Pathways of Change in Africa: Crops, Livestock and Livelihoods in Mali, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe

Ian Scoones and William Wolmer, eds. Pathways of Change in Africa: Crops, Livestock and Livelihoods in Mali, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. Oxford: James Currey / Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing, 2002. xx + 236 pp. Figures. Maps. Tables. Boxes. Bibliography. Index. $64.95. Cloth.

Pathways of Change offers a conceptually interesting, empirically rich, and convincing argument for a more sophisticated understanding of the complexities of small-scale mixed farming in Africa than much of the existing literature provides. The authors of this volume use a sustainable livelihoods approach, informed by their diverse academic backgrounds and field experiences, to "unpack the underlying assumptions behind the conventional model of crop-livestock integration" (5). Their goal is to highlight how new perspectives on "ecology, historical dynamics, social differentiation, and institutional processes" (5) can sharpen our insights into the range of interrelated socioeconomic, technological, and institutional considerations that facilitate and constrain small-scale farm families in Ethiopia, Mali, and Zimbabwe in their striving for access to resources to improve the quality of their lives.

The five chapters of this volume provide a valuable overview of the literature and key issues regarding crop-livestock integration in Africa. The three solid and empirically grounded country case studies are informed by this overview but could just as easily have been used independently of it to support the sustainable livelihoods perspective. The editors' review of the core assumptions of the conventional approach to crop-livestock integration should be required reading for anyone seriously involved in African agricultural development. To challenge this "linear, deterministic evolutionary model," the authors use four themes-agroecological and livelihood contexts, historical dynamics, social differentiation, and institutional processes-all of which require "new disciplinary perspectives and field research methodologies that go beyond... conventional... agricultural economics and household surveys to more qualitative analysis" (23). More attention and perhaps a separate chapter identifying and assessing the different field research methodologies would have been a welcome complement to the authors' conceptual overview. Such a discussion is critically needed by both researchers and policymakers, and it might also have provided a means for drawing more clearly identifiable conceptual and methodological threads among the three case studies.

In addition to presenting valuable empirical information, the Ethiopia and Zimbabwe studies represent solid comparative analyses across multiple research sites in each country. They demonstrate how such material can be presented in the context of a broader perspective or set of themes without sacrificing the character and particularities of the specific case. They also reinforce the plea of this volume for more diversity and flexibility in development policy and practice. The Mali case study, while offering valuable information regarding two significantly different (but conventional) approaches to crop-livestock integration, is much less successful in finding the threads for a strong comparative assessment of mixed farming approaches.

The important last chapter of this volume takes up the challenge of "what is to be done?" The two major responses to this question deserve considerably more public debate than they are currently receiving among development researcher-practitioners. Instead of simply using the empirical data from the case studies to revisit the critique of the conventional approach to mixed farming, this chapter explores the embedded nature of the mixed farming orthodoxy in development bureaucracies and identifies the priorities that are missing from research and extension. As the authors observe, not only is the narrative of mixed farming "deeply entrenched in the policy process," but the "specific micro-practices of research [also] contribute to the persistence in policy of particular models" (192-93). Thus it is not surprising that research and extension priorities continue to embody the technocratic and evolutionary assumptions of the conventional approach. Equally important, this chapter begins to explore new approaches informed by a livelihoods analysis that "open up a range of questions that might not otherwise be asked" (203). The authors argue convincingly for the need "to incorporate forms of reflexivity in policy processes," to document diversity, and to develop "counter-narratives that bring more complexity within a storyline than the existing crop-livestock integration model [provides]" (208).

The challenge now is to make this new way of thinking about uncertainty and complexity as convincing as the so-called technological solutions that have been largely responsible for perpetuating poverty in Africa.

Jim Bingen

Michigan State University

East Lansing, Michigan

Copyright African Studies Association Dec 2003
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