Indigenous African Knowledge Production: Food-Processing Practices among Kenyan Rural Women

by Njoki Nathani-Wane

Overview

Among the rural Embu people of Eastern Kenya, teaching and learning are not purely institutional activities. Instead, knowledge is passed from generation to generation alongside the most mundane activities. In Indigenous African Knowledge Production, Njoki Nathani Wane uses food-processing practices – preparing, preserving, cooking, and serving – as an entry point into the indigenous knowledge of the Embu and the role that rural Embu women play in creating and transmitting it.

Using personal narratives collected during several years of field research in Kenya, Wane demonstrates how Embu women use proverbs, fables, and folktales to preserve and communicate their world-view, knowledge, and cultural norms. She shows how this process preserves Indigenous knowledge devalued by the colonial and post-colonial educational systems, as well as the gendered dimension of the transmission process.

Wane’s book will be useful not just to those studying development and education in Africa, but also to all those interested in questions of how to preserve and recover local cultural knowledge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442648142
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	05/28/2014
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.28(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Njoki Nathani Wane is a professor in the Department of Humanities, Social Science, and Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreward by George J. Sefa Dei (University of Toronto, Sociology and Equity Studies)

Map of Kenya

Introduction

Chapter One – Food Processing: Embu and Indigenous Knowledges

Chapter Two – Kenya: The Land, the People, and the Socio-Political Economy

Chapter Three – The Everyday Experiences of Embu Women

Chapter Four – Food Preservation and Change

Chapter Five – Gender Relations; Decision Making & Food Preferences

Chapter Six – Indigenous Technology & the Influence of New Innovations

Chapter Seven – Removing the Margins: Including Indigenous Women’s Voices in Knowledge Roduction

Chapter Eight – Contesting Knowledge: Some Concluding Thoughts

Endnotes

References

What People are Saying About This

Patricia Clark

“Little has been published on African women’s indigenous knowledge systems and food production. Wane’s book is an important contribution to the research in this area.”

Isidore Lobnibe

“Njoki Nathani Wane addresses an important topic and proffers a powerful argument that places women at the centre of local knowledge production. She does an excellent job in representing Embu women’s views and their engagement with traditional technologies.”

Editorial Reviews

Little has been published on African women’s indigenous knowledge systems and food production. Wane’s book is an important contribution to the research in this area.”—Patricia Clark, Director, African and African-American Studies, SUNY Oswego
“Njoki Nathani Wane addresses an important topic and proffers a powerful argument that places women at the centre of local knowledge production. She does an excellent job in representing Embu women’s views and their engagement with traditional technologies.”—Isidore Lobnibe, Department of Anthropology, Western Oregon University

From the Publisher