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Browsing African Studies Program by Author "Clark, Gracia"

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    Introduction [to Traders versus the State]
    (Westview Press, 1988) Clark, Gracia
    This edited volume shows state authorities struggling with market and street traders over control of the economy and of city space. The introduction considers debates over concepts of informal, illegal and immoral trade, the relation between state credibility and public subsistence, and modalities of linkage and collusion between traders and specific state actors. Ethnographic cases analyze violent confrontations and hostile policies from Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Peru, India, Hong Kong and Washington, DC.
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    Money, sex and cooking: manipulation of the paid/unpaid boundary by Asante market women
    (University Press of America and The Society for Economic Anthropology, 1989) Clark, Gracia
    This paper analyses how Asante women trading in the Central Market of Kumasi (Ghana’s second largest city) balance the demands of trading and domestic work upon their time and money. Matriliny and duolocal marriage define very different conflicts for childcare and cooking, because of women’s authority as mothers and deference as wives. The evening meal has strong associations with sexual fidelity and financial support, leaving less flexibility for married women in its timing, quality and personal performance. The discussion of life cycle strategies of compromise draws on ethnographic fieldwork 1978-84.
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    Price control of local foodstuffs in Kumasi, Ghana, 1979
    (Westview Press, 1988) Clark, Gracia
    This chapter centers on Ghana’s 1979 “housecleaning” anti-corruption exercise led by J.J. Rawlings. Intensified price controls legitimated violent attacks on markets and stores, selling off goods at arbitrary low prices and widespread confiscations. A history of price controls since colonial times shows ideological links emerging to corruption and falling real incomes, and compares the effects of various enforcement episodes and a currency exchange on food supplies and commercial practices. Detailed ethnographic accounts of raids, demolitions, meetings and negotiations in Kumasi Central Market contrast the treatment of women traders with that of men in informal production, and the relative impact on wealthier and poorer traders.