The Emergence of Capitalist Relations in South Asante Cocoa-Farming, C. 1916–33

Austin, Gareth

doi:10.1017/s0021853700029777

Cited by 50 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 9 publications

(2 reference statements)

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“…In theory, the groups can be revived as soon as prices start to rise again: the question is, of course, whether their farms will have become too neglected in the meantime to profit from such an eventuality.2' 20. See Austin (1987) on Ashanti cocoa farmers around 1930; also Hill (1963); cf. Eckert (1993) on Duala cocoa farmers in southwest Cameroon during the same period.…”

Section: Working Groups: the Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Working Groups or Wage Labour? Cash‐crops, Reciprocity and Money among the Maka of Southeastern Cameroon

Geschiere¹

1995

Development and Change

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The spread of coma cultivation among the Maka in the 1950s created new labour demands. These were not met by wage labour, as in most cocoa producing areas, but rather by a novel system of working groups. Specific economic factors can help to explain why wage labour did not develop within the villages, but it is also clear that the preference of the Maka for more cooperative labour arrangements was related to broader sociocultural characteristics of this societynotably the somewhat paradoxical tension between strong levelling mechanisms and an equally strong emphasis on personal ambition. The new working groups were based on reciprocal exchange of labour, but money came to play an increasing role in their functioning. They allowed for a certain degree of commodification of labour to the advantage of richer farmers, but ultimately they restricted the rise of more structural inequalities. The recent crisis in cash-cropping makes it clear that a system of working groups can offer farmers more flexibility than wage labour in the face of the vagaries of world-market prices.Cash-crop cultivation reached the Maka of the forests of southeastern Cameroon relatively late, taking off effectively around 1950.' As elsewhere, the new forms of cultivation-first mainly cocoa, later also coffee-led to important changes in the organization of labour. It is striking, however, that in contrast to most cocoa-producing areas2 this did not lead to the emergence of wage labour, but rather to the development of a system of working groups. This is all the more surprising since wage labour had already existed in this area for several decades. Within the villages, cashcrop cultivation became dominated by working groups, a system based on a

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Section: Working Groups: the Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Working Groups or Wage Labour? Cash‐crops, Reciprocity and Money among the Maka of Southeastern Cameroon

Geschiere¹

1995

Development and Change

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“…Capitalist accumulation in cocoa declined due to political interventions of the government in the 1950s and 1960s to tax cocoa production as well as to control cocoa marketing, combined with falling international prices. Cocoa production gradually rebounded from the 1980s, but capitalist cocoa farming did not (Austin 1987;Takane 2002). The most recent cocoa boom in the 2000s resulted in record export volumes, but it is not clear whether this boom led to a renewal of capitalist accumulation from below (Barrientos et al 2008;Kolavalli and Vigneri 2011;Teal 2013).…”

Section: Conceptualizing the Origins Of Capitalist Agricultural Produmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Paths to Capitalist Agricultural Production in Africa: Experiences of Ghanaian Pineapple Producer–Exporters

Whitfield

2016

Journal of Agrarian Change

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With the global restructuring of agri‐food markets since the 1980s, an impressive amount of scholarship has examined its impacts in African countries. However, little has been written on the emergence of local medium and large‐scale commercial farmers selling to export companies or controlling their own export marketing arrangements. This article examines Ghanaian commercial farmers producing and exporting fresh pineapples to European markets. This group of pineapple producer–exporters represents a path to capitalist agricultural production that can be conceptualized as capitalism from outside: where capital flows into the countryside, rather than accumulation occurring from above or below within the agrarian economy. The emergence of this form of agrarian capitalism is stimulated by opportunities in new high‐value agricultural export markets, but its stabilization depends on country‐specific characteristics such as rural social structures, property rights and state support. The article documents the conditions of emergence of this new group of Ghanaian capitalist farmers, the period of destabilization caused by increasing international competition that resulted in a small number of large‐scale agribusiness firms surviving, and the challenges that these agribusiness firms faced in stabilizing their capitalist agricultural production.

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“…Beals and Memezes 1970;Plange 1979) and studies on historical and present capitalist relations in cocoa farming (e.g. Austin 1987;Arhin 1988).…”

Section: The Frontiermentioning

confidence: 99%

Ghana's cocoa frontier in transition: the role of migration and livelihood diversification

Knudsen

Agergaard

2015

Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography

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Since the first commercial planting of cocoa in Ghana more than a century ago, the production of cocoa has been a key factor in the redistribution of migrants and has played a pivotal role in the development of both sending and receiving communities. This process has been acknowledged in the literature for decades. However, how migration flows have changed in response to changing livelihoods dynamics of the frontier and how this has impacted on the development of the frontier has only attracted limited attention. Based on a study of immigration to Ghana's current cocoa frontier in the Western Region, this article aims to examine how immigration and frontier dynamics in the Western region are contributing to livelihood transitions and small town development, and how this process is gradually becoming delinked from the production of cocoa. The article focuses on how migration dynamics interlink with livelihood opportunities and strategies. It is argued that migrants to the current frontier can be divided into at least four different types based on their migration, settlement and livelihood practices. Accordingly, to understand how the cocoa frontier changes as well as its continuation beyond the frontier crop, there is a need for a broader understanding of the frontier concept, and how frontier transformation interacts with migration and livelihood dynamics.

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The Emergence of Capitalist Relations in South Asante Cocoa-Farming, C. 1916–33

Cited by 50 publications

References 9 publications

Working Groups or Wage Labour? Cash‐crops, Reciprocity and Money among the Maka of Southeastern Cameroon

Working Groups or Wage Labour? Cash‐crops, Reciprocity and Money among the Maka of Southeastern Cameroon

New Paths to Capitalist Agricultural Production in Africa: Experiences of Ghanaian Pineapple Producer–Exporters

Ghana's cocoa frontier in transition: the role of migration and livelihood diversification

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