some time to reflect on the tools of analysis of Sklar and its inability to seé°
 beyond personalities. Moreover the squandering of the petro-dollars and the
 chaotic capital accumulation in Nigeria may nowlead other students of Nigeri-
 an politics to seek to develop new tools of analysis. Both books under review
 expose the limits of bourgeois theory. They show that idealist conceptions of
 politics must be linked to the social reality of the forms ofclass truggle arising
 from the location of Africa in the international division of labour.
                                                                                         seestlliniiteres
 Horace Campbell.                       .      ae            .
 Departmentofpolitical Science and Public Administration. University of Dar es Salaam.
 Review: Hans Hedlund & Mats Lundahl, Migration and Change
 in Rureai Zambia. Scandinavian Institute of African Studies,
 Research Report No. 70, 1983. pp. 107.
    Studies of migration in Africa aboundintheliterature these days, with very
 few such studies revealing anything new. This small volume, a report of research _
 conducted in Eastern Zambiain the mid-1970’s, approaches the topic yet again,
 but with a difference. Instead of focussing on migrants (and their activities,.
 etc), Hedlund and Lundahl reverse the focus and ask how migration has ef-
 fected those who remain behind in the rural areas!
      Chapter 2 is a discussion of theoretical models which have been used in
-the study of migration. Despite raising someinteresting issues concerning the
 rural poor and women, the authors apparently accept a modified version of
 the Harris-Todaro migration model(whichstresses the economicrationality of
 the migrant) and theutility of static modelsin general to explain an extremely
 complex situation in which the nature and scope of economic opportunities have
 changed dramatically over the last 50-60 years in Zambia.
      Chapter 3 then attempts to briefly set out the relation between traditional
 agriculture (chiterene) and patterns of migration. The system ofreserves created
 by white settlers and discriminatory market practices (affecting corn) had the
 effect of concentrating too latge a population on too small an area with a con-
 sequent decline in household production and rural malnutrition. At the same
 time, however, the Copperbelt was developing as a major centre for wage labour
 and ushered in massive rural-urban migration which has, over the decades,
 changed in nature from temporary to permanent migration.
      The pressures for migration out of Chipata (the area studied) were con-
 siderable and have resulted in a rural population in which men of productive
 age are absent and onethird of all households are headed by women. In gener-
 al, the authors have made a case for the development of small-scale rural
 producers which is taking place within the context of rapid social differentia-
 tion of the rural areas. Chapter 5 attempts to present a static model predicting
 the consequences of rural-urban migration uponthedistrict. While interesting,
 this model contains too many simplifying assumptions (which the authors note)
 and overly formalises what in fact is a complex process by which capitalism
 has penetrated pre-capitalist agriculture creating the basis for rural underdevelap-
 ment and rural poverty. The data used toillustrate the modelis very interesting
 and demonstrates their hypothesis that rural-urban migration has resulted in
«declining per capita incomes because ofthe shortage of male agriculturelabour.
                                                 80


 As a consequence of this reduction in rural incomes .- which hits the poorest.
households more — household production has tended to switch away from (more
 labour-intensive) cash crops to subsistence crops as a consciousstrategy to uti-
 lise available labour in such a way as to minimise potential risks (especially food
 shortages) to the household.
       The argumentfor rural stagnation of incomes — whichis the primary cén-
 tribution of the study —(and ofthe function of beer in agricultural labour) could
 have been strengthened by stratifying household data (by     Neve     only
                                                                          andwould
                                                                            « ‘vould
 have made more seriseof information provided. As ifis,
idea of how different households are situated to each otber.in cationtthe      to the
 key variables of supplementaryincome, farming’téchniques (i.c. oxen), availa-
 bility of labour, sex and composition of               Id, and history of migration
 (muchless as a comparison betweenthe             the ). The final chapter ‘‘A Sug-
 gested Remedy:.Settlement Schemes’’ details the abysmal failureof such schemes
 in Zambiaand adds little to the analysis: As such it is merely tacked on and,
 unless we are to understand by such failures soniething more fundamental un-
 derlying such attempts at social engineering in Zambia as opposed to elsewhere,
‘offers no insights into the problem of deepening rural poverty and its impact
 on continuing rural-urban migration.
 John R. Campbell
Department of Sociology University Dar es Salaam.