Human ecological security in coastal Ghana, West Africa: The social implications of economic and environmental change in development contexts

In the face of the broad critiques of such development approaches as modernization, there has, in recent years, emerged a shift in development away from projects designed to completely rework the “underdeveloped” setting to achieve greater legibility and efficiency. In place of these “grand schemes” we see the rise of projects designed to maintain and enhance the “security” of those living in contexts at the social and spatial margins of capitalism. Included in this trend is a valorization of local knowledge and strategies for negotiating events and forces that contribute to instability and uncertainty in these contexts. Building upon such work, this dissertation describes the strategies employed by those living at the spatial and social margins of capitalism in southern Ghana to negotiate economic and environmental change. Ranging from agricultural techniques that employ both cash and subsistence crops to small-scale migrations from increasingly marginal rural settlements to improving/improved transportation centers, these strategies weave together local cultural practice, state development and economic policies, multiscalar environmental changes, and the vagaries of world commodities markets to create strategies that enable household survival in this context.; Rather than simply valorize these strategies, however, this dissertation critically evaluates them through the framework of human ecological security (HES). HES overtly recognizes that while security is a means to safety and certainty, it is also a means of maintaining the status quo. Therefore, at the center of the HES approach is the central question “who or what is being secured, and for whom?” Employing an innovative methodology that integrates ethnographic and archaeological data, dissertation explores the ways in which such security strategies have been/are enabling household survival, yet repressive of other strategies and ecological relationships in this context. I contend that through this exploration, we can more fully understand the challenges inherent in dealing with economic development in “insecure” environmental and economic settings.