African Market Women: Seven Life Stories from Ghana

In these lively life stories, women market traders from Ghana comment onchanging social and economic times and on reasons for their prosperity or decline infortunes. Gracia Clark shows that market women are intimately connected witheconomic policy on a global scale. Many work at the intersection of sophisticatednetworks of transnational commerce and migration. They have dramatic memories ofindependence and the growth of their new nation, including political rivalries, price controls, and violent raids on the market. The experiences of these women givesubstance to their reflections on globalization, capital accumulation, colonialism, technological change, environmental degradation, teenage pregnancy, marriage, children, changing gender roles, and spirituality. Clark's commentary illuminatesthe complex historical and cultural setting of these deeply revealinglives.