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This book investigates how cooking, eating, and identity are connected to the local micro-climates in each of Ghana's major eco-culinary zones. The work is based on several years of researching Ghanaian culinary history and cuisine, including field work, archival research, and interdisciplinary investigation. The political economy of Ghana is used as an analytical framework with which to investigate the following questions: How are traditional food production structures in Ghana coping with global capitalist production, distribution, and consumption? How do land, climate, and weather structure or provide the foundation for food consumption and how does that affect the separate traditional and capitalist production sectors? Despite the post WWII food fight that launched Ghana's bid for independence from the British empire, Ghana's story demonstrates the centrality of local foods and cooking to its national character. The cultural weight of regional traditional foods, their power to satisfy, and the overall collective social emphasis on the 'proper' meal, have persisted in Ghana, irrespective of centuries of trade with Europeans. This book will be of interest to scholars in food studies, comparative studies, and African studies, and is sure to capture the interest of students in new ways.
List of contents
1. In Search of Ghanaian Food.- 2. Ghana's Eco-Culinary Zones.- 3. The Proper Meal.- 4. The Asante and Diplomatic Use of Food - A Symphony of Signals.- 5. Gold Coast Foodways in the Nineteenth Century.- 6. Savanna Foodways.- 7. Colonialism and Local Foodways.- 8. Globalisation and Local Foodways in Ghana.
About the author
Brandi Simpson Miller is Visiting Assistant Professor of History and the Assistant Director for the Wesleyan College Center for Social and Racial Equity, Georgia, USA.
Report
"Brandi Simpson Miller's book was much needed to liberate the Western dominated-discourse of food (in) security in Ghana and other (West) African countries. She provides an excellent understanding of the historical developments of Ghana's food ways that should stand as the starting point for similar research." (Chiara Scheven, anthrobookforum.americananthro.org, February 27, 2024)
