Studying Social Change Through Return Visits: Return Visits:an Embu Restudy
Abstract
This paper outlines research aims and some preliminary
findings from a 1994 restudy of social change in rural Embu
District. The new project updates the author's early 1980s
field research in rural Kenya, and aims at collecting
quantitative and ethnographic data that will allow
comparisons with earlier cross-sectional data from an
intensive study of farmers in "the highlands of the Embu
District.
The paper discusses analytical and methodological problems
of studying agrarian social change. Persistent challenges
include those of capturing the strengths of both interpretive
and more positivistic or empirical approaches (e.g. exploring
cultural constructions of economic inequality as well as
positivistic 'measures' of it); exploring the interplay of
structural constraints and individual action (the
structure/agency problem); distinguishing recurrent from
linear processes of change (of Chayanov 1966), and
separating structural change from fleeting variations inpractise.Substantive themes to be investigated in the 1994 field study
include changes in farmers' economic strategies, wealth, and
land tenure arrangements (especially in response to growing
land scarcity). The central questions of the restudy are as
follows: What processes of agrarian social differentiation are
observable through longitudinal study rather than crosssectional
analysis? What are the influences on rural
household wealth differences today? How do exchange
relations between individuals in town and countryside shape
rural differentiation processes? How do Embu people
construe changes in their material well-being (e.g. as lifecycle
effects, misfortune or good luck, or the outcome of
hard work, laziness, or poor judgment)?
Preliminary findings from the 1994 restudy suggest that over
half of the original study households bel ieve (for reasons
discussed in the paper) that their material circumstances
have improved since 1980/81. The study also addresses
economic mobility across generations. Economic changes
in the research area include a sharp increase in coffee
cultivation in the former cotton zone, increased macadamia
nut and dairy production in the middle coffee zone, annut and dairy production in the middle coffee zone, an
increase in the number
Publisher
Univesity of Nairobi Institute of Development Studies