International African Institute

Botswana: Liberal Democracy and the Labour Reserve in Southern Africa by Jack ParsonReview by: R. F. MortonAfrica: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 56, No. 4, Crime and Colonialismin Africa (1986), pp. 487-488Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1160003 .

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is only touched upon in this book. The book reveals significant regional variations in land use and tenure which are not always easy to identify at first hand but require nevertheless to be incorporated during the preparation and implementation of land policies.

The book would make better reading for non-anthropologists if some of the high-sounding anthropological jargon had been simplified (e.g. Comaroff, Werbner) or, even better, left out completely in cases where it tends to obscure and mystify rather than clarify and explain. As earlier indicated, the title of the book is rather presumptuous as it promises a general and comprehensive overview of land reforms and related policies, which it does not do.

Any account of developments in this area after 1978 (the date of conference) and before 1982 (the date of publication) are conspicuously absent. The dominance of the one-sided anthropological approach in the papers leads one to conclude that the book may be more use to the academic reader than to the land-policy planner. In that event, the publication of the papers in a special issue of the Journal of African Law might have sufficed.

JAAP ARNTZEN

University of Botswana

JACK PARSON, Botswana: liberal democracy and the labour reserve in Southern Africa. Boulder, Colorado, and London: Westview Press and Gower Publishing, 1984, x + 145 pp.

Botswana is often cited as exceptional in Southern Africa for its freedom from indebtedness, racial and ethnic conflict, corruption and political repression, but until this book came along no attempt had been made to reconcile Botswana's apparent strengths with its obvious weaknesses. Economically Botswana suffers from disadvantages that make it like, rather than different from, many black African nation states: it is landlocked, drought-prone and unproductive agriculturally, heavily dependent on outside investment capital and beset with great inequalities in the distribution of its wealth. And in spite of increased govern- ment revenues derived from the export of beef and from its burgeoning diamond mining industry, the essential structure of its dependence is being reinforced rather than altered.

Parson, who has updated and synthesised his doctoral thesis from Sussex for this volume in the Nations of Contemporary Africa Series, argues that Botswana's liberal democracy has worked so well because it ably serves the interests of the large cattle owners, politicians and senior civil servants who make up the 'governing class' in the country. They constitute as well the 'intermediaries' between South African and Western investment capital and the 'peasantariat', Parson's coinage for Botswana's large, rural-based population who straddle the wage sector in order to meet essential needs. Government policy, determined by the dominant Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) parliamentary leadership, keeps urban unskilled wages low and avoids stimulating popular rural production. Developmental budgets focus instead on 'infrastructure' (roads, schools, clinics, administrative outlays, defence, communications), programmes promote land acquisition by middle and large commercial farmers and cattlemen, and the expanding governmental sector coopts graduates of schools and university as junior administrative members of the government system. It is, in effect, a prescription for aggrandisement and control rather than a blueprint for development. Free elections are held and opposition parties contend against the BDP, but the ruling party wins because it has the resources of finance, organisation and a record of bringing about physical improvements in the urban and rural areas. As long as revenues continue to flow in, the success of the BDP, with its elite leadership and 'peasantariat base', will continue.

Parson's neo-Marxist analysis will probably be outdated in a relatively short period, as further research unravels a much more complex scenario. Though Parson's data are remarkably up to date and attest as much to his energy as his publishers' efficiency, future analysts are likely to demonstrate that the economically productive in Botswana are extremely diversified and, given the obstacles to communication in this sparsely populated country, remarkably alert to a large array of options. Parson's concept of 'peasantariat'

is only touched upon in this book. The book reveals significant regional variations in land use and tenure which are not always easy to identify at first hand but require nevertheless to be incorporated during the preparation and implementation of land policies.

The book would make better reading for non-anthropologists if some of the high-sounding anthropological jargon had been simplified (e.g. Comaroff, Werbner) or, even better, left out completely in cases where it tends to obscure and mystify rather than clarify and explain. As earlier indicated, the title of the book is rather presumptuous as it promises a general and comprehensive overview of land reforms and related policies, which it does not do.

Any account of developments in this area after 1978 (the date of conference) and before 1982 (the date of publication) are conspicuously absent. The dominance of the one-sided anthropological approach in the papers leads one to conclude that the book may be more use to the academic reader than to the land-policy planner. In that event, the publication of the papers in a special issue of the Journal of African Law might have sufficed.

JAAP ARNTZEN

University of Botswana

JACK PARSON, Botswana: liberal democracy and the labour reserve in Southern Africa. Boulder, Colorado, and London: Westview Press and Gower Publishing, 1984, x + 145 pp.

Botswana is often cited as exceptional in Southern Africa for its freedom from indebtedness, racial and ethnic conflict, corruption and political repression, but until this book came along no attempt had been made to reconcile Botswana's apparent strengths with its obvious weaknesses. Economically Botswana suffers from disadvantages that make it like, rather than different from, many black African nation states: it is landlocked, drought-prone and unproductive agriculturally, heavily dependent on outside investment capital and beset with great inequalities in the distribution of its wealth. And in spite of increased govern- ment revenues derived from the export of beef and from its burgeoning diamond mining industry, the essential structure of its dependence is being reinforced rather than altered.

Parson, who has updated and synthesised his doctoral thesis from Sussex for this volume in the Nations of Contemporary Africa Series, argues that Botswana's liberal democracy has worked so well because it ably serves the interests of the large cattle owners, politicians and senior civil servants who make up the 'governing class' in the country. They constitute as well the 'intermediaries' between South African and Western investment capital and the 'peasantariat', Parson's coinage for Botswana's large, rural-based population who straddle the wage sector in order to meet essential needs. Government policy, determined by the dominant Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) parliamentary leadership, keeps urban unskilled wages low and avoids stimulating popular rural production. Developmental budgets focus instead on 'infrastructure' (roads, schools, clinics, administrative outlays, defence, communications), programmes promote land acquisition by middle and large commercial farmers and cattlemen, and the expanding governmental sector coopts graduates of schools and university as junior administrative members of the government system. It is, in effect, a prescription for aggrandisement and control rather than a blueprint for development. Free elections are held and opposition parties contend against the BDP, but the ruling party wins because it has the resources of finance, organisation and a record of bringing about physical improvements in the urban and rural areas. As long as revenues continue to flow in, the success of the BDP, with its elite leadership and 'peasantariat base', will continue.

Parson's neo-Marxist analysis will probably be outdated in a relatively short period, as further research unravels a much more complex scenario. Though Parson's data are remarkably up to date and attest as much to his energy as his publishers' efficiency, future analysts are likely to demonstrate that the economically productive in Botswana are extremely diversified and, given the obstacles to communication in this sparsely populated country, remarkably alert to a large array of options. Parson's concept of 'peasantariat'

487 487 REVIEWS REVIEWS

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is useful as description, but it smothers Botswana's rural population with a blanket of passivity. The consequences of his use of'governing class' are almost as predictable. Parsons has wisely omitted reference to two important phenomena that would have been difficult to accommodate in his argument: the cooperative movement and the cattle marketing industry.

Parson's contribution is nevertheless considerable, and it is easily the best overall assessment so far of how Botswana's economy and government function. His book provides an excellent starting point for future research in contemporary Botswana and will be for a long time a point of reference for serious studies of this unquestionably unique country.

R. F. MORTON

University of Botswana

JACK GOODY, Cuisines, cuisine et classes, traduit de l'anglais par Jeanne Bouniort. Paris, France: Centre de Creation Industrielle, Centre Georges Pompidou, Collection ALORS, 1984, 405 pp. (A translation into French of Cooking, Cuisine and Class: a study in comparative sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.)

Le livre de Jack Goody a la rare qualite d'interesser a la fois les specialistes de la sociologie culinaire et tous ceux qui sont curieux des comportements alimentaires d'autrui et d'ailleurs. Les premiers y trouveront une documentation remarquable, des informations et des appreciations fort interessantes qui sont le fruit d'une riche experience de terrain realisee au nord du Ghana. Le lecteur moins specialise prendra connaissance des differentes approches methodologiques et aura acces a tout un savoir-faire culinaire.

Cet ouvrage est consacre a l'etude comparative des pratiques culinaires du nord du Ghana (les Lo Dagaa et les Gonja) et de quelques societes comme l'Egypte ancienne, la Rome imperiale, l'Europe feodale et moderne, la Chine medievale et l'Inde de l'epoque vedique et actuelle. La recherche est presentee comme une 'etude de sociologie comparative'. C'est le sous titre de l'edition anglaise, qui a ete supprime dans l'edition franSaise.

La perspective comparative suppose une premiere analyse de chaque univers culinaire (contexte de production, preparation et consommation). L'analyse du contexte permet a la fois de soulever la question des variantes temporelles, regionales et hierarchiques et de mettre en rapport des habitudes alimentaires proches ou lointaines, leurs similitudes et les differences socio-politico-culturelles.

Apres avoir passe en revue les perspectives (ou 'demarches') fonctionnaliste, structuraliste et marxiste qui ont domine la sociologie culinaire depuis cinquante ans, l'auteur decrit la cuisine precoloniale et contemporaine des Lo Dagaa et des Gonja. Il met en evidence l'aspect pratique des processus et, trop brievement, leur symbolique (mythologie, rites, chants, etc.). Surtout, il montre qu'il n'y.a guere de variation culinaire et qu'en toute circonstance la cuisine se caracterise par la meme simplicite: le repas de tous les jours est le meme que celui des jours de fete. La difference est que ces jours la la nourriture se consomme en commun. La cuisine est la meme pour tous quelque soit le rang social, le sexe et l'age; il n'y a que le deroulement du repas qui change.

Le troisieme chapitre vous transporte en Asie et en Europe; il pose comme point de depart une opposition inexistante au Ghana entre 'une grande et une petite cuisine', difference propre aux societes culturellement et politiquement stratifiees.

L'examen de la cuisine des societes europeenne et asiatique nous revelent ainsi les liens entre cuisine et classe sociale: a chaque couche sociale son style de vie et sa cuisine, ses contradictions et ses conflits.

Importante aussi est l'ecriture, qui, dans ce type de soci&et fixe les recettes, facilite leur diffusion et favorise la complexite et la division du travail culinaire, la vari&et des menus et de leurs ingredients.

Le cinquieme chapitre traite des produits alimentaires industrialises. Ils ont ameliore, en quantite, en qualite et en variete, le regime ordinaire des classes ouvrieres urbaines.

is useful as description, but it smothers Botswana's rural population with a blanket of passivity. The consequences of his use of'governing class' are almost as predictable. Parsons has wisely omitted reference to two important phenomena that would have been difficult to accommodate in his argument: the cooperative movement and the cattle marketing industry.

Parson's contribution is nevertheless considerable, and it is easily the best overall assessment so far of how Botswana's economy and government function. His book provides an excellent starting point for future research in contemporary Botswana and will be for a long time a point of reference for serious studies of this unquestionably unique country.

R. F. MORTON

University of Botswana

JACK GOODY, Cuisines, cuisine et classes, traduit de l'anglais par Jeanne Bouniort. Paris, France: Centre de Creation Industrielle, Centre Georges Pompidou, Collection ALORS, 1984, 405 pp. (A translation into French of Cooking, Cuisine and Class: a study in comparative sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.)

Le livre de Jack Goody a la rare qualite d'interesser a la fois les specialistes de la sociologie culinaire et tous ceux qui sont curieux des comportements alimentaires d'autrui et d'ailleurs. Les premiers y trouveront une documentation remarquable, des informations et des appreciations fort interessantes qui sont le fruit d'une riche experience de terrain realisee au nord du Ghana. Le lecteur moins specialise prendra connaissance des differentes approches methodologiques et aura acces a tout un savoir-faire culinaire.

Cet ouvrage est consacre a l'etude comparative des pratiques culinaires du nord du Ghana (les Lo Dagaa et les Gonja) et de quelques societes comme l'Egypte ancienne, la Rome imperiale, l'Europe feodale et moderne, la Chine medievale et l'Inde de l'epoque vedique et actuelle. La recherche est presentee comme une 'etude de sociologie comparative'. C'est le sous titre de l'edition anglaise, qui a ete supprime dans l'edition franSaise.

La perspective comparative suppose une premiere analyse de chaque univers culinaire (contexte de production, preparation et consommation). L'analyse du contexte permet a la fois de soulever la question des variantes temporelles, regionales et hierarchiques et de mettre en rapport des habitudes alimentaires proches ou lointaines, leurs similitudes et les differences socio-politico-culturelles.

Apres avoir passe en revue les perspectives (ou 'demarches') fonctionnaliste, structuraliste et marxiste qui ont domine la sociologie culinaire depuis cinquante ans, l'auteur decrit la cuisine precoloniale et contemporaine des Lo Dagaa et des Gonja. Il met en evidence l'aspect pratique des processus et, trop brievement, leur symbolique (mythologie, rites, chants, etc.). Surtout, il montre qu'il n'y.a guere de variation culinaire et qu'en toute circonstance la cuisine se caracterise par la meme simplicite: le repas de tous les jours est le meme que celui des jours de fete. La difference est que ces jours la la nourriture se consomme en commun. La cuisine est la meme pour tous quelque soit le rang social, le sexe et l'age; il n'y a que le deroulement du repas qui change.

Le troisieme chapitre vous transporte en Asie et en Europe; il pose comme point de depart une opposition inexistante au Ghana entre 'une grande et une petite cuisine', difference propre aux societes culturellement et politiquement stratifiees.

L'examen de la cuisine des societes europeenne et asiatique nous revelent ainsi les liens entre cuisine et classe sociale: a chaque couche sociale son style de vie et sa cuisine, ses contradictions et ses conflits.

Importante aussi est l'ecriture, qui, dans ce type de soci&et fixe les recettes, facilite leur diffusion et favorise la complexite et la division du travail culinaire, la vari&et des menus et de leurs ingredients.

Le cinquieme chapitre traite des produits alimentaires industrialises. Ils ont ameliore, en quantite, en qualite et en variete, le regime ordinaire des classes ouvrieres urbaines.

488 488 REVIEWS REVIEWS

This content downloaded from 195.34.78.216 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 00:03:46 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions