Cliggett’s ethnography provides in-depth observations and analyses of the Gwembe Tonga society of Zambia to challenge existing tropes and Eurocentric perceptions of African societies, as well as to shed light on the realities of gender systems and famine across different age groups within the Gwembe Tonga community. Cliggett recounts her experiences and interactions with several individuals to not only understand sociocultural phenomena, such as kinship systems, funeral rituals, migration patterns, but to also effectively present underlying complex anthropological theories and concepts that influence the formation of political, social, and cultural dynamics. Cliggett emphasizes the importance of implementing and utilizing such theories and concepts to create a specific lens of inquiry and to develop effective research methods in approaching a research question.
In Cliggett’s ethnography, the concept of vulnerability is a critical aspect in creating an analytic framework for combating generalizations that obscure the truth about social relations in the Gwembe Tonga community, and to approach the issues of famine and gender in their society. Cliggett draws on the works of Michael Watts and Hans Bohle to define “vulnerability” in the context of her research, and to introduce underlying factors and structures that impacted one of the most vulnerable populations in the Gwembe Tonga society – the geriatric population. The effects of industrialization, political instability, land degradation, and major epidemics severely incapacitated not only the geriatric community, but the Gwembe Tonga society as a whole. More specifically, the movement towards independence during the 1960s accompanied by the desire to restructure political systems, the economic decline of the 1970s caused by a crash in the copper industry, the horrors of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, and the creation of the Kariba Dam severely affected the Gwembe Tonga people. Consequently, the instability of food security and conditions of scarcity cultivated an environment where drought and famine became more prevalent.
As a vulnerable population, the elderly experienced the hard-hitting effects of famine more intensely because of their limited physical capabilities and their dependence on others for resources. Moreover, this phenomenon perpetuated and reinforced gender stereotypes and systems within the geriatric population, as well as generational conflicts between the younger populations and elderly as younger generations emigrated to urban cities or other rural regions. Consequently, elderly men and women in the Gwembe Tonga society utilized different gender strategies to acquire resources for survival. While men held more power over material resources such as land and cattle, women appealed to others through kin relations and emotional connections. These sociocultural dynamics between different groups reflect various forms of gender strategies to survive in times of scarcity.