Gardening on the Edge: The Social Conditions of Unsustainability on an African Urban Periphery

Political ecology has done much to disassemble the dominant narratives used to define, explain, and manage environmental degradation in Africa. However, it has not seriously challenged a core assumption of these narratives: that the “natural” environment (that is, the environment containing natural resources) is the rural. This article argues for a critical analysis of human-environment relations in and around Africa’s cities, not simply because environmental problems in these areas have been for too long neglected. Such an inquiry also offers insights into the dynamic relationship between local ecological and economic change and the geographically and historically constructed social institutions governing daily production, exchange, and decision making processes. Drawing on research conducted in two market gardening villages outside of Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, the article examines how a combination of economic austerity and certain kinds of natural resource deterioration have transformed both the meanings and practices of daily work, thereby undermining potentially useful relations of collaboration and trust, both within and beyond the village. More broadly, this article argues that any analysis of how people cope with increasingly difficult material conditions in Africa’s peri-urban areas must consider how local social institutions have been shaped by a history of close urban contact.