Article
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Land Deals, Labour and Everyday Politics
Version 1
: Received: 19 February 2019 / Approved: 20 February 2019 / Online: 20 February 2019 (09:04:36 CET)
How to cite: Gyapong, A.Y. Land Deals, Labour and Everyday Politics. Preprints 2019, 2019020184. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201902.0184.v1. Gyapong, A.Y. Land Deals, Labour and Everyday Politics. Preprints 2019, 2019020184. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201902.0184.v1.
Abstract
This study presents empirical evidence on the nature of the political struggles for inclusion on an oil palm land deal in Ghana. It examines the employment dynamics and the everyday politics of workers on an oil palm plantation in a predominantly migrant and settler society of the north-eastern part of Ghana, where large-scale production has only been introduced within the past decade. It shows that by the nature of labour organization, as well as other structural issues, workers do not benefit equally from the land deals and therefore express everyday forms of resistance against exploitation, and for better terms of incorporation. Particularly, they express agency through absenteeism and non-compliance, which especially, enables them to maintain their basic food sovereignty/security. Nonetheless, these everyday politics is not necessarily liberating in confronting the everyday peasant problems and unfavourable agrarian transitions associated with capitalist agriculture. Overall, this paper contributes to the land grab literature by providing context-specific dynamics of impacts and politics and how are they are shaped by a multiplicity of factors- beyond class.
Keywords
Land deal; Land grab; Oil Palm; Labour; Farmworkers; Plantation; Everyday politics
Subject
ARTS & HUMANITIES, Anthropology & Ethnography
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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