"All we know is the hoe" : women's later life experiences within a changing rural economy in Uganda

Abstract

This thesis examines how the recent significant changes to Uganda's rural economy and the consequences of unprecedented levels of in-migration to rural villages have impacted on the everyday lives of native and migrant older women. The study is located in a culturally diverse small rural village of Kalungi in Mubende district, Uganda. I investigated the rural complex aspects, for example women's interaction with the structural components that variously shape their decision-making, i.e., their acceptance or resistance, adaptation, or endurance of rural socio-economic transformations. I have argued that the combined influences of the market, community, and capital shape the social and economic realities of those ageing in a capitalist rural environment, perceivably more than the ageing process itself. And here I have drawn upon two interconnected theoretical frameworks; Gudeman's theory of the dialectical forces of the market and community, and Pierre Bourdieu's theory of material and non-material capital within communities. Based on these theoretical frameworks, I have developed my argument through an analysis of older women's life stories to demonstrate the ways in which rural changes have altered their relationship to land, family and social network structures, and the rural communities' cultures. The thesis demonstrates that both natives and migrants experienced these changes as disruption and dislocation, within a new ageing environment characterised by socio-economic disequilibrium and - in part "" precarity, an outcome further exacerbated by gender and class. The thesis proposes a five-tier pyramidal ruralcentric framework that provides a basis for reconstructing both our conceptual and theoretical understandings of what it means to grow older as either native or migrant women in contemporary rural Uganda. It also has a great potential to stimulate a critical political debate about the role of capital intersectionality and transformation in shaping female experiences of ageing in in rural contexts.

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English