Decision making process of African farmers : a theoretical approach
Abstract
"The objectives and limitations: The objective of this dissertation is to derive an economic decision rule from the given set of underlying concepts of social organization of African societies. The small cultivator is used as an example to illustrate the rule. Like any other theoretical construction, this dissertation uses an idealized cultivator and an idealized community. It is true that some of Africa’s cultivators may not fit this construction. However, these are exceptions which do not invalidate the essential patterns to be reckoned with. A communal decision rule, based on an extended family system is derived. This rule, as any other, is entirely subjective. From this communal framework is constructed a system of production, consumption and exchange. Under some reasonable assumptions, this system does satisfy the Pareto criteria. A speculative scheme of development policy implications which is consistent with the derived system is then developed. This study is limited in three respects: first it deals only with cultivators who are called "traditional". Second, it does not provide a broad range of empirical test simply because no data have been collected to achieve this purpose. Finally, the study is highly theoretical, even though personal experience and intuition have made it possible to draw some empirical implications."--Page 7.
Degree
Ph. D.
Thesis Department
Rights
OpenAccess.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.