Moving along the roadside: A social history of Mwinilunga District, 1870s-1970s

Abstract

This thesis examines how the process of social change in the area of Mwinilunga, a district in the north-western province of Zambia, was manifested between 1870 and 1970. The process of social change is examined by looking in detail at four aspects, namely production, mobility, consumption and social relationships. Social change has received much attention in Zambian historiography. The anthropologist Victor Turner linked social change in Mwinilunga District to settlement patterns, predicting a change from large concentric villages to small settlements along the roadside. This change in settlement patterns would be accompanied by changes in patterns of production (from subsistence to market production of cash crops), mobility (labour migration to urban areas), consumption (from locally manufactured to store-bought goods) and social relationships (from extended kinship to family nucleation and individualisation). Did such changes indeed occur, or was change more complex and non-linear?