Outside Development Interventions: People's Daily Actions among the Plateau Tonga of Zambia

Abstract

Outside of or without development initiatives, people make a living by using their complex web of relationships. As the matrilineal Tongas of Zambia have experienced external and internal changes since the beginning of the last century, the egalitarian society phrased as "economy of affection" has been transformed. This paper examines whether the Tonga "sharing ideology" still exists by looking at how people help each other in farming tasks such as ploughing, weeding, and harvesting. Throughout different household categories, class, and gender, people are still embedded in the wider social network based on kinship, neighbourhood and other relations, and support each other. Conflicts have also been observed at the interfaces of different people with different interests on such occasions as the sharing of benefits and settling inheritance.