6.
 reason why the measurement process should not begin with readiness

 (what does it look like ? is it hard or stiff or does it run ? etc.).

 Instruments such as time allocation studies, useful as they are as

 indicators of the range of activities and claims on labour, make

 invisible whatever it is that women themselves see themselves as

 allocating or conserving. In Huss-Ashmore's case, women collect wild

 vegetable proteins not because they are a preference food nor because

 there is nothing else available but because women wish primarily to

conserve fuel.


The difficulty does not lie in using the measurement units which make

sense within the rationality of the referent user but in actually

getting someone to do so. Researchers and extensionists alike are

trained in the concepts of scientific agriculture and these .concepts

may have no equivalents in the knowledge system of the woman while the

woman is trained in the concepts of her indigenous knowledge system

and may have no way of apprehending the significance (even if the

literal meaning can be translated) of the concepts used by the

researcher and extensionist. This has little to do with any

differences in the ethnic background of the actors and a great deal to

do with the difficulty of articulating the rationality of one system

in the terms of the rationality of another.


Northern Zambia


The fact that local vegetables and fruits form an important part of

the diet is well-established and there are even a few research

programmes investigating the more important species (MAWD 1983). What

is not so readily accepted is that these may have characteristics