Introduction

This chapter discusses aspects of 'village structures' as observed them in one remote area of Zambia, during the turbulent late 1970s. The area, inhabited by the Mambwe people, lies in Mbala district, Northern Province. Zambia moved into the 1980s as a nation on the brink of famine. Poor harvests in 1979 and 1980 had forced the Zambian authorities to import maize–expensive maize–from the United States Kenya, Zimbabwe and even South Africa. Zambian agriculture, Dumont thought, suffered from an excessive dependence on foreign models and costly external inputs. The Zambian response was to ignore Dumont's approach and philosophy. Zambia's search for a viable food strategy is hampered by ideological uncertainty and confusion. The contrast between evidence and theory does not need to be elaborated here, since it is a central issue in Cliffe's well-known paper on labour migration and peasant differentiation in rural Zambia. Watson also reflected on the notion that returning migrants may accelerate the process of rural differentiation.