Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures in Twentieth-Century Ghana (New African Histories)

The result is a keen look at colonial capitalism in all of its intricacies, legacies, and contradictions, including its entanglement with gender and race.. In foregrounding people over objects, Market Encounters is a refreshing departure from the conventional focus on the social meaning of things. Fusing economic and business history with social and cultural history, she traces the evolution of consumerism in the colonial Gold Coast and independent Ghana from the late nineteenth century through the state violence of the 1970s, in a work of depth and interdisciplinary finesse. Murillo brings shop floor sales clerks, market women, and everyday consumers in Ghana to the center of a story that is all too often told in sweeping metanarratives about what happens to Africans when they are incorporated into global markets. By emphasizing the centrality of human relationships to Ghana’s economic past, Murillo introduces a radical rethinking o

Moreover, she writes vividly and precisely.” — Gracia Clark, author of African Market Women: Seven Life Stories from Ghana. “With original research and creative methods, Murillo makes a substantial contribution to the analysis of military periods of rule and their concrete effects and concerns with regards to local and import/export trade