Paper short abstract:

Based on a case study in middle class Ghana, I will show how the notion of “transactional sex” in studies on Africa is prejudiced by a particular ideal of love, and prevents scholars to recognise the intimate connection between love and financial support.

Paper long abstract:

The idea that love transcends the financial union of a couple is a carefully kept ideal in the global West; "real love is blind". This fixation in western imagination becomes clear in studies dealing with love and sexuality in African societies, specifically in articulations concerning the notion of African "transactional sex". Transactional sex means a sexual interaction or relation that is based on the transaction of sex for material goods or money, excluding love and affection. In this paper I will show how the notion of transactional sex is prejudiced by the western ideal of love, which is related to a long tradition of stereotyping sexuality in Africa, and how it blinds scholars to recognise the intimate connection between love and financial support.

Based on research in the middle class in Ghana, I will show how love and money are not mutually exclusive. To the contrary, a lover's or spouse's affection is understood through notions of "care" and "responsibility". "True" love is both emotional and material; a caring partner will notice the plight of the lover and will subsequently take responsibility and act upon it. Focussing on the dual definition of intimacy, i.e. as both a close relationship between people and as a sexual relationship, helps to uncover this mutually reinforcing dialectic. The pursuit of upward mobility is typically a project engendered by a couple, and is analogous with how love relations are construed in a rapidly globalizing world in Ghana where imaginations of intimacy have increasingly become mediated.