Shea Butter Republic

Shea butter (butyrospermin parkii) has been produced and sold by rural West African women and circulated on the world market as a raw material for more than a century. Shea butter has been used for cooking, making soap and candles, leatherworking, dying, as a medical and beauty aid, and most significantly, as a substitute for cocoa butter in chocolate production. Now sold in exclusive shops as a high-priced cosmetic and medicinal product, it caters to the desire of cosmopolitan customers worldwide for luxury and exotic self-indulgence. This ethnographic study traces shea from a pre- to post-industrial commodity to provide a deeper understanding of emerging trends in tropical commoditization, consumption, global economic restructuring and rural livelihoods. Also inlcludes seven maps.

Brenda Chalfin

Introduction--West African Shea: From Indigenous Commodity to Postindustrial Luxury The Setting 1. Making Butter: Indigenous Patterns of Commoditization in Northern Ghana 2. Shea and the Colonial State: Commodity Rule in Northern Ghana 3. Market Reform and Economic Citizenship in Northern Ghana: Promoting and Politicizing Shea in the Wake of Liberalization 4. Chocolate Wars and Cosmetic Contests: Shea as a New Global Commodity 5. Remaking Markets and Shape-Shifting States: Privatizing Shea in Northern Ghana 6. Capital and Cooperation: Rural Women and Market Restructuring Conclusion--Reconstructing Tropical Commodity Regimes: Cosmopolitan Consumption, Postcolonial States, Multinational Capital, and Rural Livelihoods at the Turn of the Millennium