Trouble Showed the Way

Relates women's involvement in the staples trade to enhanced self-confidence, the rise of women's organizations, and changes in government policies. Examining this commodity, often taken for granted like the women traders, the author suggests other areas of exploration - women developing new relationships to their world.

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Robertson employs a variety of approaches to analyze and weave together this wide-ranging study. This book provides an extensive case study of historical transformations in gender, agriculture, residence and civil society. Based on archival documents, library sources (fiction and non-fiction, primary and secondary), surveys and oral histories, participant observation, and quantitative and qualitative analysis, Robertson breaks new ground by focusing on traders in one commodity, dried staples, and comparing and contrasting the evolution of women's trade with men's trade. This study adopts a regional rather than an ethnic focus, in adding a historical approach to the study of ethnobotany, in identifying key elements in socioeconomic change, in linking together women's urban and rural experiences, and in meshing symbolic with material aspects of the most mundane of topics-beans. Examining this commodity, often taken for granted like the women traders, the author suggests new areas of exploration - women developing new relationships to their world, and attempting to shape that world to their needs.
Their involvement with trade, not only changes their conceptions of themselves, but also their abilities and their physical beings. In developing a food-supply system to feed Nairobi, they also undertook efforts to control their own bodies and businesses and to reconstruct Kenya's economy and society from below.