Old commodities in new niches: The shea economy as frontier

African Economic History

Volumn 32, Issue , 2004, Pages 51-63

  Chalfin, Brenda ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 71249100660     PISSN: 01452258     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. J. Guyer, An African Niche Economy: Farming to Feed Ibadan, 1968-1988 (Edinburgh, 1997), 22-23.
2. Guyer, African Niche, 22.
3. Guyer, African Niche, 22.
4. Guyer, African Niche, 21.
5. Guyer, African Niche, 234.
6. Guyer, African Niche, 233.
7. The ethnographic research upon which this article is based was carried out in 1994 and 1995 in Bawku District, Upper East Region, Ghana, with the assistance of Siedu Mumuni and the sponsorship of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and a Fulbright Award. A more extensive discussion of the shea economy in northern Ghana along with a fuller examination of shea's position in the global market can be found in B. Chalfin, Shea Butter Republic: State Power, Global Markets and the Making of an Indigenous Commodity (New York, 2004).
8. In The Gambia, the use of shea on a newborn's umbilicus is known to prevent infection. See A. Leach, T. Mcardle, W. Banya, O. Krubally, A. Greenwood, C. Rands, R. Adegbola, A. De Francisco, and B. Greenwood, "Neonatal Mortality in a Rural Area of The Gambia, " Annals of Tropical Paediatrics: International Child Health 19 (1999), 1.
9. A. Gottlieb, "Luring Your Child into This Life: A Beng Path For Infant Care, " in J. DeLoache and A. Gottlieb, eds., A World of Babies (Cambridge, 2000), 81.
10. B. Chalfin, "The Changing Face of 'One-Mouth': Household Labor and Commercial Intensification in Northern Ghana, " in D. Small and N. Tannenbaum, eds., At the Interface: The Household and Beyond, Society for Economic Anthropology Annual Proceedings (Lanham, MD, 1999).
11. In its liquid state, the brown bath of shea processing residue can be used to seal the mud walls. When dry, it can be shaped into briquettes and used as a substitute for charcoal or firewood.
12. T. Lewicki, West African Food in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1974), 106.
13. Lewicki, West African Food, 108.
14. M. Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (New York, 1971).
15. H. Barth, Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa (Philadelphia, 1890).
16. G. Gereffi and M. Korzeniewicz, eds., Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism (Westport, CT, 1994).
17. C. Meillassoux, Maidens, Meal and Money (Cambridge, 1981).
18. K. Arhin, West African Traders in Ghana in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London, 1979).
19. N. Plange, "Underdevelopment in Northern Ghana: Natural Causes of Colonial Capitalism, " Review of African Political Economy 15/16 (1979), 671.
20. I. Sutton, "Labour in Commercial Agriculture in Ghana in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century, " Journal of African History 24 (1983), 480.
21. F. Bourret, Ghana: The Road to Independence 1919-1957 (Stanford, CA, 1960), 97.
22. W. Hailey, Native Administration in the British African Colonies (Nendeln, Liechtenstein, 1952), 586.
23. M. Fortes, "Culture Contact as a Dynamic Process, " Africa 9, 1 (1936), 242.
24. Fortes, "Culture Contact, " 246.
25. Chalfin, fieldnotes, 1995, Boubuilla village, Bawku District.
26. Chalfin, fieldnotes, 1995, Kolpeleg village, Bawku District.
27. N. Fold, "A Matter of Good Taste? Quality and the Construction of Standards for Chocolate Products in the European Union, " Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurales 55/56 (2000), 92-110.
28. B. Chalfin, "Market Reforms and the State: The Case of Shea in Ghana, " Journal of Modern African Studies 34, 3 (1996), 421-440
29. B. Chalfin, "Beauty and the Beast: Natural Cosmetics and the Contradictions of Late Capitalism, " unpublished paper presented at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting, Philadelphia, (December 1998).
30. Fold, "A Matter of Good Taste?"
31. Chalfin, Shea Butter.
32. A. Pred and M. Watts, eds., Reworking Modernity: Capitalisms and Symbolic Discontent (New Brunswick, NJ, 1992), xiv.
33. W. Roseberry, "The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States, " American Anthropologist 98, 4 (1996), 762-775
34. R. Swift, "The Cocoa Chain, " New Internationalist Magazine August 304 (1998a), 7;
35. idem, "Deep Roots in Cocoa Country, " New Internationalist Magazine August 304 (1998b), 12;
36. idem, "Best of the Best, " New Internationalist Magazine August 304 (1998c), 20;
37. idem, "Chocolate Saves the World!, " New Internationalist Magazine August 304 (1998d), 30.