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Exhaustion and Exclusion in the African Village: The Non-State Social Welfare of Informal Reciprocity in Rural Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire

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Abstract

This paper examines the consequences for equity of different patterns of non-state social welfare provision, specifically the informal institutions of reciprocity among families, friends, and village neighbors in rural West Africa. Based on over 18 months of fieldwork in similar regions on either side of the Ghana-Cote d’Ivoire border, this paper challenges many existing assumptions in the literature, revealing that the informal institutions of reciprocity were not only less vibrant overall, but also differed strikingly in terms of who was helping who and how in particular localities. The paper argues that the informal institutions of reciprocity were more exhausted in the Ghanaian villages and more exclusive in the Ivoirian ones. The study highlights that the informal system of non-state social welfare provided by the family, friends, and neighborhood did not simply expand to fill the functional gaps left by the neoliberal retrenchment of the state. The paper concludes that when policies are designed based on an overly romanticized image of kinship and communal reciprocity in Africa, it is the very poor that increasingly fall through the gaps of the state and non-state system of social welfare.

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Notes

  1. Ferguson (2006: 69–88) critiques the technocratic legitimation of structural adjustment as a “de-moralizing” logic.

  2. Fine (2003) and Levi (1996) critique Putnam (1993, 2000) and other theorists of social capital (Fukuyama 1995; Lin 2001) for assuming that these networks are inherently positive. I choose not to use the concept of social capital because it lacks conceptual clarity (Dasgupta and Serageldin 2000) and is almost always divorced from a broader structural analysis of the political economy (Fine 2001, 2003; Tarrow 1996).

  3. Fieldwork was conducted from April–August 1997 and from October 1998–October 1999 in two similar villages in Tano District in Brong-Ahafo region of Ghana, and in two similar villages in the Abengourou region of Côte d’Ivoire. Fictional names are used for these villages in the endnotes to protect the anonymity of the sources. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship and grants from the Social Science Research Council, Institute for the Study of World Politics, and the University of California-Berkeley’s African Studies Center. The author also wishes to express thanks for the tireless efforts of the research assistants in each country, Celestin Mian and Fulgence Kanga in Côte d’Ivoire and Faustina Sottie and Kweku Dickson in Ghana, as well as the institutional support of the University of Ghana at Legon’s Department of Political Science and the Centre de Petit-Bassam (IRD/ORSTOM) in Abidjan.

  4. After asking an open-ended question, research assistants enumerated 17 different types of social exchanges to stimulate recall. This list was vetted with US and local academics and then revised after a pre-test with several men and women in an Akan village in Ghana. The types of social exchange given and received included: help to pay for hospital or clinic fees; help to pay for medicine; help to receive care from a traditional healer or herbalist; help with the costs of a funeral; help to get engaged or married; help to pay school fees; help to provide school books or supplies; help to provide accommodation; help with food or prepared meals; help with cloth, clothing, or shoes; help with tools; help by working for someone without getting paid; help with land; help to pay a debt; help to start a business; and, help with anything else that was not mentioned. Several of the various types of help were not monetized; they were often exchanges of food or labor that was given in kind. In order to compare all types of quantitatively, respondents were assisted to estimate a monetary value.

  5. Particularly for gifts given in kind, the giver would be more knowledgeable about the value of the gift than the recipient. Even for gifts that were given in cash, the gift is more memorable to the giver, who is probably making something of a sacrifice to share very limited resources, than to the recipient, who is appreciative but not “hurt” by the exchange. Also, the giver most likely gives only one gift for one crisis, whereas the recipient might be receiving more than one gift simultaneously, particularly if the gift is for a health or a school crisis.

  6. Of the 17 different types of social exchange, these five were probably the most memorable because: the crisis was life-threatening; the gifts were given at the same particular times of year (school start, harvest, Christmas, and/or Easter); and, with the exception of clothing, the gifts were almost always given in cash. Thus, the dollar values were most reliable.

  7. Women’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Barima, Ghana, March 1999.

  8. Survey interview (anonymous) by author. Kyere, Cote d’Ivoire.

  9. See MacLean (2010, 54–58) for a more detailed analysis of the differences for women, the non-Akan and the poor.

  10. In a cross-tabulation, fewer women than expected received $0 of help, and this difference was statistically significant. Pearson chi-square = 3.98* in Ghana and 15.42** in Cote d’Ivoire.

  11. The result of a cross-tabulation of zero help given and non-Akan was only statistically significant in Ghana, where Pearson chi-square = 3.94*.

  12. In villages with very low levels of formal sector employment, I measured wealth by combining several questions on asset characteristics into a wealth index. The mean scores for the wealth index were approximately equal in the two regions.

  13. Additional analysis showed that these striking differences in levels of help given were not merely due to purchasing power parity differences or differences in the rural cost of living.

  14. Since concepts such as the “nuclear family” and “extended family” are not indigenous to this context, the survey data analysis employed the narrowest “Western” concept of the nuclear family (the respondent’s spouse and children). The extended family included parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and other family members. In-depth interviews allowed me to explore further how different individuals constituted the meaning of various family systems (MacLean 2010:65–96).

  15. Men’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Kyere, Côte d’Ivoire, September 1999.

  16. Survey interview (anonymous). Makwan, Ghana.

  17. Women’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Barima, Ghana, March 1999.

  18. Survey interview (anonymous) by author. Makwan, Ghana.

  19. Survey interviews (anonymous) by author. Opanin, Côte d’Ivoire.

  20. Survey interview (anonymous) by author. Barima, Ghana. Interview (anonymous) by author. Makwan, Ghana, 9 April, 1999. Women’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Barima, Ghana. March 1999.

  21. Survey interview (anonymous) by author. Makwan, Ghana.

  22. Men’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Kyere, Cote d’Ivoire, August 1999.

  23. The claims of change over time in the terms of reciprocity are bolstered in this section by qualitative data that explicitly compares the present time period to an earlier one in the past.

  24. Men’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Kyere, Côte d’Ivoire, August 1999.

  25. Men’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Kyere, Côte d’Ivoire, August 1999. Similar responses from the men’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Opanin, Côte d’Ivoire, September 1999.

  26. Women’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Opanin, Côte d’Ivoire, September 1999.

  27. Indeed, the presentation of this material has provoked intense discussion and challenges.

  28. Men’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Barima, Ghana, March 1999. Men’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Makwan, Ghana, April 1999.

  29. Men’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Opanin, Côte d’Ivoire, September 1999. Women’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Opanin, Côte d’Ivoire, September 1999.

  30. Men’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Opanin, Cote d’Ivoire, September 1999.

  31. Men’s focus group (anonymous). Tape recording. Opanin, Côte d’Ivoire, September 1999.

  32. Hirtz (1995) also finds a narrowing of social solidarity in his study of social security in the rural Philippines.

  33. Berry (1993).

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  1. Department of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Lauren M. MacLean

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MacLean, L.M. Exhaustion and Exclusion in the African Village: The Non-State Social Welfare of Informal Reciprocity in Rural Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. St Comp Int Dev 46, 118–136 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-010-9082-8

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