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Editorial Review:

Onions Are My Husband: Survival and Accumulation by West African Market Women Reviews:
Onion Overload
2009-11-03 - Onions Are My Husband serves as a portal to the world of West African market women through the eyes of Gracia Clark. Ghana's massive Kumasi Central Market, which is described as one of the largest of its kind on the continent, is kept in motion by the thousands of women who handle the transactions that Clark began observing in 1978. In eleven chapters, Clark unravels the dynamics affecting the marketplace and the lives of women, providing historic accounts to understand how political relations, kinship relations, and marketplace relations shaped women's survival as traders. Clark's view is comprehensive as she additionally tackles issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and all other divides to help achieve her holistic representation, yet her attempt at covering all areas alienates the reader.

From the start, Clark familiarizes the reader with the environment by providing a strikingly vivid image of Kumasi Central Market. The organization and regulation described here makes the precise layout of an ant colony seem inferior. After such a dizzying tour, the reader feels confident in how and when one should navigate the crowded paths filled with yams, tomatoes, and eager traders. Such information is vital, for Clark presents space as a theme that she takes great care to unfold. Passages describe the seasonal and gradual changes of space in the market, giving insight to power of certain commodities at any given time. Through her spatial analysis, the reader becomes aware of the resilience and ingenuity of the Asante woman. Space in Kumasi market is fluid, forcing traders to adapt quickly and with cunning if they wish to increase their capital. Here, the fascinating hierarchy of commodity groups uncoils to show the ohemma's, queen mothers, and the politics that surround their positions.

On a more abstract level, Clark notes that time and space between women and their kin in place of spending more time on account of their husbands can ultimately limit their access to resources. Female traders' time in the home versus being physically stationed in the market in order to work to support their children and their children's educations presents the conflict of motherhood and wifehood to which Clark gives considerable attention.. Whether to describe power networks by identifying geographic regions within the market or by discussing how the interaction of neighboring stalls helps forge important, sustaining relationships, Clark's spatial analysis is both well-constructed and interesting.

Clark's historical analysis proves no less meritorious than her spatial analysis. In brief, Clark elaborates on how a structure has sustained itself through famine and hardship for so long despite numerous attempts at government regulation using rich historical evidence. Her task was not simple, yet she is extremely thorough in her analyses. In her chapter entitled "Persistent Transformations," Clark logs a detailed history, "outlining confrontations from earlier centuries that established the basis for control of major material and social resources..." (83). Aside from providing rich historical analysis, Clark's research period's spanning over a decade into the 1990's alone allows one to trace historical effects. The reader benefits from a wide range of studies and sees transformations more clearly. Clark's having been able to personally witness and study the effects of time is invaluable. She cites an overall decline in traders' relative power in relation to "overall social formation" and dedicates a lot of space to fanning out this issue (402).

Laced with various tables and charts, Clark undoubtedly supports her claims, but on the whole, the reader may feel as if her claims sometimes harbor a certain emptiness. By choosing not to incorporate other voices in her work, Clark leaves the reader that is often drawn to the genre of ethnography to hear some of the individual's account unsatisfied. Those searching for the Nisa of Kumasi marketplace women will find no solace here. For much of the book, the reader is inundated with statistics and conclusions, which often alienates the reader, and theory is rarely, if ever, accompanied by anecdotal interlude. As a result of the exclusion of the reader from having some idea of what was said during interviews, one is forced to take Clark's word for everything. which presenta problem.
Before diving into the market, Clark describes her quest for "searching for a theoretical framework hospitable to this multi-faceted analysis" in her first chapter (26). Her analysis addresses gender, race, ethnicity, autonomy, and environment in relation to wage earning, marriage, education, technology, and various aspects of society. These subjects are paired with the themes of economics, politics, and local relationships to make for a complicated overview. An exhaustive list of themes explored might cause for praise or for skepticism, however. Some might wonder whether or not Clark undertook too ambitious an initiative in trying to leave no stone unturned. Or, on the other hand, others might flock to her work as an encyclopedic canon of the marketplace.

Overall, Clark provides the reader with the tools necessary to understand the dynamics of marketplace survival for Asante women while providing historical transformation as another level of enlightenment for the reader. While the language style may not captivate the reader or the discussion evoke poignant sentiments, Onions Are My Husband is insightful and touching in its own regard. More than a decade's worth of knowledge is presented in a format that is both accessible and highly detailed. At the very least, the issues Clark raises merit the attention of anyone hoping to better understand the issues of gender in African society as well as the dynamic of local power structures, but the text most certainly warrants the attention of anyone seeking a work that is as close to a holistic text as any other ethnography making such a claim could possibly be.

A dense but well-informed read
2009-10-28 - "A woman without an income is not a real woman, but like a child or, more precisely, an idiot" (107). In Ghanaian society, women are expected not only to bear children to continue the lineage, but also to earn money as a basis of economic independence. Many modern Ghanaian women, barred from large-scale agriculture such as the cocoa plantations established during the British colonial period, seek this income in the market as traders. This double responsibility creates a population of women who are traders and also mothers, wives, and daughters, using their positions in a market economy and Asante culture not only to survive, but to thrive. These women are the subject of Gracia Clark's book, Onions are my Husband, a rich ethnography of, more specifically, the women traders in the Kumasi Central Market in Ghana. Clark aims to examine market women's capacity to engage in effective social action and the market's contribution to this effectiveness (4), and though she constantly highlights the position of women in this market, her ethnography results in a much broader picture of the heterogeneous Kumasi Central Market, situating it in several complicated structural and theoretical contexts, which results in a loss of focus on the individual experience of the women traders themselves.

In Onions are my Husband, Clark presents an interesting question that is driven by her informants and has broader implications for global development economics. She is a careful ethnographer who allows the traders to "inform my research agenda by indicating...what I should learn," and in doing so, she finds herself focusing on "their preoccupation with survival and accumulation" (18). Her focus on the women's survival, and I would argue, success, as traders is more a tribute to the resilience of this particular market system as a whole. She does not ignore the diversity of the market and discusses women within the larger trading population, not only through the lens of gender, but through the lenses of ethnicity, class, and history. Her "intention here is to identify key social forces which generate, maintain, and continue to reshape this diversity" (3). Focusing on survival, Clark realizes that "[t]rader's actions not only helped their families to survive but affected for better or worse, the survival capacity of their communities and nations" (26). Her study is unique in that it embraces the multifaceted identities of the Kumasi traders and projects the survival of this resilient marketplace as a model for the African continent as a whole.

Onions are my Husband is an ethnography grounded in structural analysis, driven by the author's background in medieval economic history and American feminist social movements. Clark employs a different kind of structural analysis to explain the complexities of the market and reflect on the effects these structures have on women trader's survival in every chapter. In the first three chapters, Clark analyzes physical structure, situating us in space and time, by placing Kumasi Central Market in visual, geographic, and historical context. In chapters 4 and 5, she looks at functional structure, by analyzing the processes of buying, selling, and obtaining resources and assessing characteristics of commodities. In chapters 6 and 7, Clark discusses organizational structure in the form of informal relationships and market leadership. In chapter 8, she looks at the social structure of identity through the multifaceted lenses of gender and ethnicity, using a framework similar to the matrix cross-sectional analysis that Patricia Hill Collins uses to analyze race, class, and gender effects among American black females in the Church. In chapter 9, Clark analyzes local economic structure, though addressing how trading affects women in the household, their domestic relationships, and the division of responsibilities. Finally, in chapters 10 and 11, she addresses the position of Kumasi Central Market within larger political and economic structures such as British colonial rule, the modern state, and international development interventions, like Structural Adjustment Programs. Her ultimate conclusion is that though the "[m]arket may be no paradise for women, ...trading under these circumstances, in combination with certain features of Asante culture, does provide significant sources of strength on which these women can build" (33).

Clark's comprehensive structural analysis situates the market and its processes, players, tools, and objects squarely amidst several larger contexts; however the broad focus and repetitive frameworks do not allow as in-depth an analysis of the individual gender dynamics and women trader's experiences within Kumasi Central Market. As a reader, I come away with an understanding of the minute structures within which traders move and the generic organization of their daily lives, but I have only a small window into how the traders internalize their position in these structures and the repercussions of their daily actions to gain "sources of strength on which...[to] build." Even when Clark discusses gender and women's experience, which she does within almost every framework, she does so generally, and there is little included directly from the life histories that she collected, told in the women's words, so there is less personal relation to the women's lives and struggles.

Clark's economic analysis of the access to resources and political analysis of the assertion of power against dominating systems is strong and well-situated in theoretical literature. She understands and effectively communicates how "geographic patterns of trade" can reinforce "broader patterns of stratification" (62). For example, travel and transport are differentially available to traders of different genders, and the narrow streets of the marketplace meant stall placement determined income and customer range. She broadly defines resources to include not only capital and commodities to sell, but also information and labor. She also explains that the way to seek access is through political means: "relations with various historically constituted governments was...a critical and hotly contested asset for groups of traders constituted along ethnic, racial, gender, or class lines" (122). Her discussions of structure deftly describe the frameworks of power against which or within which traders must seek survival and accumulation.

These theoretical and historical frameworks, though, tend to swallow some of Clark's more essential focal points about gender and women trader's survival. The thorough and interconnected contextual information, constantly in conversation with outside theories such as Marxist feminism, Dependency theory, and Modernization theory, runs the risk of unnecessary repetition and certainly makes for a difficult read. It is hard to sift through these arguments and see that "[g]ender holds a very different but still powerful meaning for Asantes, implicated through matriliny in the division of family financial and domestic responsibility" (29). There are only several instances where Clark takes time to engage directly and personally with her ethnographic evidence, but even these few quotes and analyses relate more directly to her argument than the broader contextualization. Her language analysis is insightful and focused--she compares the Twi words for debt and loan, showing how important credit is as a resource (179) and she compares the Twi words for cooking and sex, showing the symbolic importance of one of women's prime domestic activities (345). Clark also includes several quotes from interviews and surveys--she writes that traders "mentioned that a desire for independence led them to stop working for a senior relative" (194) and "women I interviewed saw [polygyny] as a serious threat to their economic and personal interests" (342); quotes a woman saying, `I was farming with my husband, so after the divorce I left to come and trade' (295); and finds a good husband, according to one woman, is if `he sits and talks with you on the veranda in the evening' (339). These pieces in the women's own words speak volumes about their experiences in the market and deserve analysis and reflection, rather than a casual mention, in order to properly highlight the experience of survival and accumulation over the numbers and categorical facts. I would have appreciated a deeper gaze into market women's lives through further focused analysis of language and quotations and it would have added more to an argument about female resilience than Clark's broader Marxist comparisons.

Finally, one of Clark's stronger arguments is about the importance of informal relationships and the creation of empowering spaces within Kumasi Central Market for women traders' survival and accumulation. Again, though, in addition to her evidence gathered from participant observation in descriptive detail about these interactions, direct quotations or anecdotes that allow the reader to engage with specific personalities and their experiences with these interactions would have furthered her arguments. The findings that "traders who accumulated more and survived serious crises better had a greater tendency to have stronger vertical linkages with individual customers or stronger horizontal ties with colleagues" (216) and that "commodity groups and informal collegial sets of traders forming official or ad hoc commodity groups play an important role in preserving this relatively autonomous position for traders" (246) would have been better communicated through richer description and personal evidence, similar to those employed in Dorothy Hodgson's ethnography, Church of Women, about Maasai women's empowerment through communal social space in the church.

Overall, Clark's Onions are my Husband, proves her sound grasp of economic and anthropological theory and shows the resilience of the Kumasi Central Market, but it fails to focus on women's experiences and successfully gain the sympathy and understanding of readers.


Book Review
2009-10-28 - In her ethnography Onions Are My Husband: Survival and Accumulation by West African Market Women, Gracia Clark enters the field of Kumasi Central Market in Ghana hoping to understand the key social forces that generate, maintain and continually reshape the market's changing dynamics. To go about doing this, she explores and explains the infinite economic, political, gender, kinship and ethnic complexities involved in the operation of the marketplace. From explaining the nuances of the geographic layout of the market, to tracing the historical trajectory of women in market trade, to analyzing the dual roles women play as both mother and trader, she extensively explores the life of women traders in Ghana from every possible vantage point. Her analysis is centered around the concepts of survival and accumulation: she looks at how women seek to accrue financial and political power in their roles as traders so as to ensure domestic and familial stability as well as personal strength and agency. She especially focuses on how the way in which they seek to access power is inherently limited by gendered and ethnic identities located within various systems of domination (422-423). Through examining Kumasi Central Market and women's actions within and through it, Clark brings to light the relationship between marginality and autonomy (403), highlights the necessity of flexibility, and emphasizes the value placed on resourcefulness and agency.
These extensive explorations on Clark's part, as well as the subsequent analyses and conclusions that she draws from her research are some of the most positive aspects of this book. Many of the themes which she explores are relevant not only for study in this particular class, but also in a variety of other related fields, such as anthropology and women's studies more broadly, economics, African studies, demography, and history. An in-depth analysis of the interaction of multiple factors like gender, ethnicity, and colonization as they relate to a particular subject, such as Clark's focus on the historical trajectory of women traders in Kumasi on pages 316-326, allows readers to see that modern institutions and beliefs develop out of a synthesis of numerous factors. This realization can be helpful in that it prevents one from boiling all analysis down to one simplistic cause.
Furthermore, Clark does an admirable job of illuminating her role as ethnographer in her initial chapters. She introduces her mission, her methods and her position in a way that gives the reader a good sense of where she is and what she is doing. By laying out her own first visual impressions of the market (17), explaining the ways in which her relationships with traders developed and transformed (19-20), and listing her own thoughts and concerns, as well as how they changed over her time in Ghana (23-26), she weaves herself into her ethnography in an authoritative but uncomplicated way. Although she continues to insert herself throughout the following chapters with comments such as "Women I talked to (343)", "Travelers I accompanied (224)" and "I was told (269)". These mentions function to remind the reader that Clark is the one conducting this research - observing everything firsthand and relating it back to them - yet do not dominate the account.
Another extremely positive aspect of her work is that her central argument is presented in such an informed and scholarly way that it is understood by readers as being both strong and valid. Enormous in both its scope and size, her ethnography leaves no doubt in readers' minds that she explored this topic extensively from every angle. Upon reading it, one also finds that she supports her findings with a variety of personal observations, historical evidence, and social theory, which all function to support the validity of her argument. However, while these do create a more valid argument for readers, her lack of anecdotes and her heavy reliance on theory, especially in the initial chapters of the book, could detract from the accessibility of her book to mainstream readers.
Along these lines, Clark's abundant use of theory in specific sections of her book overload the reader with an overwhelming amount of difficult and dense information. One noteworthy example is in the initial sections of Chapter 3. Pages seventy-four through eighty-two of this chapter explore dynamics of class, gender and race through bombarding the reader with a laundry-list of theories. From capitalism (75), to articulation theory (77), to modernization (78), to materialist feminism (80), this conglomeration of theories function not to clarify understandings of market processes for the reader, but instead to utterly confuse them. It would have been much more helpful if Clark had instead simply mentioned the importance of having a multitude of supporting and contradicting debates concerning class from which to draw in her work and analysis, as opposed to listing them all. Doing so creates a book that reads much more as a source of routine facts than as an enjoyable relation of information and events. Perhaps this is the effect Clark was hoping for; however, doing so can alienate mass audiences who are hoping for a more accessible and anecdotal style.
There are instances, however, in which Clark incorporates theory and supporting evidence in an effective and accessible way, such as when she explains Asanti understandings of marriage and aging and she brings in supporting information from Owusu's research, as well as Comaroff's theories of Tshidi marriage as a "process of becoming" (106). Such examples show that she has the capability as an author to create a synthesized argument that is easily understood. The "readability" of her work could also be enhanced if Clark used more anecdotes. Although her chapters are peppered with quotes from traders and others with whom she spoke, she does not closely identify who is speaking, giving them only generalized labels, such as "A cloth trader from a yam-growing district (192)" or "Kumasi market women (340)". She rarely fleshes out these personalities by giving more details or identifying information. One notable exception is when she explains the transition of housework from middle-aged women to their children in Chapter 9 by telling the story of the trader with nine children. Although brief, this one paragraph gives the reader a bit of background as to the family's financial situation, their relations with extended family, and the mother's ambitions (332). Such a description makes the characters seem more real and relatable - people with individualized stories and experiences - as opposed to broadly generalized categories of society. Although her chapters are full of extensive explanations of the lives of Ghanaian women traders, her broad generalizations in some instances seem to reduce the Ghanaian woman trader simply to a social unit, as opposed to an individual.
In conclusion, although there are notable ways in which Clark's work could be improved upon, her overall contributions to the disciplines of anthropology, women's studies, and political economy are significant. Her findings demonstrate the importance of studying the economic activities of women in order to understand how a culture and society function. The broader impact and value of her findings are that she moves away from both the singularity of studying only men's economic pursuits and the dichotomy of studying women's and men's economic pursuits as completely separate and oppositional spheres, and instead explores a history in which both interact and shape one another. In addition, her broad scope emphasizes the necessity of studying a variety of cross-cutting factors in creating any academic analysis. For example, understanding that marginality, accessibility and autonomy are mutually creating and reinforcing was outlined through her explorations of gender domination and trading history. Anthropologists often enter a field with an extremely narrow scope of study in mind, and in doing so may ignore a variety of essential influencing factors, leading them to a conclusion which is too narrow and neglects essential factors. Following the example of Clark and taking a wider view of the numerous processes that shape even a small phenomenon could lead them to a more thorough and accurate analysis.

Pithy Onions
2009-10-28 - In her book Onions Are My Husband, Gracia Clark uses Ghana's Kumasi Central Market as a grounding point for her exploration of the female traders' social assets and cultural world. Clark's ethnographic project is ambitious in scale. Her lens of analysis does not focus solely on tracing the life experience of the trader in the market; she extends the scope of her consideration to the geographical, historical, familial, and political environments that shape the trader's contemporary reality.
Clark divides her work into four sections, discussing the Kumasi Central Market's place in geography and history, the people and enterprises of the market, the informal networks and organizing principles of market actors, and, finally, the ideological place of the market with respect to individual identity formation as well as state processes. The social story that rises out of Clark's decisively holistic approach is one united by the overarching themes of autonomy and survival.
As far as ethnographies go, Onions Are My Husband is neither brief nor breezy--such, perhaps, is the cost of breadth. That said, Clark does manage successfully to usher her readers through a multitude of interrelated issues without yielding to the temptation of oversimplification. Clark's core strength as an ethnographer rises from her ability to zoom in and out of each dimension of her research, from the micro- to the macro-level. This seamless movement along a sliding scale--from the individual, to the city, to the state, to the international community, and everywhere in between--helps clarify the lines of significance between each level of social organization, thereby contributing a critical dose of cohesiveness to the book overall. As a result of Clark's "zooming lens," readers are able to walk away from the text with a firm understanding of female traders' struggles for autonomy and survival in an environment dominated by power differentials and instability.