Large-Scale Land Acquisition in Ghana: Institutional Change, Gender and Power

This book examines a large-scale land acquisition project for rice production in Ghana's Volta Region, which has been purported to be a social and ecological showcase of a company entering a community-private partnership with affected communities. However, the deal benefits mainly the powerful elite, including elite women, and generally increases the depreciation of those already most marginalised, such as poor female-headed households and settler communities. The author adopts a New Institutionalist perspective in social anthropology to analyse how the land acquisition has been implemented in a plural institutional context and how different actors use different rules and regulations and associated legitimising discourses to increase their bargaining power and to pursue their own interests.

Format: Hardback
Length: 130 pages
Publication date: 28 April 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This book delves into a comprehensive examination of a large-scale land acquisition project for rice production in Ghana's Volta Region, which has garnered significant attention as a purported model of a community-private partnership between a company and affected communities. The project, celebrated by national and international media outlets, has received substantial funding from various donor organizations and is touted for its purported empowerment of women through its lauded outgrower project. While the investment company, the state, and customary authorities employ discourses of development, sustainability, and women's empowerment to justify the large-scale land acquisition, this book sheds light on how the deal primarily benefits the powerful elite, including elite women, while exacerbating the marginalization of already disadvantaged groups such as poor female-headed households and settler communities that relied on resources from the commons that have now been enclosed and transformed into a rice farm.

The author adopts a New Institutionalist perspective in social anthropology to analyze how this land acquisition has been implemented within a plural institutional context, as well as how different actors leverage different rules, regulations, and legitimizing discourses to enhance their bargaining power and pursue their own interests in a changing legal landscape. Furthermore, this perspective highlights how benefits and losses are distributed along various intersecting axes of power, including class, gender, clan membership, and age. By centering on power, gender, and legitimization strategies within the context of institutional change brought about by the large-scale land acquisition, this book fills a gap in the literature on such acquisitions while contributing to the development of theoretical frameworks.

Weight: 420g
Dimension: 216 x 138 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032080635