Among the rural Embu people of Eastern Kenya, teaching and learning are not purely institutional activities. Instead, knowledge is passed from generation to generation alongside the most mundane activities. In Indigenous African Knowledge Production, Njoki Nathani Wane uses food-processing practices - preparing, preserving, cooking, and serving - as an entry point into the indigenous knowledge of the Embu and the role that rural Embu women play in creating and transmitting it. Using personal narratives collected during several years of field research in Kenya, Wane demonstrates how Embu women use proverbs, fables, and folktales to preserve and communicate their world-view, knowledge, and cultural norms. She shows how this process preserves Indigenous knowledge devalued by the colonial and post-colonial educational systems, as well as the gendered dimension of the transmission process. Wane's book will be useful not just to those studying development and education in Africa, but also to all those interested in questions of how to preserve and recover local cultural knowledge. Reviews: Njoki Nathani Wane addresses an important topic and proffers a powerful argument that places women at the centre of local knowledge production. She does an excellent job in representing Embu women's views and their engagement with traditional technologies. - Isidore Lobnibe, Department of Anthropology, Western Oregon University Little has been published on African women s indigenous knowledge systems and food production. Wane s book is an important contribution to the research in this area. - Patricia Clark, Director, African and African-American Studies, SUNY Oswego" Table of Contents: Acknowledgements Foreward by George J. Sefa Dei (University of Toronto, Sociology and Equity Studies) Map of Kenya Introduction Chapter One - Food Processing: Embu and Indigenous Knowledges Chapter Two - Kenya: The Land, the People, and the Socio-Political Economy Chapter Three - The Everyday Experiences of Embu Women Chapter Four - Food Preservation and Change Chapter Five - Gender Relations; Decision Making & Food Preferences Chapter Six - Indigenous Technology & the Influence of New Innovations Chapter Seven - Removing the Margins: Including Indigenous Women's Voices in Knowledge Roduction Chapter Eight - Contesting Knowledge: Some Concluding Thoughts Endnotes References About the Author: Njoki Nathani Wane is a professor in the Department of Humanities, Social Science, and Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. |