L'avenir d'une illusion. Histoire de la production et des politiques vivrières en Côte-d'Ivoire

In: Etudes rurales: anthropologie, économie, géographie, histoire, sociologie ; ER, Band 99, Heft 1, S. 281-325

Abstract

The Future of an Illusion: the History of Food Crop Production and Policies in the
Ivory Coast.

The history of food crops in the Ivory Coast during the colonial period reveals large-scale transformations with a quantitative increase that are usually overlooked. The history of economic policies also shows the precocity and permanency of concern with the food problem as well as the repetititveness of applied measures and, in general, of their failure.
Dominant discourse about the "native" (now called "informal") sector formed a "paradigm" perpetuated as a system of ideological and symbolic concepts. This paradigm, which does not take into account the efficiency and complexity of the system of production, is based upon an evolutionary model that historical reconstruction has invalidated. This nonanalysis of the food-producing sector in processes of global transformation makes it possible for State agencies to act without worrying about meeting up with "reality".