Until the 1960s, the Gokwe region of northwestern Zimbabwe was perceived as the wild, remote, and culturally backward domain of the "Shangwe" tribe. Since the introduction of small-holder cotton production in the 1960s, and the influx of immigrants from the south, it has been represented as a miracle of agrarian transformation, a frontier of commoditization, and more broadly, as an exemplar of the transition to modernity. In this thesis, I explore how alternative narratives of commoditization inform modes of state intervention, representations of ethnic difference, and forms of agrarian labour in Gokwe. Using my own ethnographic journey through Gokwe as a referent, I examine the different ways in which colonial maps, indigenous myths, and ritual exchanges variously locate relations of power, labour and identity in social space. Labour forms and commodity relations are continually remade as farmers, traders, ethnographers and administrators argue over the signs of modernity and its antitheses.

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