Machines That Cook or Women Who Cook?: Lessons from Mali on Technology, Labor, and Women's Things

摘要

By the last quarter of the twentieth century, grain mills had proliferated across rural Mali and were central to the story of women and development. Yet, proponents of such supposed labor-saving technologies often assumed that women in Africa have little technological experience or know-how. The present article examines this well-worn narrative with an emphasis on the ways in which Malian women have interrogated different technological interventions from their own shifting perceptions. It is a history that predates the introduction of grain mills and post-colonial development and focuses on women's savvy when it came to assessing new technologies, especially in relation to cooking. This historical examination further illuminates not only women's concern for labor-saving technologies, but also women's ability to shape the infrastructure of their work. In so doing, they gender their tools as women's things and assert control over the meanings of their own work and status.