Exploring gender and intersectionality from an assemblage perspective in food crop cultivation: A case of the Millennium Villages Project implementation site in western Kenya
运用聚合框架分析肯尼亚西部卢奥族多妻家庭中不同地位女性的动态关系及其对粮食安全的影响，揭示性别本质主义在发展中实践的不足。
Gender essentialism in development practice has been criticised for more than three decades with little effect. We use gender and intersectionality within the framework of assemblage to analyse the relations, practices, and intersections of both human and nonhuman elements within the context of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) in Luoland in western Kenya. This framework permits us to tease-apart essentially categorised ‘women’ revealing changing dynamics of senior and junior women within the Luo polygamous homestead, dala, and their implication for food security within. This insight reveals the inadequacy of essentialising representations of Luo women and the relevance of their recognition as social beings who differently construct themselves and their actions, in interaction with both human and nonhuman elements. Gender and intersectionality from an assemblage perspective makes visible the involved human and nonhuman intersecting elements and the changing dynamics within an ongoing process in a specific socio-ecological context that better support development.