Neoliberal Frontiers

An Ethnography of Sovereignty in West Africa

Chalfin Brenda

In "Neoliberal Frontiers", Brenda Chalfin presents an ethnographic examination of the day-to-day practices of the officials of Ghana's Customs Service, exploring the impact of neoliberal restructuring and integration into the global economy on Ghanaian sovereignty. From the revealing vantage point of the Customs office, Chalfin discovers a fascinating inversion of our assumptions about neoliberal transformation: bureaucrats and local functionaries, government offices, checkpoints, and registries are typically held to be the targets of reform, but Chalfin finds that these figures and sites of authority act as the engine for changes in state sovereignty. Ghana has served as a model of reform for the neoliberal establishment, making it an ideal site for Chalfin to explore why the restructuring of a state on the global periphery portends shifts that occur in all corners of the world. At once a foray into international political economy, politics, and political anthropology, "Neoliberal Frontiers" is an innovative interdisciplinary leap forward for ethnographic writing, as well as an eloquent addition to the literature on postcolonial Africa.

About the Author

Brenda Chalfin is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Florida and the author of "Shea Butter Republic: State Power, Global Markets, and the Making of an Indigenous Commodity".

Reviews

"This fascinating study offers important new insights into what neoliberal restructuring means (and does not mean) for states today. Through careful observation and clear-sighted analysis, it demonstrates just how much we stand to gain from a truly ethnographic approach to the postcolonial state" – James Ferguson, Stanford University

"Brenda Chalfin's meticulous, innovative, and theoretically sophisticated account of changing customs regimes in contemporary Ghana offers a compelling and revealing analysis of customs practices as a window onto the nature of modern statecraft, the procedures and effects of neoliberalism, and the complex and contradictory faces of sovereignty in twenty-first-century Africa" – Daniel Jordan Smith, Brown University

Back to the list of books