acerca de género y economía. Desde otro punto de vista, este artículo se pregunta de qué manera las mujeres que están involucradas en negocios y organizaciones productoras de alimentos están cambiando la reproducción social. Al centrar la cuestión en la reproducción social, o en el trabajo––remunerado o no––que les sustenta la vida, la producción de alimentos para venta no es de facto más valiosa que la producción de alimentos para la familia. Con este foco sobre la reproducción social, encontré que los proyectos alimentarios de las mujeres rurales a menudo usaron su identidad femenina rural para construir proyectos de alimentos que cambiaron los contextos sociales y espaciales sobre cómo ellas proveyeron sustento a sus familias. Estos cambios dependieron en gran medida de la manera como ellas se involucraron con las redes de desarrollo. Cómo organizaron o participaron en las organizaciones de los productores, y cómo produjeron su alimento y lo vendieron. Analizando la producción de alimentos como parte de una reproducción social más amplia se pone atención a las consecuencias no relacionadas con el mercado de estos proyectos de alimentos, tales como los impactos sobre las relaciones sociales, la identidad y sobre el alimento como sustento. Identificar estas consecuencias no mercantiles es esencial para entender mejor el modo como afectan los esfuerzos rurales la fábrica social y económica de la vida rural, sin asumir a priori la apariencia que esa vida deba tener.

Key Words:

• empowerment
• gender
• Jordan
• rural development
• social reproduction

关键词:

• 授权
• 性别
• 约旦
• 农村发展
• 社会再生产

Palabras clave:

• desarrollo rural
• empoderamiento, género
• Jordania
• reproducción social

Acknowledgments

Thank you to all of the people from various organizations and food businesses who shared their time and experiences with me. Thank you to Nadia for her work in interviews, in transcribing and translating, and in contributing to the research project. Thank you to Dr. Sara Ababneh and the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan for the affiliation while I was completing my research. Thank you to Dr. Anna Secor for reading and working through many drafts of this article. Thank you to Dr. Tad Mutersbaugh, Dr. Sue Roberts, Dr. Hsain Ilahaine, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. Any errors and omissions are mine alone.

Notes

1 Names of interviewees are pseudonyms.

2 Some of these products, such as sesame seeds, were purchased from outside of Ajloun and then washed, dried, and packaged at the organization’s office. Other products such as sumac were purchased from local residents and then repackaged. Some products, such as jameed, were made by employees of the organization.

3 The Hashemite family has several development organizations that, alongside other international development agencies, fund projects across Jordan.

4 Three interviews included multiple women. Forty is based on the number of women who spoke and were transcribed as being present. In one of the interviews, however, some women were only present for part of the interview and some women were present but did not contribute verbally.

5 Whereas several women who were interviewed mentioned that they had worked other jobs before this, many were previously unemployed—the ideal target population for development agencies.

6 See work on feminist political economy (Bakker 2007; Hoskyns and Rai 2007; Bakker and Silvey 2008; Federici 2012).

7 All interview quotes were translated by the author.

8 Women can request that IRADA arrange consultation or trainings based on their specific need.

9 This is yogurt cheese.

10 There has been a cycle of women going into debt from microfinance and other loans, sometimes resulting in imprisonment (Jarar and Omar 2019; “Zakat Fund Approves 11th Batch of Aid for Indebted Women” 2019). In some cases, the women took the loans for other people.

11 I found one instance of a professional organization of female engineers also selling food products, but I did not include them here because they are not based in the rural northeast.

12 “We” refers to the research assistant, Nadia, and I.

13 Tarawneh (2013) outlined other rural identities in Jordan. Fellah was the most commonly mentioned term (to express a rural identity) in my interviews, but there are more nuances to the meaning of this word in relation to other identities that were not evident through my interviews.

Additional information

Funding

Thank you to the Fulbright U.S. student program, the Council of Overseas American Research Centers and the American Center for Oriental Research, and the Society of Women Geographers for funding parts of this research

Notes on contributors

Brittany Cook

BRITTANY COOK is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70504. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests are in political ecology and feminist political geography. Her work examines the intersection of international flows of capital, ideas of development, and rural spaces in Jordan.