contested ecologies: gender, genies, and agricultural knowledge in zanzibar

Contested Ecologies: Gender, Genies, andAgricultural Knowledge in Zanzibar

Erin Dean

Erin Dean is with the New College of Florida, Sara-sota, FL

Abstract

In the village of Jongowe in the Zanzibar archipelago,women are the guardians of extensive agricultural knowl-edge. Yet male authority circumscribes this feminine spherein the form of ritual and scientific “experts.” Annualplanting is dependent on the advice and goodwill of genies,spiritual beings who are ritually summoned, celebrated insong and dance (ngoma), and formally consulted by eldermale ritual leaders. At the same time, a male governmentextension agent has introduced agricultural extension pro-grams that bring new planting calendars, farming tech-niques, and seed varieties to the village. Through these maleritual and scientific authority figures, ecological knowledgein the village is controlled, classified, and contested.However, recent challenges to local land use have cast newlight on the ordering of agricultural knowledge. I suggestthat although the control of knowledge and resources inJongowe may be most obviously understood throughan idiom of gender, the most important epistemologicaldistinctions in this community may lie elsewhere.[traditional knowledge, agriculture, gender, ngoma,Zanzibar]

Introduction

It was one day before the full moon, and thebright orb lit the sky and painted the village below instark contrasts of moonlight and shadow. Stars glit-tered across the sky, and the Southern Cross hung low

on the horizon. Below the dramatic display of theheavens, the residents of Jongowe, Zanzibar gatheredin an open space in the center of the village. It was thecusp of the rainy season, and it was time to consultthe genies (majini) about planting the fields.

Jongowe is the smaller of two villages on theisland of Tumbatu in the Zanzibar archipelago. Thisngoma (drum ceremony) was one of many heldthroughout the year, but this year the ceremonies tobless the planting ritual had added significancebecause a protracted land dispute had kept Jongoweresidents from farming their village plots for the pasttwo years.

In the middle of the ceremony space was a stalkof sugarcane decorated with flowers to attract thegenies. At one end sat the drummers, and in front ofthem burned a small fire. The space was ringed bylimestone and thatch houses, and observers sat on thenarrow stoops (barazas) to watch the preparations.Electric light spilled out of the windows and opendoor of the nearest house as people moved in and out,collecting and arranging the special gifts for thegenies. As the drummers began their rhythmic pat-terns, men moved into the ceremony space and beganto dance and sing call-and-response. At first, onlymen danced, but as the music and singing intensified,women joined in. The rhythm built, voices rose, andincense was lit to attract the attention of the genies.They came.

A genie manifests in its human host in a varietyof ways. Some people collapsed. Some fell andthrashed in the dirt or shook as if having a seizure.Some became violent and lunged and grabbed forthose nearest them, yelling or even crying out as if inpain. Some merely stiffened and continued dancing injerky, abrupt motions, their eyes wide and fixed.Many of the women who hosted genies spoke in high,girlish voices. Most spoke in Swahili, but others spokeArabic and a few used English.

The scene became chaotic as genies moved errati-cally through the open space, usually attended to bypeople who were not hosting genies. The music

Erin Dean is Associate Professor of Anthropology at New Collegeof Florida in Sarasota, FL. She is an environmental anthropologistwhose research considers knowledge and power in the context ofagriculture, conservation, and development in Tanzania.

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Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment Vol. 35, Issue 2 pp. 102–111, ISSN 2153-9553, eISSN 2153-9561. © 2013 by the American AnthropologicalAssociation. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/cuag.12014

reached a crescendo and subsided, only to build againand again. Finally, after several hours, a tray coveredwith cloth was brought out of the house lit withelectricity, the village’s offering to the genies. Thegenies gathered around the tray and sniffed at thesugarcane stalk while the other ngoma participantsmade a tight ring around them. Finally, an elderpresented the offering to the genies and formallyasked them when the fields should be burned forplanting.

This traditional ngoma ceremony has taken placein the village of Jongowe for as long as people therecan remember. In a place where people believe theyshare the world with spiritual beings, ngoma ceremo-nies are one way of recognizing and honoring thisrelationship. Although both women and men hostgenies, the ngoma ceremony and the conversationwith the visiting genies are all controlled by maleelders. They are the ritual experts who have theauthority and the knowledge to appropriately consultthese potentially dangerous spiritual advisors. Yet theadvice they seek about planting practices is mostrelevant to women, as all but a small handful offarmers in Jongowe are women, and nearly all of thewomen in the village farm. Women’s extensive exper-tise of praxis is in this way framed and directed bymen’s ritual expertise. Further, in Jongowe, both ritualand practical forms of agricultural knowledge areincreasingly challenged by emerging “technical” or“scientific” approaches, as well as by recent politicalcontroversies over land control and appropriation.

Although ecofeminist discourses and the women,environment, and development approaches recentlypopularized by policy makers suggest the primacy ofwomen’s links to the environment, as Haraway notes(1988), all forms of knowledge are situated andpartial, reflecting the perspective and position of theindividual or group. Because occupation and activityare gendered in this strictly Muslim community,women and men in Jongowe know the environmentin different ways. This knowledge is further producedand performed based on factors such as politicalaffiliation and external land pressure. And, while eachof the different ways of “knowing” is a part of thelocalized knowledge of agriculture in Jongowe, formsof knowledge are not equally empowered in practice.

Based on ethnographic research conducted inJongowe in 2004–2005 and updated with return visitsin 2008 and 2011, this article examines how the

complex web of competing forms of expertise andauthority effectively control and classify the multipleforms of ecological knowledge in the village (Berkes1999; Gupta 1998; Tsing 2005). By considering the wayvarious forms of knowledge are situated and howknowledge translates into authority, I explore how thedifferent ways of understanding agriculture are impli-cated in the creation and maintenance of hierarchy.While this categorization reflects a distinction based ongendered practice, the selective resistance of womenfarmers to male “expertise” suggests that althoughstruggles for resources are often understood throughthe idiom of gender (Carney 1996), the most importantepistemological distinctions may lie elsewhere.

Classifying Ecological Knowledge

One common way of categorizing different waysof understanding the environment is to draw distinc-tions between “traditional” or “indigenous” ecologi-cal knowledge and knowledge informed by westernscience. In his seminal work, Fikret Berkes definestraditional ecological knowledge (TEK) as “a cumu-lative body of knowledge, practice and belief, evolv-ing by adaptive processes and handed down throughgenerations by cultural transmission, about the rela-tionship of living beings (including humans) with oneanother and with their environment” (Berkes 1999:8).He emphasizes the holism of TEK in that it cannot bedivorced from the social or spiritual, but that togetherthese perspectives form ways of understanding theworld. Yet, as Berkes admits, the idea of TEK isambiguous because each of its component terms isambiguous.

In attempting to delineate a difference betweenways of knowing, Banuri and Marglin (1993) contrastthe culturally embedded and locally specific natureof “traditional ecological knowledge” with the dis-embedded and universalizing character of Westernscience. Agrawal, however, posits that distinguishingbetween traditional or indigenous and Westernscience is inappropriate (Agrawal 1995). He arguesthat such delineation discounts the fact that the twoheterogeneous systems of knowledge often overlapand inform each other. Further, all knowledge issocially produced by contested historical processes, soboth “scientific” and “traditional” ecological systemsof understanding could be characterized as composedof partial perspectives, contested understandings, and

Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment 103 Vol. 35, No. 2 December 2013

situated practices (Leach and Fairhead 2002; Sillitoe1998; Tsing 2005).

Elaborating further, Ingold and Kurttila (2000)distinguish between two understandings of “tradi-tional knowledge,” one framed within discourses ofmodernity and one created through localized practice.They argue that the first type of knowledge, whichthey call MTK, or modernist traditional knowledge,suggests an abstract, inherited process of knowledgetransmission that simultaneously distinguishes indig-enous knowledge from scientific knowledge and “dis-places the knower” (Ingold and Kurttila 2000:184)from her environment. That is, this abstracted idea ofenvironmental knowledge suggests that it is a productof genealogy and passed-on wisdom rather than expe-rience, and as such, it is distinct from ways ofknowing characterized by Western science. On theother hand, what they call LTK, or localized tradi-tional knowledge, is a category that reflects the expe-riential and evolving knowledge that comes fromintimate knowledge of a place and its environment.One form of knowledge (MTK) removes the knowerfrom the environmental context while the other form(LTK) is generated by the particularity of localizedpractice and experience. Similarly, Lauer and Aswani(2009) argue for a practice-oriented approach to eco-logical knowledge that emphasizes the regenerativeand situated nature of ways of knowing over anyinherited or static cognitive models.

A situated approach to knowledge productionchallenges perceived distinctions between traditionalor scientific understandings of the environment andrecognizes that ecological knowledge is not sharedequally within the community (Davis and Wagner2003; Mosse 1994; Sillitoe 1998). Rather, knowledge isvariably distributed within communities, based onfactors including gender, age, class, position, resi-dence location, political affiliation, ethnicity, and reli-gion. In Jongowe, one of the most visible markers ofknowledge distribution is gender.

Gendered Spaces of Jongowe

Jongowe is situated on the southern end of thecoral rag island of Tumbatu, the third largest island inthe Zanzibar archipelago. Tumbatu is approximately7 km by 1.5 km, and a larger village, Kichangani (alsocalled Gomani), is located near its northern end. Theisland is only accessible by boat, usually sailing dhow,with a motorized boat making one round trip between

Jongowe and the Zanzibar mainland (Unguja Island)every day. There are no cars or roads on the island, withthe exception of a path between the two villages that isin places just wide enough for a bicycle. Until late 2010,Tumbatu was not part of the national electricity grid,and solar panels from foreign development projects orgenerators provided the only power. There are nopermanent sources of fresh water on the island, soresidents rely on rainfall or water pumped under thechannel from mainland Zanzibar on a schedule thatalternates between the two villages.

The 2002 census puts the population of Jongowe atapproximately 2,650, with slightly more women thanmen, although a recent building boom on the outskirtsof the village suggests that the population is steadilygrowing. Subsistence labor is divided based on gender.Men are generally fishermen, traveling during certaintimes of the year to fish and reside in other parts of theSwahili Coast, particularly the towns of Zanzibar Cityand Tanga. In recent years, many men also work ascivil servants or teachers, commuting daily to the mainisland, Unguja. Women perform the vast majority ofthe agricultural labor in the village. They also fish withseine nets for small fish near the shore, and collectshellfish. While men’s catches are generally sold atmarket for income, women’s catches and their agricul-tural products go toward meeting household subsis-tence needs. Several women also work as teachers inthe village or in Zanzibar City.

Labor is not the only way the village is demar-cated based on gender. While there is a great deal ofinteraction and friendship between men and womenin the village, it is also a place of gendered spaces.There are men’s beaches and women’s beaches.Women and men use the same mosques but worshipin separate spaces within them. In the evenings, mentend to congregate at the beach or the soccer pitchwhile women stay in their homes or visit the homesof neighbors and friends. The ritual and practicaltasks surrounding birth, marriage, and death aregendered, as are the preparations and celebration forthe annual Maulid festival commemorating the birthof the Prophet Mohammad. The planting ngomadescribed above was one of the few ritual perfor-mances I witnessed that was not strictly segregatedby gender, although even in this ceremony the taskswere discrete, as women were not ritual leaders ordrummers.

These distinctions between women and menextend to the authority positions in the village.


Women do not hold the most visible positions ofleadership, either as sheha (chief) or on the baraza lamji (village council), although they are able to exercisepower through the hirimu age set system (Dean 2013).This has not historically been the case, however. Gray(1962) and Ingrams (1931) note that Fatuma binti Aliand Mwana Kazija binti Ngwali were women whoruled on Tumbatu during the early part of the 19thcentury, and the first recorded sheha of Tumbatu wasa woman named Mwana wa Mwana in the mid-1800s.Her granddaughter and great-granddaughter alsoserved as sheha, but the tradition of female rulersended when Tumbatu lost its self-rule in 1865 and thesultan of Zanzibar took over the task of appointingshehas (Askew 1999). Women maintain a strong andassertive presence in many spheres, particularly in thedaily household and farm activities, but men hold thedominant leadership positions in contemporaryJongowe, and elder men in particular are deferred toin most village matters.

Agricultural Knowledge in Jongowe

One outcome of the gendered division of laborand space within the village is the gendered divisionof ecological knowledge. As Ingold and Kurttila(2000) explain, the fallacy of a homogeneous commu-nity can mask, among other things, task-related dif-ferences in expertise and knowledge. Although thereare of course differences in individual knowledge andwomen are not a homogenous group of agriculturalpractitioners, the gendered divisions of the commu-nity mean that women’s experiences of the environ-ment are different from men’s experiences, andtherefore their expertise takes different forms. Whilemen demonstrate extensive and nuanced understand-ing of the ocean, the reefs, the tides, navigation, andsea life, women’s nautical expertise is limited to tidesand the shallow shelves and tidepools close to shore.Similarly, most men know the geography of theirisland intimately but do not claim knowledge of cropsor planting techniques.1

Further, beyond the way knowledge is distributedbased on daily occupation, control of the supernaturalproduces a different form of expertise. Elder mendemonstrate their authority by mediating between thewomen farmers and the spirit world. They are theones who determine when to hold the ngoma ceremo-nies asking the genies for advice and blessings,although, as one man ruefully explained to me, they

do so “with women whispering in our ears.”2 While Iobserved smaller drum ceremonies of women only,and women acted as both hosts and interpreters forgenies in those ceremonies, the much larger plantingngoma is always coordinated by men. So, althoughagriculture is primarily done by women, becauseplanting cannot proceed without the ngoma cer-emony, the ritual authority of the male elders in effectcreates boundaries for women’s practice.

However, women are themselves the guardians ofdistinct and extensive agricultural knowledge. Theirexpertise is embedded in complex patterns of landuse and the hereditary nature of the farm plots them-selves. As a foreign female researcher living in thecommunity, I had flexibility in moving between themen’s and women’s tasks, but the majority of my timewas still spent with women, working and conversingin their fields, collecting firewood, or fishing andshellfish gathering. Thus, I had ample opportunity toobserve and discuss the way women organized theirfields, planted their crops, and taught their daughtershow to farm.

A significant component of the farming system forJongowe village is that it is organized in an elaboratesystem of shifting cultivation controlled by thefarmers. There are six separate farming areas, ranginggeographically from plots adjacent to the village tofields that are about a 40-minute walk away. Thesefields are rotated on an annual schedule in a patternof alternating pairs: 1 2 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 6 5 6. This allowseach plot a ten-year fallow after being farmed for twoalternating years. Within each village field, everyfamily has a plot that they return to each time theyfarm that area. These plots are passed matrilineally, sosisters often farm adjacent plots that have been sub-divided from their mother’s plot. Observing thelayout of the Jongowe fields is akin to observing thepattern of matrilineal kinship for the village overtime.

Another critical aspect of Jongowe farming is thatall of the farmers work collectively and rotate theirfields as a unit. That is, they all move together to theannual farming areas, although within those areasthey have individual plots. While this collectivefallow period has the effect of conserving soil nutri-ents and allowing areas to rest, it has other practicalbenefits cited by women farmers. The most importantis pest control. If one woman decides to defy thecommunal decision to farm a certain plot, she willreceive no protection from the insects, birds, monkeys,


or other garden raiders. When the farmers of neigh-boring gardens (shambas) are controlling the insects intheir plot (usually through burning or picking off andkilling insects by hand), there are fewer available tomove into your plot. Monkeys and birds do take a tollon crop production, even among the collectivelyfarmed fields, but farmers think it would be muchworse if they did not plant in a group. The neighbor-ing village of Kichangani does not plant collectively,and often someone must sleep in the fields to protectthe crops from nighttime predators. So, while manywomen, especially the very old and the youngerwomen, do not want to rotate to fields further fromthe village, if the decision is made to go, everyonemust follow.

Another reason for the field rotation lies in theschedule of planting and the types of crops grown.For each plot, field preparation begins by cutting theovergrowth, both weeds and remaining vegetation,from the planting ten years ago. Occasionally, menhelp with this job, as it is strenuous labor. The remain-ing vegetation is then burned in controlled fires(Figure 1), creating completely clear fields and expos-ing the underlying rocky terrain. While farmers alsogrow cassava, pumpkins, and millet, the schedule ofplanting and harvesting revolves around green lentils,red beans, and pigeon peas. Lentils, beans, and milletare planted first, by making a hole in the soil with asharp stick and dropping seeds into it. Most womencan plant their entire plot in lentils, beans, and milletin one or two days. Next, cassava is planted. This is

much more labor intensive. Cassava stalks from theprevious year are harvested and cut into pieces aboutfour to six inches long. Using a tool called a mduu, acurved blade with a short handle used for farmingand cutting firewood, pockets of soil are loosened andcleared of any remaining weeds. The sticks of cassavaare stuck into these pockets, where they will take rootand eventually form tubers. Generally, plantingcassava takes about two weeks. Pumpkins are alsoplanted around this time, usually directly in thepatches of ash left from the fires used to clear thefields.

Lentils ripen first, and they are harvested andeaten or dried (Figure 2). Shortly thereafter, beans areready for harvest. If it rains, farmers will replantlentils and beans. If there is no rain, they will plantpeas, which can grow in dry periods. The peas growinto tall bushes, and as they get bigger, their foliagegradually shades the ground to the extent that othercrops cannot be planted. Because this tends to happenbefore the peas are ready to be harvested, farmerswishing to plant other crops must shift to the nextscheduled farming plot. Thus, in addition to control-ling pests, part of the reason for the annual rotation isthe size and timing of the pea crop.

Figure 1.Burning the fields to prepare for planting. Photo by: ErinDean.

Figure 2.Harvesting choroko or green lentils. Photo by: Iddie AliHadji.


The pea plants provide yet other benefits to thecrop rotation system and highlight the extent towhich the fallow period is part of the farmers’system of agricultural management. Once the peashave been harvested from the plants, those fields areleft to fallow for the off-years. Yet the peas continueto function as both effective and productive crops(Cairns 2007), both enhancing the soil and providingadditional resources to the farmers. Effectively, aslegumes, the pea plants are nitrogen fixers thatimprove the quality of the soil and make the fallowperiod more beneficial. As a fallow period covercrop, they also guard against soil erosion. Produc-tively, the pea “trees,” which continue to grow to atrunk diameter of several centimeters, are harvestedfor fuel wood. Using the ubiquitous mduu, womenwalk to the old fields and spend several hours eachweek cutting and stripping the trees of smallbranches to get suitable sticks for cooking fires. Theystack these sticks to dry in the field and later carrythe heavy loads on their heads to their houses forcooking. As all cooking in the village is done onwood fires, and the natural forest resources of thevillage are now nearly nonexistent, this source offuel wood is indispensable. Although planting peasmeans other crops will not grow as well in that plot,the benefits of food, soil improvement, and wood areimminently important.

Thus, the system of crop rotation practiced by thefarmers is responsive to the subsistence needs of thecommunity, the ecological requirements of the specificcrops, the control of agricultural pests, and the needto rest and rejuvenate the soil. Beyond this, farmspaces are also very much social spaces, wherewomen work with their sisters and socialize withtheir friends. In spite of the strenuous and hot workof planting and harvesting, when I asked womenwhere they could have fun or “relax,” they inevitablymentioned their farm plots.

The ritual authority of the male elders may delin-eate the timing of women’s activities, and womendefer to their leadership. Male ritual control repre-sents a specific type of agricultural knowledge thatlinks the ecological and spiritual. However, this formof ritual authority does not intrude on women’s day-to-day work or their understanding and managementof agricultural practice. This is not the case withanother form of agricultural knowledge at work in thevillage that draws its authority not only from genderdynamics but explicitly from “science.”

“Agricultural Science” as Expertise

While men ritually sanctify and direct agriculturalpractice, it is women’s understanding of sequencingand crop interactions that guides the actual produc-tion of food. However, the ritual and practical formsof agricultural knowledge signified by the ngomaceremony and women’s labor were also contested byemerging forms of expertise informed by the technicaldiscourse of “agricultural science.”

The day after the ngoma ceremony, I met with thevillage agricultural agent, Bwana Shamba (Mr. Farm).

“I hear you were at the ngoma last night,” hesaid, smiling at me. “What did you think?”

“Fascinating,” I replied truthfully. “But youweren’t there?”

“No, I don’t go to those things. I don’t believe init,” he said.

“You don’t believe in genies?” I asked. BwanaShamba was a devout Muslim, and I was curiousabout his position on this issue.

“I believe in genies,” he said. “I believe they arecreatures in this world as human beings are creaturesin this world. But I don’t believe they know when weshould plant our fields.”

He went on to express deep frustration with theagricultural practices of Jongowe farmers. This prac-tice of waiting for the genies to give permissionto plant was especially exasperating to him, andalthough this was the will of the male-dominatedvillage council and male ritual leaders, his frustrationwas focused on the women farmers of the village. Heexplained that agricultural science could considerthings like historical data and long-range weatherforecasting to determine the optimal planting date foreach crop. Women, he explained to me, were espe-cially stubborn and intransigent, clinging to tradi-tional beliefs rather than exploring “modern” farmingtechniques.

“You know,” he said, “traditional beliefs are amajor problem here. Adopting new ideas is a long-term program.”

Bwana Shamba’s frustration suggested that hemade strict distinctions between the various forms ofagricultural knowledge exercised in the village, and inparticular, between his understanding of the environ-ment and the understanding of the women farmers.In his view, filtered as it was through the lens ofmodern agricultural science, the women farmers werefixated on static and inherited ideas about agriculture


and crop management, the understanding of tradi-tional knowledge that Ingold and Kurttila (2000)described as MTK (as opposed to the experiential andadaptive knowledge of situated practitioners theyterm LTK).

This skepticism was reflected back at him infarmers’ opinions of many of his “technological inno-vations.” While the women farmers of the village wereinclined to accept the authority of the male elders onissues of spiritual compliance and timing, they wereless receptive to Bwana Shamba’s “technical” exper-tise. Rather than citing inherited knowledge as theirjustification, women instead referred to their experi-ence and situated practice as the explanation forcertain agricultural activities. For example, oneongoing area of conflict was in the burning of fieldsbefore planting. Bwana Shamba tried to keep thewomen from burning their fields, saying that burningdestroyed the small grasses and plants that kept thescant soil from completely blowing or washing away.In observing the fragile pockets of soil wedged into therocky terrain, it was easy to understand his concern.However, for the women farming those fields, burningwas a key part of the field preparation process. Theyexplained that the soil was “light” (upesi) from beingfarmed for too long, and the burning made it “heavy”(mzito). As described earlier, crops like squash werespecifically planted in piles of ash to take advantage ofthis enhanced soil. Further, and most significantly forthe farmers, burning kills insect pests, particularlysnails. So, while Bwana Shamba lamented the poten-tial loss of soil through the destruction of small groundcover, the women were not willing to give up apractice they believed enhanced the soil and providednecessary pest control.

Bwana Shamba has also clashed with the womenover the planting of corn. Corn used to be a staplecrop in Jongowe, but women no longer plant it.Bwana Shamba repeatedly encouraged the farmers toplant corn in their fields in order to supplement thevillage diet. However, women refused to do so, claim-ing that corn was particularly appealing to themassive Indian house crows, a relatively recent inva-sive species that is ubiquitous throughout Zanzibar.Indeed, Bwana Shamba admitted that while a few ofhis corn plants survived, the crows did indeedconsume most of the seed he planted as soon as heleft his field. A further area of disagreement betweenthe farmers and Bwana Shamba involved cropspacing. The women tended to plant their crops close

together and often with many seeds in one hole,growing a clump of millet rather than individualstalks. Bwana Shamba wanted them to space theircrops further apart and thin them. However, womenargued that if they planted fewer crops, pests wouldtake them and none would be left. The crowding wasa buffering strategy to accommodate what the womenknow will be inevitable loss to monkeys, rats, birds,and insects.

These disagreements reference differencesbetween broadly classified “traditional” approachesand “scientific” approaches to agricultural knowl-edge. But, as explored earlier, distinctions betweenthese forms of knowledge can be simplistic or prob-lematic, ignoring the situated nature of knowledgeproduction. Bwana Shamba is a male authority figurein Jongowe, but rather than drawing on spiritualauthority, he refers to scientific authority. Yet hissuggestions are largely resisted by the farmers. Thisresistance has something to do with the way hisagricultural advice conflicts with their experience andunderstanding of crop dynamics. And, beyond theclash Bwana Shamba perceived between traditionalpractices and modern practices, the farmers’ resis-tance to Bwana Shamba reflects the gendered divi-sions of knowledge and of the village space itself.Male elders have ritual control over some aspectsof agriculture, but women have a great deal ofautonomy in their actual activities. Bwana Shambachallenges that autonomy, while at the same timeattributing their reluctance to work with him to“women’s stubbornness.” Additionally, not only arewomen the producers of the vast majority of agricul-tural goods, but the farms are women’s spaces. Theyare the places where they talk with their sisters andcatch up with their friends. In the highly genderedgeography of the village, women are in control ofthose small areas of land, and Bwana Shamba’s inter-est in telling them what to do symbolically and physi-cally violates that female space.

Yet women’s willingness to defer to the maleelders about planting schedules suggests that there ismore to this clash than gendered tension. Withincommunities, areas of social differentiation and theways knowledge is divided between them are oftenrelated to broader issues of political authority andcontrol of resources (Leach and Fairhead 2002). Inaddition to the spiritual context and gendered normsof Jongowe, women’s and men’s interactions with theenvironment are occurring within a specific political


and economic context. Resistance to Bwana Shamba isnot only about control of gendered knowledge oradherence to tradition—it is also about the broaderpolitical climate on Tumbatu Island and all ofZanzibar.

Simply put, women do not trust Bwana Shamba.This is in part because he is male, but it has evenmore to do with the political composition of thevillage. The vast majority of the villagers of Jongowe,and almost all of the women, are members of theCivic United Front party, the party in opposition tothe ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi party, and the rela-tionship between these parties since the 1964 Revolu-tion has been fraught and at times violent. As agovernment extension officer, Bwana Shamba isviewed as a representative of a government that manyresidents view as negligent in its relationship withJongowe and a ruling party that some considercorrupt and even in some cases malicious. As a malegovernment representative, Bwana Shamba embodiesauthority in the village. Yet women resist this author-ity by defying his agricultural proscriptions, listeningpolitely and promptly ignoring his advice.

New Challenges to Agricultural Practice

This political tension, expressed subtly in thecompeting agricultural ideologies, has been both elu-cidated and overshadowed by a recent land disputewith the neighboring village. In 2009, a rumor spreadin Jongowe that a nongovernmental organization inthe neighboring village was trying to sell a stretch ofland between the villages to a developer withoutapproval from any authority in Jongowe. There areongoing disputes about the village borders, and thisparticular section of contested land contains a beau-tiful beachfront with abundant shellfish, the ruins of amosque thought to be built by some of Tumbatu’searly Shirazi settlers, and fields that are part of thewomen’s rotational cropping pattern.

In response to this rumor of impending landexpropriation, the women of Jongowe took the lead inprotecting their agricultural resources and strategi-cally went to farm the contested fields to reinforcetheir claim to the land, altering their standard patternof field rotation. The neighboring villagers protested,and tensions escalated beyond the women’s symbolicprotest to a stone-throwing fight between young menfrom both villages that injured three Jongowe youth,one seriously. Authorities at the district, regional, and

finally national level intervened and declared that noone could farm the area until the matter was resolved.Concerned that farming elsewhere would weakentheir claim to this land, the women of Jongowe didnot farm any of their plots for two years, a move thatcaused significant hardship and required families toeat their seed stock.

When a new unity government came to power atthe end of 2010, combining representatives from bothpolitical parties, villagers began to hope that the issuecould be decided quickly and fairly, and the maleelders decided that farmers should plant in the nextgrowing season. Thus, the ngoma I described at thebeginning of this article was particularly significant asthe blessings of the genies were especially importantthis year. Again, rather than following the traditionalfield rotation, the fields farmed beginning in 2011were strategically located on the path to the contestedland (although not the contested land itself). As withthe early stages of the conflict, the women’s agricul-tural practice became a tactical form of offense in thestruggle for land rights. The women’s adherence totheir praxis-oriented knowledge constituted an every-day form of resistance (Scott 1985) to Bwana Shambaand the gender and political authority he represented.But, in the context of the land dispute, this same tacticbecame actively political.

Knowledge and Resistance

One problem with attempts to distinguish or clas-sify various ways of knowing is the temptation toisolate or remove knowledge from any evolving socialcontext. All understandings of the environment areembedded in the cultural, political, and economicsituations of the people, and those situations areinformed by local processes and by national andtransnational issues that are constantly in flux. Thus,situated knowledge is not only partial but fluid,responsive to and responsible for changing contextsand contestations.

Many studies of indigenous knowledge and theconstruction of ecological “expertise” look at thestruggles between local people and external actorsand consider these conflicts in terms of propertyrights, conservation, and control of resources (Li 2007;Agrawal 2005; Tsing 2005; Sillitoe 2007). This externalfocus may in some cases obscure the way knowledgeis first classified and ranked within a community,and how this internal process informs multiple


expressions of power. Circumscribing knowledge andcontrolling land use is not just about clashes betweenlocal people and the state or tradition and science; inJongowe, elder men use their ritual authority to reas-sert control over an area where women have signifi-cant autonomy and power, and women accept thatauthority. However, women farmers’ refusal to acceptthe political authority of the male extension officersuggests the limit of gender-based power.

Agricultural knowledge in Jongowe is clearlygendered, yet the examples of Bwana Shamba and theland dispute suggest that while control of where andhow to plant the fields is expressed and even embod-ied in gendered ways, for the women farmers, genderis not the most relevant distinction in their decisionsto acquiesce to or resist competing forms of authority.Rather, the distinction of note has to do with both thedegree of interference and ideological or politicalclassifications based on the village’s strong place-based sense of identity. The distinction BwanaShamba notes between “traditional” and “modern”agricultural practice could more effectively bedescribed as a difference between the trusted and theunknown (or the known to be untrustworthy). Simi-larly, while the power of male ritual leaders reflectsthe patriarchal nature of authority in the village, it isalso contained within accepted ideas about commu-nity identity and heritage, a deeply held respect forelders, and generations of spiritual practice. In con-trast, the techniques brought by Bwana Shamba andthe threat of land appropriation are challenges tofarmers’ autonomy from outside the village. In thiscontext, farming becomes an act of resistance to theexternal power embodied by technical advisors andthreats of land expropriation.

Until the recent land dispute, in Jongowe, thepolitical components of the struggle over agriculturalideology have largely been only symbolic, with theagricultural extension officer representing the statebut not really possessing any of the state’s authorityor power. Yet the land dispute and the governmentintervention have highlighted the way control ofresources is implicated in broader power strugglesand how control of land can translate into control ofpeople. The outcome of the land dispute is stillunclear, but the important role of Jongowe’s femalefarmers is increasingly evident, as is their determina-tion to resist any ordering of knowledge that chal-lenges their limited autonomy or privileges the“scientific” over their practical experience.

The night of the ngoma, a male elder presentedthe genies with the offerings from the village, and thegenies gave their verdict on the proper time to beginthe planting season. Jumanne, the genies agreed,Tuesday. After a while, another answer came: Jioni, inthe evening. The next Tuesday as the sun was goingdown, the women of Jongowe sprinkled incensewater on their fields in another tribute to the genieadvisors. Then, in preparation for the new growingseason, they lit their fires.

Notes

1. There are a few men in the village who keep farm plotson the main island of Zanzibar, where they mostly growrice and bananas, not the crops women farmers grow onTumbatu Island. I did not, however, know of any womanwho fished beyond the seine net, wade fishing along theshore, and indeed many women expressed their fear ofthe ocean and their inability to swim.

2. That is, when women believe it is getting close to afavorable time to plant, they begin to urge the elders toconsider holding the ceremony.

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contested ecologies: gender, genies, and agricultural knowledge in zanzibar

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