Thinking about George Bailey in Ghana

As someone working within the sub-field of economic anthropology, it’d be ridiculous to overlook aspects of gifting and exchange during fieldwork.  Since tis the season, these are some rudimentary thoughts on how these elements of economy (for better or worse termed the “informal” components of economy) are part and parcel of Ghana and how they can really get the goat of an American anthropologist.

I owe the inspiration for this blog to a friend and fellow anthropologist  who totally gets the annoyance of being asked for things and who made me laugh over the fact that anthropology hadn't yet ruined my perspective on It's a Wonderful Life.  She pointed out to me that the ending is not all that wonderful because the conniving antagon/capital/ist is left to continue his plundering.  She, too, is blogging her way through fieldwork in Ghana.  Her blog is here and it is stunning.  

It is inevitable that at least once in any given day in Ghana a stranger will make a request of a gift from me.  Sometimes people want me to buy them food as I’m buying food.  Sometimes a child leaves a note on my bike requesting football shoes.  Sometimes the security personnel at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra ask me for the Ghanaian made and readily available chocolate that they saw as my bag was searched.   The requests can be incredibly polite, beginning with the Ghanaian English preface “Please, can you….?”  Sometimes the requests sound incredibly rude to my Midwestern American ears.  "Give me your phone" is a statement I find difficult to relativistically digest. 

Never do I not find this annoying.  When it’s a day of never ending requests, I come very close to cartoonesque meltdowns.   As an outsider, as someone consistently viewed as having more money than almost everyone in Ghana, I see these requests as an attack on my minimal means. Such requests only exacerbate my frustration over my inability to communicate my own incredibly minimal financial position in the world.  My own relative poverty is almost always on my mind (how am I ever going to pay off my student debt??) even as I conduct research with people with much less power to overcome their own poverty. As such, sometimes I react to requests by middle class town folk by pontificating that when cost of living ratios are taken into consideration, I am, in fact, poorer than them and am in no position to be giving away my things.  Though such speeches make me feel better, they rarely resonate.  Most Ghanaians continue to see their country as existing in absolute rather than relative poverty and the US as existing with absolutely no poverty. These speeches also miss what I suspect is the greater point of gifting in Ghana. 

This would be George Bailey's trogan
(a trogan is a slogan put onto diesel mini-vans that serve as public transit in Ghana and that are known as tro-tros)

When I return to my thinking rather than reacting brain, it becomes a bit clearer that such requests are not so much about the item, but about making some form of social connection with me.   I know that my status as an American does make me a unique target for requests (that are sometimes genuinely wanted or hoped for), but this is not the full story. There are different rules for ownership and usage of property in Ghana. As can be seen in the social protocol to invite people to share your food, the mantra often seems to be “what’s mine is yours.”  This implies a cyclical system of sharing.   It’s not necessarily about the equality of the exchange but the ability to meet someone’s immediate need or desire and the knowledge that your own future need or desire will be reciprocally met. As such, I hope people are often just wanting to incorporate me into local ways of being and doing. 

It's important to note that such aspects of economy do not categorize Ghana into some “traditional” economic system.  The country is, very much, capitalistic to the core.  Ghana wouldn’t be the envy of floundering economies if capitalism wasn’t fueling economic growth.  Economic systems don’t progress from informal to formal or from traditional to modern.  Charles Piot’s ethnographic work that is set in next door Togo demonstrates that exchanging within the Kabre society is not residual of tradition, but rather a feature of modernity. He argues that colonial era policy (ie taxation) made exchange with family and friends a more feasible way to engage in necessary transactions for food or services so that  monetary income could be diverted to the new demanding state. 

The gifting symbols of Christianity as they appear in Accra in early November

Formalities abound at this machine shop in Wa.  Don't even think about trying to barter. 

As the month of December is so good at reminding me, I come from a culture where gifts are demarcated for particular events and reciprocation is simultaneous. Perhaps that is why one of my favorite films is It's a Wonderful Life (a film I would like to point out, that is also beloved by everyone's favorite new it director David O. Russell). I love the story it tells of a good life as one experienced through everyday good deeds that are returned to you when you need help most. It's a story of how informal economy meets formal economy in America. 

But perhaps a more compelling ending, and one that suggests the necessity of overarching social change rather than individual problem solving, is the one brought to us by Saturday Night Live.  This ending suggests that if we focused a bit more on cultivating an economy based on reciprocity rather than capital gains, life could be a bit more wonderful for all.