Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T19:15:20.999Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cars, the Customs Service, and Sumptuary Rule in Neoliberal Ghana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2008

Brenda Chalfin
Brenda Chalfin
Affiliation:
University of Florida
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This essay probes the role of commodities in the crafting of state power, working from the vantage point of contemporary Ghana, a polity at once post-socialist and staunchly neoliberal, least-industrialized and highly cosmopolitan. Among the many commodities which Ghana's citizens and state bodies identify with and rely upon, cars are of critical significance. In what follows, I explore the raft of interventions surrounding car importation and allocation imposed by Ghana's Customs Service, and the resulting public critique, in an effort to capture the shifting contours of state authority in the context of an electoral and economic transition spurred by neoliberal reform.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , April 2008 , pp. 424 - 453
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abugri, G. S. 2001. “One for the Road—A Letter to Jomo.” Daily Graphic, May 4: 7.Google Scholar
Accra Mail. 2000. “Ceps Boss Rejects c. 38 Million Duty.” 6 Nov.: 3.Google Scholar
Accra Mail. 2001a. “Alarm Blow: Mother of All Car Looting Capers.” 22 Feb.: 3.Google Scholar
Accra Mail. 2001b. “Alarm Blow II.” 26 Feb.: 1.Google Scholar
Adjei-Bediako. 2001. “Tony Aidoo Must Be Ashamed.” Chronicle, 5 Mar.: 2.Google Scholar
Africa Report. 1990. “Auto Industry,” 35, 3: 12.Google Scholar
Akyeampong, E. 2005. “Diaspora and Drug Trafficking in West Africa: A Case Study of Ghana.” African Affairs 104, 416: 429–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aidoo, T. 2001. “Tony Aidoo: Rejoinder.” Chronicle, 14 Feb.: 2, 4.Google Scholar
Allotey, J. A. 2001. “Opinion: Cars, Cars and Still Cars.” The Independent, 23 Jan.: 6.Google Scholar
Amissah, J. 2001. “I Have Not Bought any Audi Car from CEPS.” Daily Graphic, 3 Mar.: 3.Google Scholar
Ampofo, O. 2005. “Mr. President, Act to Control Public Funds.” Ghana Homepage, http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/artikel.php?ID=85843 (accessed 27 Jan. 2006).Google Scholar
Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Anim-Asante, J. 1988. A Descriptive List of the Records of the Customs Department in the National Archives of Ghana, Accra. Department of Library and Archival Studies, University of Ghana, Legon.Google Scholar
Arhinful, D. 2002. “We Think of Them: Money Transfers from The Netherlands to Ghana.” In, van Kessel, I, ed., Merchants, Missionaries and Migrants: 300 Years of Dutch-Ghanaian Relations. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 151–59.Google Scholar
Armah, A. 1969. The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Oxford: Heineman Publishers.Google Scholar
Austin, D. 1964. Politics in Ghana. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Austen, R. 1987. African Economic History: Internal Development and External Dependency London: J. Currey and Heineman Publishers.Google Scholar
Auto Industry. 2007. “World Vehicle Production Statistics since 1997 by Region,” www.autoindustry.co.uk/statistics/production/world (accessed 5 June 2007).Google Scholar
Azarya, V. and Chazan, N.. 1987. “Disengagement from the State in Africa: Reflections on the Experience of Ghana and Guinea.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 28, 4: 106–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barthes, R. 1972. Mythologies. New York: Noonday Press.Google Scholar
Beckman, B. 1976. Organising the Farmers: Cocoa Politics and National Development in Ghana. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies.Google Scholar
Beuving, J. J. 2004. “Cotonou's Klondike: African Traders and Second-Hand Car Markets in Benin.” Journal of Modern African Studies 42, 4: 511–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biney, K. 2001. “Ato Dadzie Must Face Trial.” Guide (Ghana) 29 Jan.: 1.Google Scholar
Bloch, M. and Parry, J.. 1989. “Introduction: Money and the Morality of Exchange.” In, Parry, J. and Bloch, M., eds., Money and the Morality of Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–32.Google Scholar
Botwe, F. O. 2001. “CEPS Told to Provide Vehicles to DAs.” Chronicle (Ghana) 15 Mar.: 5.Google Scholar
Bowie, K. 1993. “Assessing the Early Observers: Cloth and the Fabric of Society in 19th-Century Northern Thailand.” American Ethnologist 20, 1: 138–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandon, R. 2002. How the Car Changed Life. London: McMillan.Google Scholar
British Broadcasting Corporation. 2006. “The Story of Africa between World Wars: Air and Road,” www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/13chapter9.shtml (accessed 27 Jan. 2006).Google Scholar
Business Week. 2000. “A Cream Puff in Used Cars?” 3682 (22 May): 181.Google Scholar
Chalfin, B. 2003. Working the Border in Ghana: Technologies of Sovereignty and Its Others School of Social Science Occasional Paper, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., Paper 16.Google Scholar
Chalfin, B. 2004. Shea Butter Republic: State Power, Global Markets and the Making of an Indigenous Commodity. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalfin, B. 2005. “Sovereigns and Citizens in Close Encounter: Airport Anthropology and Customs Regimes in Neoliberal Ghana.” MS.Google Scholar
Chalfin, B. 2006. “Trafficking Sovereignty: Customs Regimes and the Fault Lines of Neoliberalism.” Paper presented at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, Washington, D.C., 18 Apr.Google Scholar
Chazan, N. 1983. An Anatomy of Ghanaian Politics: Managing Political Recession 1969–1982. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Collins, J. 1994. The Ghanaian Concert Party: African Popular Entertainment at the Cross Roads. Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. L.. 1993. Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Coomson, K. 2001. “More Revelations on Bootlegged Cars.” Chronicle (Ghana) 9–12 Feb.: 1.Google Scholar
Crusading Guide (Ghana). 2001. “Cars, Cars and Still Cars”: 4.Google Scholar
Daily Graphic (Ghana). 2000a. “Where Is Car Number GR 1466 J, CEPS.” 25 Sept.: 9.Google Scholar
Daily Graphic (Ghana). 2000b. “Customs, Excise and Preventive Service, Notice to Owners of Seized Cars.” 27 Oct.: 9, 35.Google Scholar
Daily Graphic (Ghana). 2001. “List of Beneficiaries of Vehicles.” 23 Jan.: 9.Google Scholar
Daily Guide (Ghana). 2001. “CEPS Blows Whistle.” 27 Feb.: 1.Google Scholar
Devries, J. 1976. The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dispatch (Ghana). 2001. List of beneficiaries of vehicles, final list of beneficiaries under the transitional arrangement. 22 Jan.: 5.Google Scholar
Dogbe, E. 2003. “Elusive Modernity: Portraits of the City in Popular Ghanaian Video.” In, Zeleza, P. and Veney, C., eds., Leisure in Urban Africa. Trenton: Africa World Press, 227–48.Google Scholar
Donkor, M. 2000. “CEPS Impounds 70 Vehicles … for Non-Payment of Tax.” Daily Graphic (Ghana) 13 Sept.: 32.Google Scholar
Duodu, S. 2001. “Idrissu Mahama Dashed Stolen Expensive Car.” Evening News (Ghana), 27 Mar.: 1.Google Scholar
Duodu, S. and Bouna, P.. 2001. “Government Retrieves Cars, Ex-Officials Can't Pay New Prices.” Evening News (Ghana), 30 Jan.: 1.Google Scholar
Earle, T. 1994. “Wealth Finance in the Inka Empire: Evidence from the Calchaqui Valley, Argentina.” American Antiquity 59, 3: 443–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Economist. 1999. “The Desert Blooms.” 353, 8146 (20 Nov.): 85.Google Scholar
Evening News (Ghana). 2001. “CEPS Explains Position on Confiscated Vehicles.” 16 Jan.Google Scholar
Ferguson, J. 1993. “De-Moralizing Economies: African Socialism, Scientific Capitalism, and the Moral Politics of Structural Adjustment.” In, Moore, S. F., ed., Moralizing States and the Ethnography of the Present. Arlington, Va.: American Anthropological Association, 78–92.Google Scholar
Ferguson, J. 1999. Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gaonkar, D. 2003. “On Alternative Modernities.” In, Gaonkar, D., ed., Alternative Modernities. Durham: Duke University Press, 1–23.Google Scholar
Genoud, Roger. 1969. Nationalism and Economic Development in Ghana. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Ghana News Agency. 2004. “CPP, NDC Accuse NPP Attempts to Marginalize Opposition.” 30 Oct.Google Scholar
Ghanaian Times. 2001. “CEPS Denies Allegations of Smuggling of Vehicles.” 17 Jan.: 9.Google Scholar
Gifford, P. 2004. Ghana's New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalizing African Economy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, E., ed. 1982. From Craft to Industry: Ethnography of Proto-Industrial Cloth Production. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenfield, K. R. 1918. Sumptuary Law in Nürnberg: A Study in Paternal Government. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, K. T. 2000. Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Harvey, D. 1990. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Harvey, D. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hasty, J. 2005a. The Press and Political Culture in Ghana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hasty, J. 2005b. “The Pleasures of Corruption: Desire and Discipline in Ghanaian Political Culture.” Cultural Anthropology 20, 2: 271–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holden, L. 1998. “More than a Marque. The Car as Symbol: Aspects of Culture and Ideology.” In, Thomas, D., Holden, L., and Claydon, T., eds., The Motor Car and Popular Culture in the 20th Century. Aldershot: Ashgate, 28–40.Google Scholar
Hopkins, A. 1973. An Economic History of West Africa. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Hunt, A. 1996. Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law. London: St. Martins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchinson, C. F. 2005. The Pen-Pictures of Modern African and African Celebrities. Doortmont, M., ed. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Iliffe, J. 1995. Africans: The History of a Continent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jeffries, R. 1989. “Ghana: The Political Economy of Personal Rule.” In, Cruise O'Brien, D., Dunn, J., and Rathbone, R., eds., Contemporary African States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 75–98.Google Scholar
Killick, T. 1978. Development Economics in Action: A Study of Economic Policies in Ghana. London: Palgrave McMillan.Google Scholar
Kopytoff, I. 1986. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process.” In, Appadurai, A., ed., The Social Life of Things. New York: Cambridge University Press, 64–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lartey, O. 2000. “CEPS Boss Rejects 38 Million Duty.” The Accra Mail, 6 Nov.: 3.Google Scholar
Lavenir, C. B. 2000. “How the Motor Car Conquered the Road.” In, Levin, M. R., ed., Cultures of Control. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 113–34.Google Scholar
Lee, B. and LiPuma, E. 2004. Financial Derivatives and the Globalization of Risk. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Manuh, T. 2000. Migrants and Citizens: Economic Crisis in Ghana and the Search for Opportunity in Toronto, Canada. Ph.D. diss, Indiana University.Google Scholar
McLeod, M. D. 1981. The Asante. London: The British Museum.Google Scholar
Meyer, B. 1998. “‘Make a Complete Break with the Past’: Memory and Post-Colonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist Discourse.” Journal of Religion in Africa, 28, 3: 316–49.Google Scholar
Meyer, B. 1999. Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe of Ghana. Trenton: Africa World Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, B. 2004a. “Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 447–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, B. 2004b. “Praise the Lord”: Popular Cinema and Pentecostalite Style in Ghana's New Public Sphere. American Ethnologist 31, 1: 92–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mintz, S. W. 1985. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Mitchell, T. 2002. Rule of Experts. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orhin, I. G. 2001. “Ato Dadzie Admits Error.” Public Agenda (Ghana), 23 Jan.Google Scholar
Pellow, D. and Chazan, N.. 1986. Ghana: Coping with Uncertainty. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Pels, P. 2003. “Magic and Modernity.” In, Meyer, B. and Pels, P., eds., Magic and Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1–38.Google Scholar
Plange, P. K. 2001. “Bad-Bye Nii Okine.” Chronicle (Ghana), 22 Jan.: 1.Google Scholar
Public Agenda. 2001. “Significant Fall in Car Imports,” 19 Mar.: 4.Google Scholar
Rathbone, R. 1978. “Ghana.” In, Dunn, J., ed., West African States: Failure and Promise. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 22–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roncoli, M. 1994. Managing on the Margins: Agricultural Production and Household Reproduction in Northeastern Ghana. Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Binghamton.Google Scholar
Rothchild, D., ed. 1991. Ghana: The Political Economy of Recovery. Boulder: L. Rienner Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schildkrout, E. 1996. “Kingdom of Gold.” Natural History 105, 2: 32–47.Google Scholar
Scott, J. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shipton, P. 1989. Bitter Money: Cultural Economy and some African Meanings of Forbidden Commodities. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
Steiner, C. B. 1985. “Another Image of Africa: Toward an Ethnohistory of European Cloth Marketed in West Africa, 1873–1960.” Ethnohistory 32, 2: 91–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taussig, M. 1999. Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, D., Holden, L., and Claydon, T.. 1998. “Introduction.” In, Thomas, D., Holden, L., and Claydon, T., eds., The Motor Car and Popular Culture in the 20th Century. Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 1–8.Google Scholar
Torpey, J. and Caplan, J.. 2001. “Introduction.” In, Torpey, J. and Caplan, J., eds., Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1–12.Google Scholar
Van der Haak, B. 2003. Lagos/Koolhaas Brooklyn: First Run Film (video).Google Scholar
Verdery, K. 1991. “Theorizing Socialism: A Prologue to the ‘Transition.’” American Ethnologist 18, 3: 419–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Victory Bible Church International. 2006. Our Logo, www.vbint.org (accessed 27 Jan. 2006).Google Scholar
West, H. and Sanders, T., eds. 2003. Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
White, L. 2000. Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilks, I. 1967. “Asanti Government.” In, Forde, D. and Karberry, P., eds., West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century. London: Oxford University Press, International African Institute, 206–38.Google Scholar
Wilks, I. 1993. Forests of Gold. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Yeboah, A. A. 2001. “NDC Man Quizzed over Cars.” Ghana Times, 5 Feb.: 1.Google Scholar
Zaun, T. and Singer, J. 2004. “How Japan's Second-Hand Cars Make it to the Third World.” Wall Street Journal—Eastern Edition 243, 5: A1.Google Scholar