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Paper short abstract:

In this contribution I am going to explain how transformation is produced, experienced, and negotiated in the post-colonial context of cocoa farming in Ghana, where social sphere and the natural world keep adapting together to meet world market demands. Or vice versa?

Paper long abstract:

Among cocoa farmers, hope for at least bearable future is engaged with practices, plant growth, and various activities accelerating time and dividing space. However, actual transformations are dependent on factors such as the demands of world market, global ecological actions, and local government shifts. Policy-makers may hope for a transformation from subsistence to market farming, and farmers may hope for less droughts and better yields. For both to happen, social sphere—matrilinear system shifting to patrilinear, non-market-based capitalism to liberal market, that would correspond to the demands of international capital and severe ecological policies—and the natural world would have to adapt. For the latter, answers are being sought through science that can measure or accelerate various aspects of plant growth and develop new varieties that are more resistant. The former is often translated into negative connotations that impact farmers in a negative way and shows them as less capable, even if they have to act in a framework that does not consider their circumstances. Hope then means hoping that what you are embedded in, and what you rest upon, will work, with the help of God. Meanwhile, in the eyes of others, it has to disappear and transform itself into a new system – and so it can work. Hopeful futures are articulated through the enactment of various policies, time-frames, and accessible scientific methods, not only through various processes of evaluation but also through plant growth.