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Blessing and destruction. Climate change and trajectories of blame in Northern Ghana

This anthropological study provides an analysis of environmental observations by farmers and their perceptions of change, as well as models of blame in Northern Ghana, a poor agricultural region of high vulnerability to climate change. Qualitative data were collected through a standardized questionnaire which was directed to twenty‐five individuals to collect data on community consensus on how to explain this change. Responses were transcribed to allow content analysis. Natural data sets confirmed most local observations but older age and affectedness of the respondents were crucial in determining the views of the respondents. Farmers observed more changes than younger people who were not yet decision‐makers on their family farms. Climate change was generally given a lower priority by the respondents compared with other manifestations of change that have occurred over the past decades, such as infrastructural development, human‐spiritual relations and changes in social relations within the community. When referring to these changes, the respondents often made reference to the blessing of the land and the destruction of the land. The destruction of the land was always understood in a metaphorical way as the result of eroding social relationships and stagnation, as well as norm‐breaking and lack of unity within the community.

Simple

Date (Publication)
2012-01-01
Presentation form
Digital document
ISSN
1864-6638
Status
Completed
Principal investigator
  Center for Development Research, Department: Political and Cultural Change, University of Bonn - Irit Eguavoen ( Senior Researcher )
Walter-Flex-Straße 3 , Bonn , 53113 , Germany
+49-228-73-4912
  - ( )
Maintenance and update frequency
Not planned
GEMET - Concepts, version 2.4
  • social science
  • environmental perception
Theme
  • climate change
  • local priorities
Region
  • Ghana
Place
  • West Africa
Access constraints
Intellectual property rights
Other constraints

Citation:

Eguavoen, I. (2012): Blessing and destruction. Climate change and trajectories of blame in Northern Ghana. ZEF Working Paper Series 99

Metadata language
English
Character set
UTF8
Topic category
  • Society
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S
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W
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Distribution format
  • PDF ( )

Distributor
  ZEF -
OnLine resource
WSC_soc_environmental-perception_ghana_2012.pdf ( WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download )

File to download

File identifier
85850586-eec7-451a-90d2-372f48f4c61b XML
Metadata language
English
Character set
UTF8
Parent identifier
5417176d-9333-4cce-8363-bfc0eff7deca 5417176d-9333-4cce-8363-bfc0eff7deca
Date stamp
2017-12-29T10:43:15
Metadata standard name
ISO 19115:2003/19139
Metadata standard version
1.0
Author
  - Irit Eguavoen ( )
 
 

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Spatial extent

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Keywords

climate change local priorities
GEMET - Concepts, version 2.4
environmental perception social science

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