Feeding Families: African Realities and British Ideas of Nutrition and Development in Early Colonial Nyasaland (Malawi) by Cynthia Brantley (Hardback, 2002)
Historical analysis of colonial nutrition policies detailing and comparing African village conditions with specific British nutritional projects in Nyasaland (Malawi). Colonial nutrition investigations and interventions in Africa began earlier than scholars have assumed. Feeding Families provides a historical perspective on Africa's early colonial nutrition legacy by incorporating both the comparative details of African village nutritional conditions and the specifics of British colonial scientific nutrition projects. Through her examination and contextualization of the rich and obscure data from the Nyasaland Nutrition Survey team members to integrate their findings with kwledge of, and respect for, African sociological conditions rendered the scientific information obtained in the surveys almost meaningless. The ultimate conclusions British nutritionists derived from the surveys were misleading--both in terms of what was needed and what could be accomplished. The comparative complexities of African village life deplcted in this book illustrated the degree to which Africans drew on rich and complex combinations of the historical and the cultural in their efforts to adapt to constant change and the challenges of meeting their nutritional requirements. By highlighting gendered aspects of feeding families, the specific ways that colonialism transformed African lives, and the ways in which colonial officers believed in the superiority of British techlogical and scientific expertise, Cynthia Brantley offers suggestive insights about many of the problems that linger in contemporary nutritional development projects.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Heinemann USA, Heinemann Educational Books,U.S.
ISBN-10
0325070814
ISBN-13
9780325070810
eBay Product ID (ePID)
104705339
Product Key Features
Author
Cynthia Brantley
Format
Hardback
Language
English
Subject
Sociology & Anthropology: Professional
Type
Textbook
Additional Product Features
Place of Publication
Portsmouth
Content Note
Bibliography, Index
Author Biography
Cynthia Brantley is Professor of African History at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of The Giriama and Colonial Resistance in Kenya, 1800-1920 (1981) and numerous articles in journals such as Africa, The International Journal of African Historical Studies and Criitique of Anthropology.