Book Report: Onions are My Husband by Gracia Clark
Clark, Gracia 1994 Onions Are My Husband. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
Overview
Gracia Clark gives a comprehensive summary of her ethnographic studies in the female dominated marketplaces of Kumasi, Ghana in Onions are My Husband. The Kumasi Central Market is the largest in Ghana, and possibly in West Africa. It is estimated that there is a daily trading population of fifteen to twenty thousand. The marketplace is similar to others in southern Ghana in that female traders dominate it. The marketplace population is about 70 percent female, and 65 percent Asante, a reflection on the region’s political dominance by the Asante ethnic group.
Clark’s studies focus on the marketplace in Kumasi as a diverse and ever-changing subject. Actual traders are extremely diverse, ranging from those selling food crops, to those selling small merchandise like chewing gum, to those advertising for traditional medicine. Market relations themselves are perpetually molded and altered according to the shifting relationships between things both commercial and noncommercial. Clark sees this diversity as an opportunity for holistic study that can show connections within the marketplace that reflect social levels from within households, to villages and communities, to international structures. She states, “It is these very contradictions that constantly renew and transform the full range of trading relations, including their constraints” (Clark 3).
The Kumasi Central Market is a fascinating display of cultural gender roles and relations in commercial Ghana. Ghanaian women are uniquely able to compete for powerful positions within the context of the marketplace. They must continually work within their social constraints while testing the “limits of resources [they] can draw on to accumulate capital” (Clark 3). Asante women in southern Ghana had moved into marketplace work soon after the colonialism era, while men moved on to cocoa farmer where they could enjoy better income and economic mobility. Clark mentions that although some sources have made it seem that Ghanaian women have been well protected and unscathed in marketplace employment, her participatory studies showed her otherwise. She relates that political upheavals in trading rates and prices have affected the women involved in the marketplace and left them vulnerable frequently for attacks and resulting disadvantage in their business. At these times, the women often have very limited resources and alternatives to turn to for assistance.
Clark describes her experience entering the field, and how this in itself is a process towards quality ethnographic research. She relates that during her first visit, she had a very passive time where she simply gained trust and accumulated rapport with Ghanaians. It took her months to gain a suitable amount of the “interactional skills and acquired…sponsorship of individuals that [she] needed to work at full speed” (Clark 19). Clark explains that her process of assimilation was like a baby learning to interact in the world around her. As she gained footing, she was able to start becoming more systematic and specific in her research. Overall, her ethnographic research spanned over several years, and included multiple back and forth trips. She was able to observe historical events and trends that affected her research subjects and caused her to adapt her methodologies and theoretical frameworks.
The bulk of the book describes the interconnecting social relations of marketplace dynamics and the technicalities of trading. Clark shows that the Kumasi Central Market is strongly linked to farming and consumption from other regions around Ghana. The relation the marketplace shares with other areas is due to its central location, and traders are benefited through these relations. The different urban and rural connections traders have with areas outside of Kumasi dictate their own social stratification within the marketplace world. These stratifications affect how daily transactions occur. These processes illustrate the layers of power associated with a variety of demographics, whether these be gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, etc.
Throughout the book, women and how their gender roles affect their marketplace interaction is specifically discussed. Ghanaians use matrilineage, which can greatly benefit Asante females, by protecting them “against risks of divorce, illness, or bankruptcy…[and] help a trading enterprise survive” (Clark 331). However, marketplace women must also learn to reconcile between conflicts of commercial, urban work and traditional, domestic work. Trading requires investments for the appropriate training, time, and organization to affectively bring in monetary capital. Yet, for Asante women, the first priority is raising children. Adhering to the important investment in human capital is important because children will grow up to represent the family reputation. These seemingly contradicting pursuits often must be juggled by marketplace women, which may include using children for non-paid domestic work or leaving the respect of being a mother at home when at the marketplace, because although it is dominated by women, traders deal with government, which is male dominated.
Clark concludes the book by explaining that marketplace traders face persisting obstacles from gaining access to resources on the national level, both financial and material. However, the deregulation of internal trading, if nothing else, will allow women to remain in the marketplace. If marketplace traders survive, they will continue to provide the means for local consumption, and reinforce local buying power. Clark ends by stating, “It may be that continued survival for themselves, their families, and their communities is the most crucial as well as the most realistic contributing a resilient marketplace system can be expected to make” (Clark 426).
Application
Overall, this book connects to my project because of its underlying them of gender roles within Ghanaian society. Although I will mainly be observing female children, not adults, and in a rural and agricultural setting, instead of urban and commercial, I think there is still insight to be gained. Obviously, no matter what level of society a woman interacts with in Ghana, the deep running cultural stigmas connected to matrilineage and gender relations will affect her. I wonder if girls involved in cocoa farming and attempting to gain an academic education face learning to reconcile between seemingly contradictory lifestyles, as marketplace women in Kumasi often face.
In general, I was surprised by the freedom women even have to accumulate their own capital and dominate trading enterprises while working in the Kumasi Central Marketplace. I guess that this just displays one of the ignorant assumptions I am led to make because of my American stereotyping and preconceptions about third world life. Realizing that gender roles and female capabilities are far more complex and extensive than I realized may help me in my own project. I need to understand that there are different ways of being a free and dynamic woman, that my perception of being educated or successful as a woman may be very different from how Ghanaian women perceive such things.
Some parts of Onions are My Husband also gave me a better understanding of how interrelated varying parts and social levels of a nation really can be. Rural, urban, residential, commercial, agricultural regions and interactions all connect and are dependent upon one another to create a holistic conglomerate of society and culture. Clark did not limit her research only to the marketplace and its immediate facets, but extended her analyses and observations to other areas of interest that related to her study. For my own ethnographic research, it would benefit me to take a page out of Clark’s book, and attempt to look outside of the most blatant dimensions of my project to external elements that might hold sway on my subjects and their situations.
Conclusion
Onions are My Husband includes a vast variety of cultural and analytical data about Ghanaian society. Clark’s observations and resulting conclusions provided me with a fruitful resource for benefitting my own research. I was able draw new insight into gender relations and Ghanaian industry for females. However, I also gained a better knowledge of how to go about my ethnographic work and what ways of perceiving my project might be more effective.
