ABSTRACT
Although shea is firmly embedded in the livelihoods and lifestyles of rural women residing in West Africa’s savanna, it is also situated in a much wider web of meanings and economic relationships. In the 1990s, following nearly a century of steady but silent incorporation into metropolitan industry, shea gained a visible presence in the centers of cosmopolitan consumption and commerce-an economic arena far removed from the markets, farms, and forests of northern Ghana. At the turn of the millennium, shea is as likely to be found in the shopping districts of any of the world’s global cities or even less central places as it is in the markets of West Africa.
