Event Details
Farming the Floodplain: Gendered Surplus People and Maladaptation to Climate Extremes in Northern Ghana
12-1pm CST, April 1, 2021 on Zoom
Dr. Hanson Nyantakyi-Frimpong, Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Denver, explores how a foreign mining concession led to the dispossession of pre-existing land use rights held by thousands of farmers across several villages in northwestern Ghana. While most of these farmers became landless, their labor power was not absorbed into mining activities, thus creating a group that Karl Marx has referred to as relative surplus people. To fulfill gendered responsibilities in household food provisioning, women who experienced complete land dispossession ended up farming the floodplain of Ghana’s Black Volta River. Nyantakyi-Frimpong argues that for these women, their status as surplus people and the simultaneous need to ensure household food security compel them to pursue flood adaptation measures that heighten vulnerability and generate new risks.
Co-sponsored by the Food Agriculture & Society Program, Geography Dept, Environmental Studies Dept, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Dept, African Studies Program and International Development Program
