I am an African Historian working on a sociocultural history of the co-operative movement in Ghana. I trace the colonial origins of these co-operative societies since the 1930s. The larger purpose of my research is to identify how present day fair-trade co-operatives might continue to be influenced by discourses of development that were first created during the colonial era. This project brings together many of my research interests, including history of development, history of international commodity exchange, history of cocoa and chocolate, oral history, and African social history. As an Africanist I am specifically interested in representing African agency in the shaping and altering of colonial and present day development initiatives. This project began ten years ago as a personal investigation into labor conditions in the West African Cocoa industry, and became my primary academic focus six years ago when I began graduate school.
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Diversity in Organizations, Communities, and Nations
