McCann, Maize and Grace - Book Report/Review Example

McCann, Maize and Grace One of the most notable works on the social history of maize in Africa, James McCann’s Maize and Grace: Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop, 1500-2000 deals with how maize has become the continent’s most important source of food as a result of the intolerant environment and rapidly changing weather patterns in the continent. Significantly, McCann makes a profound exploration of the history of maize in Africa, and the various chapters of the book deals with studies of particular regions or topics relating to the general history of maize in Africa.

Introduced sometime around 1500 A.D. as a seed imported from the New World, maize has become the most important crop and food grain of the region. It is important to recognize that Africa’s experience with maize, although distinctive to the continent, is also instructive from a global perspective, because it is predicted to be the world’s most cultivated crop by 2020. “Whereas much of the world requires maize as a livestock and chickenfeed… Africa’s demand is primarily for maize as food for humans.

This particular situation of Africa by comparison with other world areas sets the continent’s romance with maize apart.” (McCann, 2005, P. xii) Therefore, it is evident that McCann’s work, instead of systematically analyzing the entire maize commodity system in Africa, is concerned with various themes, problems, and processes which illuminate the outstanding African encounter with a New World crop over a period of time. This paper makes a comprehensive review of McCann’s Maize and Grace in order to analyze the major argument of the author in the book, its strengths and weaknesses, the use of different sources to effectively convey the main points, etc.

McCann’s Maize and Grace has been widely regarded as one of the central contributions to an understanding of the social history of maize in Africa and the author’s major argument is presented with reference to the history of maize in Africa. McCann begins his book with a discussion of the biology of maize and how it fits into African climates and ecologies. According to the author, “the story of African maize tells us a great deal about the continent’s distinctive physical and cultural environments, as well as the many ways Africa has contributed to the global (and globalized) phenomenon of maize.

” (McCann, 2005, P. 11) In the second chapter of the book, “Naming the Stranger: Maize’s Journey to Africa”, McCann investigates the linguistic evidence from the diverse range of African names for maize, whereas the next chapter (“Maize’s Invention in West Africa”) deals with how maize’s arrival in the region became a defining event in the historical perspective. The role of the political economy of peasant farming in the cultivation of maize in Venice’s Po Valley region and the Ethiopian highlands is analyzed in the chapter “Seeds of Subversion in Two Peasant Empires”.

The influence of industrialization and mining on the large-scale cultivation of maize during the late 18th and early 19th century is taken up in the chapter “How Africa’s Maize Turned White”, while the next chapter “African Maize, American Rust” deals with a fungus detected in Sierra Leone in late 1949. The chapter “Breeding SR-52: the Politics of Science and Race in Southern Africa” discusses about the development of the SR-52 maize hybrid in 1960 and the next chapter, “Maize and Malaria”, explores links between maize and malaria, focusing on the Ethiopian area of Burie.

In the final chapter, “Maize as Metonym in Africa’s New Millennium”, McCann is concerned with the future of maize in Africa: “By the year 2020… world demand for maize will surpass he need for both rice and wheat… For Africa, where humans eat more than three-quarters of the maize produced… the annual demand for maize will virtually double, to 52 million tons.” (McCann, 2005, P. 197) In a profound analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments made by the author, it becomes lucid that McCann is highly effective in convincing the readers about the general history of maize in Africa as well as its nature and future.

The author efficiently takes the reader to a captivating tour of five centuries of African history relating to maize and its effect is mainly academic more than the popular. In short, it is a highly productive work for students of African agriculture as well as general readers who are fascinated about the social history of maize in Africa. Bibliography McCann, James. 2005. Maize and Grace: Africa’s Encounter with A New World Crop, 1500-2000. Harvard: Harvard University Press. P. 11.