The Importance of Being Modern

Modernity is a topic drowning in theoretical discussion.  Foucalt brought the knowledge and power to the party.  I sense I can trace a lot of what I’m thinking about now to his original thinking.  I hope to read his original thinking (and revisit that of his disciples) when I’m procrastinating with my dissertation (which is not supposed to be about modernity at all) and later on as an unemployed Dr. who can’t write prescriptions and who can’t stomach the idea of tweaking another cover letter. For now I release some pent up thoughts on how I see the quest for modernity shaping people’s lives in the Upper West.  

I’ve spent the week engaging how I most love to engage in and out of fieldwork: talking with old people. In particular I’ve been talking with elder women about changes in dietary practice.  A repeated and telling statement rationalizing perceived change is: “Well, we are trying to be modern now”.  The traditional mixes with the modern here in numerous and consistently observable ways.  People still use traditional medicine alongside Western medicine. People wear contemporary Western styles alongside more local ways of dressing.  Modern and traditional exist on a spectrum here, just as they do everywhere.  However, never in the middle does anyone admit to want to be.  People don’t discuss ways to preserve the traditional as much as they explicitly express the desire to be modern.   

Particular kind of tree bark that is boiled and taken as a tea to improve stomach ailments

Vitamin packed syrup meant to attract the well dressed and modern Ghanaian familiy. 

In the context of the Upper West, the young adult population is only 3 generations removed from initial contact with colonial authorities who justified rule because of the non-modern ways of the local people. Then came an era of post-WWII development where modernity (aka science and technology) was the framework for identifying, defining and solving the ongoing problems of tradition or newly established problems where modernity already derailed.  I can only imagine what it does psychologically to a population to be told repeatedly that your ways of being and doing are wrong and reform is necessary. When I consider how colonial authority was imposed, it’s not too difficult to see why doing things “the modern way” is important to self and peer perception.  Shame might not be a genetic trait, but it’s surely one that has passed from family to family from colonialism onward.

The adage “you are what you eat” is proving pretty resoundingly apt in my current quest to learn about dietary change. What people are often trying to be through their diet is modern. When it comes to what food ingredients are used, certain ingredients from the wild can identify you as someone who is languishing in the land of the traditional.  During one chat, one woman pointed to a tree and said that no one will eat the leaves from that tree anymore because the tree is too public—meaning the tree represents a traditional food source that people can’t risk being seen taking leaves from to cook with.  Modern people don’t get their food from the wild, but from the market even though the wild foods can be incredibly nutritious and trees and bushes don’t charge you for taking the leaves.

"Modern" folks in one of my fieldsite don't eat leaves from this tree.  "Traditional" folks who live in my other fieldsite still do

"Modern" folks are supposed to use Maggi bullion cubes to flavor soups, a modern item that simultaneously sells  modern ways of  what it means to be a woman 

Maggi also discourages using the local (and protein rich) soup flavoring known as dawa dawa

Additionally, the preparation of the modern staple maize porridge is one that requires more expensive extraction of the maize kernel’s shell (or pericarp?? or more??) in the milling process so as to eliminate nutritional components (protein? fiber?) that make the meal more healthful but less aesthetically pleasing to the modern eye. Modern porridge is very pure white in color and very soft in texture. This is the food that will impress guests with your modernity.  If whole grain maize porridge is served--maize that looks slightly brown and is harder-- they will know you are poor and backwards.  This is despite the fact that the whole grain maize porridge is largely considered to be more satisfying and better for the body. Wonder Bread had its day and still lingers in the States.  The same process of technology influencing the aesthetics of food is at work here.  

What’s particularly interesting about the achievement of modernity through diet are the geographical layers that can be analyzed.  People in the fieldsite where I live are striving to be like the people in the nearby urban center Wa.  Associations with certain wild foods or ways of preparing food that are considered too traditional are associated with my other field site, a smaller, more rural community only 5 kilometers away.  Meanwhile, the urban folk of Wa are adopting ways of eating that could be considered less regional and more standardized Ghanaian, with more reliance on food items that come from outside the country.  My assistant and I had a very frustrating go around recently where he insisted that because perfumed Thai rice was the same price as the locally produced rice I should just buy the perfumed Thai rice.  His theory was that the Thai rice, being from the outside, was obviously better than any locally produced product.  Steeped in my “I buy local when I can” zeal, I kept trying to convince him that buying local rice made more sense because it supported the local rice farmers and that I found the local rice to better accompany the local flavors used.  He didn’t buy my theory*. 

Cowboy Rice from the US of A.  The US also floods its subsidized Jazz rice in the Ghanaian market alongside Thai and Vietnamese rice.  Local rice struggles. 

Local rice

I don’t suggest that Ghana has no need for modern consumer goods from around the world or technologies that can enhance productivity or provide essential services. The point is that it is disconcerting to see that alongside the access to such modern goods and ways of consuming, is the assumption that it is better simply because it comes from the outside and that anything locally produced must be inferior. 

As if this aspect of becoming modern weren’t exasperating enough to witness, the efforts to become more modern here are costly.  I do a lot of uncomfortable shifting in my seat as I listen to how being modern inevitably results in further integration into a cash economy, largely on the consumer end.  People have plenty of opportunities to be modern through what they buy, but incredibly limited opportunities to be modern through how and what they earn. Historical memory and contemporary world membership encourages modern consumption, but jobs that help support such a modern lifestyle are minimal and require levels of formal (and expensive) educational attainment that farmers don’t and can’t have.  That is why tertiary education is now priority for everyone here and why school fees sometimes trump food needs.

So in addition to feeling pulled into modernity, farmers are often forced to become more modern in their attempts to close this discrepancy between “things one must have” and “ways to earn money to have those things”.  Though elders are prone to categorize all change as that which occurs to be less traditional, a lot of dietary change is not due to choice.  Beans are a food item that my observation and interviews assert as not cast into the traditional category. People describe plenty of interest in wanting to eat more beans.  However beans have fallen long by the wayside in the diet because beans are more expensive than other foodstuffs.  Women would be inclined to cook more beans and less rice if they weren’t compelled to balance food needs with school fees or health insurance or small business activity that keeps their purchasing capabilities afloat. 

Similarly, there would probably be more beans in the household if men weren’t so prone to favor of the commercial crop appeal of groundnuts.  The standard argument is that commercial crops lead to higher income and the ability to purchase rather than grow diverse food stuffs.  But that argument is based on the idea that an equitable commodity chain exists and farmers are getting fair prices for their crops.  That often doesn’t happen in many places in the world and isn’t happening here.  Men sell groundnuts to buy fertilizer, an outside technology that is just as often described as necessary for keeping up socio-economic appearances as it is for soil enhancement.  Men need fertilizer because maize is a very nutrient hungry crop and won’t grow here without fertilizer.  Men direct attention to maize rather than focus on the more traditional (and higher protein and less nutrient needy) grains millet and sorghum because it has a faster maturation time.  Faster maturation time is needed to get food into a house that is hungry because cash is tight and farming challenged by changing rainfall patterns. Maize also has more earning potential on the Ghanaian market.   Men don’t sell groundnuts to buy beans.  Men sell groundnuts to ensure that the cheaper maize porridge can consistently be eaten 2-3 times a day at the cost of a more diverse diet.

Recently harvested maize to put an end to the really food insecure JuneJuly period in this household

Groundnut harvest--a good harvest.  This will make a dent on the cost of ag inputs for next year as well as school fees.

Sorghum foreground and millet background--indigenous grains that are losing out to greater ecological and economic forces. 

The citizens of the Upper West are still trying to prove themselves through the achievement of modernity that they are both pushed and pulled into. The templates and processes that guide this push and pull are produced by the outside progenitors of what it means to be modern. This is pretty exasperating to witness and makes my brain want to explode, especially since many people who reside in places that determine what is modern think that the templates and processes are malfunctioning. As Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman get Westerners to forage for their food and buy local food to sustain local economies, Ghanaians contend with a historical legacy that deems such actions backwards and membership in a contemporary world that still benefits from exploiting rather than enhancing livelihoods.  This region can now boast of being more modern, but it can also boast of having a less diverse diet.  That is whack.

*He also didn’t get why I felt guilty for buying a pair of $2 red knock off Tom’s in Scotland. He didn’t get why I should feel guilty for having to buy cheap goods made by cheap labor when I should be celebrating my ability to buy a pair of shoes so cheaply.  Unfortunately he also failed to see the irony of wearing knock off Tom’s in Ghana, a place where authentic Tom’s are supposed to be improving people’s lives.  And so that’s why I tag it on here.