ABSTRACT
This book, an economic biography of a sort, is about a West African commodity known as shea (Butyrospermum parkii) and the challenges its commercial history poses to conventional pathways of tropical commoditization. Focused on the shea economy of the West African nation of Ghana, the book is fundamentally concerned with the logics of economic engagement: the way global economic shifts are brought to bear on, altered, or kept at bay by states and rural economic actors and institutions. Two concerns setting shea apart from other tropical commodities frame the analysis presented here. First, how do we account for the persistence of a domestic market for shea geared to rural provisioning in the face of a long history of export promotion? Second, how can we explain shea’s changing status on the global market from an inexpensive and little-noticed industrial raw material to a much-discussed and high-priced consumer item?
