| For the last two decades, flagging exports and agrarian stagnation have characterized Africa's political economy. Agricultural performance has plunged as world market trends for Africa's major export have been unfavorable since the early 1970s. This decline in revenues, coupled with IMF/World Bank pressure for structural adjustment, has hastened the call for agricultural diversification, and horticultural production in particular. Horticultural exports have grown into one of the most dynamic sectors in international trade: by this decade Kenya's horticultural industry had surpassed coffee--historically Kenya's most prosperous export crop--as the nation's second major source of foreign exchange in the agricultural sector.;The remodeling in the world market for fresh horticultural produce has had profound implications for agrarian households as the former division of labor by crop is shifting. Prior to the advent of French beans in Meru, women's horticultural property, conventionally very small plots, was earmarked for local vegetables grown for household consumption and sale at local markets. The significance of the Meru case lies in the fact that horticulture, the "traditional" domain of women, has been rapidly intensified, commoditized and appropriated by men. The customary division of labor by crop and gender is currently undergoing a sea-change as men encroach upon the rewards associated with export horticultural production and compel their wives to relinquish either land for growing, or income derived from, French beans. Female control has eroded as men foster disputes over male and female property rights and tensions resonate over the boundaries of men's and women's contributions to household subsistence.;Women have responded to the erosion of their rights in ways that are contradictory, both accommodating and resistant to male authority. Specifically, the household has become the locus of conflict as women seek freedom from the social order through divorce, participation in women's organizations and spiritual activities, and finally, by either bewitching or poisoning their husbands. The spiritual domain has become a principal forum through which labor, land and intrahousehold dynamics are negotiated. |
