Sweeping as a site of temporal brokerage

Linking town and forest in Mozambique

Bibliographic Data

ID2360994
AuthorsIngrid L Nelson (0000-0001-5589-1347, University of Vermont, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume36
Issue1
Pages44-60
Publication date2016-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritique of Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-275X • E-ISSN: 1460-3721
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0308275x15617303
OpenAlexW2305591539
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited16

Building on 18 months of ethnographic research between 2007 and 2011 in Mozambique, this article explores how sweeping practices elaborate multiple temporalities and thus can serve as powerful sites of "brokerage" where diverse actors and their many agendas meet. Sweeping renders daily activities legible to local residents and illegible to others. Daily sweeping just outside of the home signifies a day's routine beginning and a family's availability for receiving visitors. Sweeping also prevents the rapidly growing miombo woodland undergrowth from invading the home space, which partly explains differences in why many local residents see the woodlands as advancing and environmentalists' argue that the "forest" is disappearing due to illegal logging. Limited understandings of sweeping as banal or wasted time miss the links between many urban-based non-governmental organization and activist practitioners who implement their projects in rural areas. Sweeping blurs and challenges assumed boundaries between urban and rural woodland spaces

Archaeology · Economic growth · Environmental planning · Ethnography · Geography · Logging · Political science · Sociology · Temporalities · Undergrowth · Woodland · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Ecology · Forestry

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub