No Condition Is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

No Condition Is Permanent, a popular West African slogan, expresses Sara Berry's theme: the obstacles to African agrarian development never stay the same. Her book explores the complex way African economy and society are tied to issues of land and labour, offering a comparative study of agrarian change in four rural economies in sub-Saharan Africa. These include two that experienced long periods of expanding peasant production for export (southern Ghana and southwestern Nigeria ), a settler economy (central Kenya), and a rural labour reserve (northeastern Zambia). The resources available to African farmers have changed dramatically over the course of the 20th century. Berry asserts that the various ways resources are acquired and used are shaped not only by the incorporation of a rural area into colonial (later national) and global political economies, but also by conflicts over culture, power, and property within and beyond rural communities. By tracing the various debates over rights to resources and their effects on agricultural production and farmers' uses of income. Berry presents agrarian change as a series of on-going processes rather than a set of discrete successes and failures. No Condition Is Permanent aims to show how multi-disciplinary studies of focal agrarian history can constructively contribute to development policy. The book is designed to be a contribution both to African agrarian history and to debates over the role of agriculture in Africa's recent economic crises.