WIDENING THE LENS: EMBODIMENTS OF GENDER, WORK AND MIGRATION WITH MARKET WOMEN IN GHANA

Abstract

Women have legendary roles as traders who financially dominate the sale of various market goods in West Africa. Head porters are young women from Ghana's rural northern region who work as human transporters in the various markets in urban areas throughout the country. Kayayei (female head porters) who work at these famed markets are the focus of this dissertation. The north of Ghana is the agricultural breadbasket of the country, with strong Islamic influences that thrive in dispersed, mostly rural ethnic enclaves. This contrasts sharply with the service manufacturing and trade economies that mark Christian influenced southern Ghana. As young women migrants arrive in Accra, this dissertation focuses on narratives of head porters as they confront the multi-ethnic, hierarchical social climates of the city, particularly Accra's largest shopping venue, Makola Market. This dissertation uses theories in phenomenology, informed by feminist anthropology, to consider the political economy of Ghana in order to examine how head porter's lives are grounded with the development history and the spread of capitalism in the nation-state. Throughout this dissertation, attention is given to the widespread informalization of the economy in the nation-state and the role of head porters in these processes. Using a methodology of collaborative photography with kayayei, this dissertation examines the politics of visibility and analyzes the kinds of skills these women develop in order to survive and negotiate the socio-economic hierarchies of urban space. By situating the theoretical and methodological concerns of this research within the social realities of rural-urban migrants, this dissertation explores migration as a sensibility that acts upon various social terrains at markets in Accra, Ghana.