| My
dissertation research examines the social and environmental history
of marine fishing among the Fanti people in Cape Coast, Ghana from
1400 to the present. Artisanal fishing provides up to 70 per cent
of animal protein in the diets of West Africans, and has become
increasingly important to Ghana's export economy as well. My research
focuses on the critical role of women in Ghana's fishing industry,
because women perform all of the processing and marketing activities,
in addition to being the main source of finance and innovation the
artisanal sector. |
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As
processors and marketers of fish, women fishtraders in the Fanti
town of Cape Coast, Ghana have become powerful financers and owners
of canoes, nets and other fishing equipment. Since the 1960s when
motors were first introduced to Ghana's artisanal canoe fleet, two
interrelated processes have occurred. First, Ghana's fisheries have
become increasingly exploited, and in the case of some species,
overfished. Second, the social relations of production in the artisanal
sector have shifted from being socially embedded to being more market-based
and impersonal. |
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argue that two recent Women in Development (WID) projects in particular
have recently contributed to the breakdown of fishtraders' traditional
economic networks and livelihood strategies, which are (a.) loan
schemes which target women's associations, and (b.) the Intestate
Succession Law of 1985 which reconfigured inheritance rights. These
WID projects, based on Western notions of gender and the household,
have created disharmony and mistrust among Cape Coast's fishtraders
rather than promoting their "development." The breakdown
of fishtraders' labor and marketing organizations has resulted in
increasingly desperate strategies to get fish, increased degradation
of Ghana's marine environment, and uncertainty for the future of
the coastal economy. |
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Publications:
Walker, B.L.E. 2002. "Engendering Ghana's Seascape: Fanti
Fishtraders and Marine Property in Colonial History," Society
and Natural Resources 15(5):389-407.
Walker, B.L.E.
2001. "Sisterhood and Seine-Nets: Engendering Development
and Conservation in Ghana's Marine Fishery," The Professional
Geographer 53(2): 160-177.
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fieldwork and writing for this research has been supported by the
International Predissertation Fellowship Program of the Social Science
Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies with
funds provided by the Ford Foundation; the National Science Foundation
(Grants SBR-9506062 and SBR-9806256); the Simpson Fellowship of
the Institute of International Studies of the University of California
at Berkeley; the UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor for Research Fund Award;
and the UC Berkeley Graduate Division Dissertation Award Fellowship. |
© copyright 2001 by Barbara Walker
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