to provide services and in search of a livelihood
through restaurants or prostitution. During the
two world wars many men in French and British
colonies were conscripted to fight for the Allies
with the encouragement of Muslim shaykhs; many
were not paid by the European powers for their
services. The slave trade and labor migration were
thus major factors affecting the relations of pro-
duction within the household economy, with wide
ranging consequences for the economy proper.Postcolonial period
The French anthropologist Claude Meillassoux
(1975) analyzed West African agricultural commu-
nities and their articulation with capitalism through
the process of colonization to illuminate the con-
nections between the kinship structures that control
reproduction and the exploitation of workers. Meil-
lassoux thus considered the historical and material
conditions that contributed to the development of
this particular form of social organization to avoid
thinking of the family as an extra social given.
In the postcolonial period, many agriculturally
based communities have suffered environmental
degradation as a result of poor farming practices
related to monocropping during the colonial period.
They have come to rely increasingly on trade in
local, national, and overseas markets and overseas
remittances as the prices for raw goods have fallen
in the global market and their currencies have been
devalued through structural adjustment programs
of the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank. As a result, men have become increasingly
involved in overseas migration and women have
become increasingly involved in domestic markets.
Women are thus often the consumers and distribu-
tors of good imported by their male counterparts.
In some societies, such as northern Nigeria, women
practice seclusion and must rely on exchanges
between households to earn money rather than
working outside the home.
Thus the household division of labor within the
family is not comprised of a fixed set of duties and
responsibilities, but rather by a set of obligations
that are the product of a process of constant rene-
gotiation in the context of changing social, politi-
cal, and economic conditions. The division of labor
within the family is influenced in part by Qur±ànic
law and by the ™adìth, the sayings of the Prophet
Mu™ammad (Sow 1985, 563). For example, in
Senegal, men and women place a premium on gen-
erosity. For men this means giving charity and alms
as well as gifts to religious leaders and aid to friends,
associates, and business partners. Ideas about gen-
erosity form the basis of relations of patronage that246 household division of labor
reach up toward the state. For women, the empha-
sis on generosity means giving liberally at family
ceremonies and staging elaborate feasts. Thus men
and women often come into conflict concerning the
allocation of household resources.
In many families across the continent, women
participate in rotating credit unions and Islamic
forms of banking that avoid payment of interest,
which is prohibited in Islam. These economic
organizations may be composed of family mem-
bers, neighbors, religious devotees, or participants
in local development projects sponsored by non-
governmental organizations. One such organiza-
tion that has been very successful is ENDA T.M. in
Senegal. Exchange relations, and their affective
qualities, go beyond family to encompass rotating
credit unions, and ritual, neighborhood, and polit-
ical associations. Relations among women neigh-
bors have become a significant resource pooling
unit, much like the kinship unit.
Qur±ànic law is applied differently to varying
forms of family structures and relations of obliga-
tion across the continent. What is universal is the
emergence of a discourse about how Qur±ànic law
ought to be interpreted with respect to the genera-
tion and distribution of resources along the lines of
age and gender. Arguments concerning the division
of labor and household economy play out over the
manipulation of rules of filiation, paternity, en-
gagement, marriage, and inheritance. But as Sow
argues, “the advent of Islam in black Africa did not
lead to acute conflict of family structures and law”
(1985, 563). She gives two reasons, the first of
which is a historical argument based on the plural-
istic basis of many of these societies and the second
is that “Koranic thought lends itself to interpreta-
tion (ijtihad), in the sense of adaptation” (1985,
563).
Conventionally, the head of the family is a senior
male. This person is in a position to control the pro-
duction, exchange, and distribution of resources;
this includes material resources such as land and
cash and symbolic payments such as bridewealth
within the extended family. This person also dis-
tributes work along the lines of age and gender, pro-
vides for the needs of the family members, and
endeavors to establish good relations beyond the
household (Sow 1985, 564). Women aim to sustain
good relations within the household and extended
family. Authority follows the lines of age and gen-
eration in the first order and gender in the second,
in most cases. With regard to relations of alliance,
mothers-in-law have control over the productive
and reproductive possibilities of their daughters-in-
law. Thus younger women often take on the burden