Capitalist organization of production through non‐capitalist relations: women's role in a pilot resettlement in Upper Volta

In Upper Volta, pilot resettlement schemes for the Volta Valley Authority, designed as models for some multi‐million dollar projects financed by the World Bank and others, have been found to be nearly intolerable to the women because of the lack of basic facilities, such as market places, land to grow the family food, village wells, grain mills and other facilities regarded as essentials in their home village. Many women have insisted on leaving. Getting to see the invisible women’, The Economist,April 1979).

In examining why there should be the reported resistance by women, this analysis of one pilot scheme in Upper Volta shows how it is essentially a capital‐enterprise that utilises not wage labour but scheme ‘members’. The scheme's profitability is thus premised upon a certain, ‘nuclear’ family structure, which in turn presupposes a much greater burden on women than is customary in Voltaic society.