ABSTRACT
Survival in Mambwe country is very much a question of whether and how poorer households control their food supply, and of whether access to regular cash can be ensured. When survival is at stake, networks 'organized round a core of women' can prove very effective indeed. In spite of the limited function that patrilineality has for action beyond the sphere of inheritance where they concern cultures conventionally labelled as matrilineal, are useful for understanding survival. The Mambwe self-help programme for economic survival may indeed at the end of its lifespan. The Mambwe economy is coming to terms with a deteriorating physical resource base and with an ailing national distribution sector. Village conditions vary a great deal in Mambwe land. Life in Mambwe villages can be suitably understood within the framework of a political economy of migrant labour. The long history of Mambwe involvement in wage migration is the ultimate wider reference for understanding the more important aspects of village life.
