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Becoming a bwana and burley tobacco in the Central Region of Malawi*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2009

Martin Prowse
Martin Prowse*
Affiliation:
Institute of Development Policy and Management (IOB), University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 13, B-2000 Antwerpen, Belgium
*
Email: martin.prowse@ua.ac.be
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Abstract

Smallholders now grow most of Malawi's main export crop – burley tobacco. Based on nineteen months' fieldwork in the Central Region, this article offers a sociological interpretation of why some smallholder growers spend a proportion of burley income on conspicuous consumption in rural towns and trading centres. This practice can be seen as a form of inculcated behaviour whereby smallholders reproduce elements of one model of success in this region: that of the Malawian tobacco bwana (boss/master). The article discusses implications from this form of potlatch behaviour by describing the contrasting fortunes of two non-farm rural enterprises, examining data on how tobacco production and ‘cooling off’ is viewed by wives, and comparing the crop preferences of husbands and wives. It concludes by suggesting that the concept of conspicuous consumption may provide an alternative prism to the instrumental lens of neo-patrimonialism through which to view apparently unintelligible investment decisions in African economies.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , December 2009 , pp. 575 - 602
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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Footnotes

*

The research for this paper was conducted whilst I was a PhD candidate at the University of Manchester. I gratefully acknowledge Economic and Social Research Council funding, and my affiliation to the Centre for Social Research, Zomba, and the National Smallholder Farmers' Association of Malawi (NASFAM). I thank Juveta Nkhata and Sirjent Saka for excellent research assistance, Jens Andersson and Richard Sherrington for their comments, and Jan Kees van Donge for his enthusiasm in studying the sociology of economic life. Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers whose comments have improved the paper considerably.

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