PAPERBACK ISBN: 0-88258-153-8       $24.95

360 pages; 6 x 9 inches

by Gwendolyn Mikell

In Cocoa and Chaos in Ghana, Gwendolyn Mikell contends that a single crop has been both a source of wealth and devastation in this West African nation. She further maintains that as the cash nexus of capi­talist development in postcolonial Ghana, cocoa became the pivot of its economic and political activity. This thoroughly researched book shows how the Ghanaian struggle to control the resources from its cocoa crop, and the inordinate dependence on cocoa’s revenues for national develop­ment, led to tensions at every level of society—from domestic and gender conflict to lineage fragmentation and peasant/elite and ethnic and regional antagonisms.  Ghana’s political economy became increasingly problematic for the nation’s elites to administer, and overall underdevel­opment and impoverishment were the outcomes. Cocoa and Chaos in Ghana further explores the socio-cultural and politico-economic impact of cocoa production and trade by tracing how these aspects affected Ghanaian relationships at the local, national, and global levels.

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