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Household Extension and Fragmentation: Investigating the Socio-Environmental Dynamics of Mossi Domestic Transitions

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Abstract

Recent studies in West Africa and other parts of the world suggest that globalization and modernization make extended forms of domestic organization untenable in the face of modern economic and ecological circumstances. Unlike the large and extended domestic groups of pre-industrial and pre-colonial periods, households today tend to be small and nuclear. Thirty years ago, a series of case studies conducted on the Central Plateau of Burkina Faso documented this nucleation process among Mossi rural communities and predicted the decline and demise of Mossi extended households. This article tests the degree to which these predictions were correct based on ethnographic fieldwork in three villages in 2004. The results indicate that extended households indeed persist. Their persistence is explained by analyzing the roles of environmental and social change on the twin processes of household extension and fragmentation. Regional desiccation, off-farm income-generating opportunities, and agricultural intensification have created conditions that equally promote both household extension and fragmentation.

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Notes

  1. This term should also be credited to Ingold who used it to describe similar household processes in his book Hunters, Pastoralists, and Ranchers (1988).

  2. At the time of their fieldwork, the country was the République de la Haute Volta or simply Upper Volta.

  3. This research was funded with a Pre-Dissertation Research Grant from the West African Research Association (WARA).

  4. Batterbury (1998) asked the tengsoba or chef du terre (custodian of the Earth) of Mossi villages to delineate the approximate terroirs in his study. This position does not exist within all of the villages featured here—notably the saaba village of Loulouka. Likewise, Kouka is involved in a land dispute with a neighboring village and this information would be highly politically charged. For these reasons, a similar method was not used.

  5. My research assistant was Aimé SOMÉ dit Bonaventure whose assistance in all aspects of the research was invaluable.

  6. Projet Amenagement des Terroirs et Conservations des Ressources dans le Plateau Central is funded by the German government through a cooperative agreement with the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock of Burkina Faso.

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Acknowledgments

Fieldwork was funded by a Social Science Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Population Council. Write-up of this article was supported by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate and Global Change Post-doctoral Fellowship. I would like to thank the people of Loulouka, Sakou, Kouka, and Kongoussi who graciously shared their lives with me. I would also like to thank Carla Roncoli, Mark Moritz, and Michael Kevane who helped me revise early drafts of this document. Carol G. West provided proof-reading assistance.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Colin Thor West

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West, C.T. Household Extension and Fragmentation: Investigating the Socio-Environmental Dynamics of Mossi Domestic Transitions. Hum Ecol 38, 363–376 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-010-9317-3

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