Market Encounters
NEW AFRICAN HISTORIES
SERIES EDITORS: JEAN ALLMAN, ALLEN ISAACMAN, AND DEREK R. PETERSON
David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, The Risks of Knowledge
Belinda Bozzoli, Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid
Gary Kynoch, We Are Fighting the World
Stephanie Newell, The Forger’s Tale
Jacob A. Tropp, Natures of Colonial Change
Jan Bender Shetler, Imagining Serengeti
Cheikh Anta Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad
Marc Epprecht, Heterosexual Africa?
Marissa J. Moorman, Intonations
Karen E. Flint, Healing Traditions
Derek R. Peterson and Giacomo Macola, editors, Recasting the Past
Moses E. Ochonu, Colonial Meltdown
Emily S. Burrill, Richard L. Roberts, and Elizabeth Thornberry, editors, Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa
Daniel R. Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets
Emily Lynn Osborn, Our New Husbands Are Here
Robert Trent Vinson, The Americans Are Coming!
James R. Brennan, Taifa
Benjamin N. Lawrance and Richard L. Roberts, editors, Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake
David M. Gordon, Invisible Agents
Allen F. Isaacman and Barbara S. Isaacman, Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development
Stephanie Newell, The Power to Name
Gibril R. Cole, The Krio of West Africa
Matthew M. Heaton, Black Skin, White Coats
Meredith Terretta, Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence
Paolo Israel, In Step with the Times Michelle R. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries
Abosede A. George, Making Modern Girls
Alicia C. Decker, In Idi Amin’s Shadow Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Conjugal Rights
Shobana Shankar, Who Shall Enter Paradise?
Emily S. Burrill, States of Marriage
Todd Cleveland, Diamonds in the Rough
Carina E. Ray, Crossing the Color Line
Sarah Van Beurden, Authentically African
Giacomo Macola, The Gun in Central Africa
Lynn Schler, Nation on Board
Julie MacArthur, Cartography and the Political Imagination
Abou B. Bamba, African Miracle, African Mirage
Daniel Magaziner, The Art of Life in South Africa
Paul Ocobock, An Uncertain Age
Keren Weitzberg, We Do Not Have Borders
Nuno Domingos, Football and Colonialism
Jeffrey S. Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism
Bianca Murillo, Market Encounters
Laura Fair, Reel Pleasures
Thomas F. McDow, Buying Time
Jon Soske, Internal Frontiers
Market Encounters
Consumer Cultures in Twentieth-Century Ghana
Bianca Murillo
OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
ATHENS
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
© 2017 by Ohio University Press
All rights reserved
To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax).
Printed in the United States of America Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 5 4 3 2 1
A version of chapter three is based on Bianca Murillo, “‘The Modern Shopping Experience’: Kingsway Department Store and Consumer Politics in Ghana,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 82, no. 3 (2012): 368–92, © 2012 by Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with permission from Cambridge University Press.
COVER IMAGE. Miss Ghana, Monica Amekoafia, visits Kingsway Department Store, Accra, April 1957.
Reproduced with kind permission of Unilever from the original at the Unilever Archives, UAC/2/10/B1/8/1/15.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Murillo, Bianca, author.
Title: Market encounters : consumer cultures in twentieth-century Ghana / Bianca Murillo.
Other titles: New African histories series.
Description: Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, 2017. | Series: New African histories | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017027990| ISBN 9780821422885 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780821422892 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780821446133 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Consumption (Economics)—Ghana—History—20th century. | Consumption (Economics)—Political aspects—Ghana. | Consumers—Ghana—History—20th century. | Ghana—Commerce—History—20th century.
Classification: LCC HC1060.Z9 C64 2017 | DDC 381.309667—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017027990
To Teresa Rubie
Contents
Introduction. Consuming Histories and Creating Economies
Chapter 1. A Door “Wide Open” Imagining Gold Coast Markets
Chapter 2. “We Cannot Afford to Be Fooled” African Intermediaries on Shifting Commercial Terrain
Chapter 3. “In Time for Independence” Kingsway Department Store, Modernity, and the New Nation