Contingent conjunctures: Market reforms, the state and rural women's livelihoods in northeastern Ghana

Based on an ethnographic case study of northeast Ghana's shea economy and highlighting the situation of the rural woman, this dissertation probes the implications of changing global markets and economic controls for local social institutions and the state. It focuses on the intersection of two transnational currents: the cultivation of new markets for tropical commodities by multi-national firms, and the implementation of international-financial-institution mandated market promotion policies. The analysis of the shea economy suggests that these two trends, even as they dictate national priorities and overtake state capacities, nonetheless strengthen state power. This is a result of novel forms of state collusion with newly established private companies and NGOs, the increased autonomy of meso-level bureaucrats, and citizens' reinvigoration of state-derived norms in the absence of administrative controls. Local social institutions---from market associations to labor cooperatives---likewise experience a parallel process of inadvertent reinvigoration in response to these political and economic shifts. This occurs as the rural women whose livelihoods depend on shea become increasingly self-conscious and cohesive in the face of externally induced interventions, and thus come to assertively define and guard the parameters of local market participation. These dynamics are especially significant for local gender relations and the economic standing of rural women in particular. Although female shea processors and traders, now forced contend with the valorization of commodities they have long controlled, are rendered vulnerable to competition, they also gain the support of more powerful individuals on both the local and extra-local level, enabling them to protect and publicize their interests.