← New Books Network
New Books Network
Lauren M. MacLean, "Negotiating Power and Inequality in Ghana: Electricity and Citizenship as Reciprocity (Indiana UP, 2026)
01:20:30
Loading summary
Transcript61 lines
- [00:01]
A
Want consistent color for every job. Milo's Pro Rewards members get a 20% paint discount on future purchases after paint annual qualifying spend reaches $3,000 plus order eligible in stock paint and paint supplies by 2pm for free. Same day delivery by 8pm improving is easy at Lowes. Exclude spray paint and mistints. More exclusions, terms and conditions apply. Subject to Change details@lowes.com Terms Same day delivery valid in select zip codes. Subject to driver availability details@lowes.com SameDayDelivery welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:36]
B
Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Ifua Befi Kwashi. Today I'll be talking to Dr. Lauren McLean about her book Negotiating Power and Inequality in Ghana, Electricity and citizenship as reciprocity. Dr. Lauren McLean is a Thomas P. O' Neill Chair of Public Life and department chair of Political Science at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on the politics of electricity access and the everyday practice of citizenship in Africa. Lauren, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me. How are you?
- [01:09]
C
I'm good. Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted.
- [01:13]
B
Right. So I thought we could start with, you know, just a quick intro of yourself. Tell us about yourself, your work, and how you came to the study of Africa and electricity and all the wonderful work that you do.
- [01:26]
C
Sure, sure. So let's see, where to start? So I was, this is actually relevant. I was born in Louisiana, and so I always say that there's a lot of, there's a lot of similarities between our local cuisines, the heat and humidity, but also politics in my home state. But I moved all around. And during college at the University of Pennsylvania, I thought I wanted to originally work on the public school system in the United States. But then I took a class and I think this is how people, you know, you get inspired by different mentors. And I took a class with Tom Callagy, who was teaching the politics of developing nations. And he was an Africanist. And I just was so interested in everything that I was learning. And so when I studied abroad in Paris, I continued to study African politics, but then through the lens of French, you know, this French political identity that needed Africa to feel important, like they had status in the world. And so I, I, by the end of college, I knew I wanted to do something with African development, with political economy. And so it was a big recession. But I just moved to Washington, D.C. and here I was, a college graduate from an Ivy League institution. And the way I got my job, my first job, was because I was an incredibly fast Typist. And so, so I was an administrative secretary, which they sort of got rid of that title after a while because it was. Nobody liked that title. But I worked in this think tank in D.C. that was working with USAID and with World bank and I, it was called World Resources Institute, is now a huge environmental think tank. I was relatively small at the time and I just worked and my bosses like gave me many opportunities. So with a lot of the students I teach, I sort of, I share with them that sometimes your career from the back end looks like this perfectly sort of evolving ascent to the top. And you can narrate it that way. But really there's a lot of happy accidents and important mentors at different points that sort of get you interested in different things or provide opportunities. So one of my mentors at WRI was working on an article for a journal and let me help do research and help do some of the writing. And so that was one of the first co author pieces I had. And that was just. It sort of got me excited about that kind of thing. And I realized that in, in the development, international development space, even for this nonprofit organization, there wasn't the same kind of autonomy or agency that I was really seeking. And so that's when I went back to graduate school because I felt like in the university there would be more freedom. And arguably there has been, but I would say right now we're having some threats to that freedom. But yeah, so maybe this. So I was at Berkeley and then designed this study comparing similar regions in Ghana with Cote d' Ivoire for the first book. So the first book was really looking at social policy over time and also sort of looking at global actors like the World bank and donors and how they were shaping. But all of my work is really focused on looking at citizens and citizen experiences and really wanting to understand how these bigger historical and institutional processes are really experienced at the local level. I felt like that was something that wasn't always developed in my discipline of political science. And so that's something that I really wanted to share. Yeah.
- [06:36]
B
And that comes through really well in this book. And it's a great segue to start talking about it. And I want to invite you to really just tell us what the book is about. Where are we? Who do we meet here? Like what's, what's going on in this. In this book?
- [06:55]
C
Yeah. So I. So this is another happy accident. I was actually doing some work on another project for looking at small scale renewable energy. And we had done some work in Kenya and I was doing some comparative work in Ghana in 2014, the summer of 2014, and I was having all of these interviews and Ghanaian, I mean, it was like hard to find people to talk to. Like there just didn't seem Kenya. There was a lot moving in this space and in Ghana, it just seemed like there just weren't a lot of people talking about it. And I remember one government official said something to the effect that renewable. He was happy to talk to me, but renewable energy was like the pimple in the bud of the state. He was like, this is just kind of annoying. It's back there, you can't see it. It's not a big deal. It'll go away eventually.
- [08:02]
B
Quite visual there.
- [08:06]
C
We have some colorful visuals, but it was very striking. And as I was having all of these conversations, what kept coming up more and more was the power outages that were really plaguing the country at the time. And literally I'd be doing an interview and the lights would go out and people would start talking about it. And as I was talking to just everyday people, one of the stressors that summer was that the World cup was coming up in a few weeks and Ghana was going to be playing and Ghana was going to be playing the US in one of the games. And so they would good naturedly kind of tease me about how they were going to win, but then they would complain because they were worried that the TVs, you know, they wouldn't be able to watch it because of the power. So that's when I started to realize that it seemed like there was this more of a Western interest in small scale renewables at the time. But for a whole combination of reasons, Ghanaians were less interested in that and really interested in sort of utility scale electricity and really interested in it being affordable and reliable. And that just wasn't happening at the time. And so I sort of continued to study the other work and I have continued in Kenya and in Ghana, but developed this project and then was very thankful to get a Carnegie Fellowship that allowed fieldwork that allowed me to come back in 2018, 2019 to do more work on the project.
- [10:12]
B
Yeah, so you've already sort of alluded to this, but can you say more about Ghana's kind of specific relationship to electricity? And I think you do a really great job of laying it out in the book that this sort of the desire for, you know, accessibility and reliability. Right. And.
- [10:37]
C
And affordability.
- [10:39]
B
And affordability. Right. And why that, how and why that relationship developed. Right. And so basically, so I'm asking what, what is this kind of very strong relationship that Ghanaians have, right, with electricity? And just as an aside, Ghana won that game with the US in 2014,
- [11:06]
C
So I guess that worked out well.
- [11:10]
B
I actually don't know for sure, but. So that's just an aside.
- [11:15]
C
And so it is true that the Ghanaian government bent over backwards to make sure that everybody could watch. So they actually told one of the biggest industrial aluminum plants that they needed to bring the power needs down. Like they needed to come down. And then they had this huge campaign. If everyone could just turn off their freezer for 24 hours, it would provide enough electricity for, you know, your stuff wouldn't spoil and everyone would be just reducing the amount of power they stopped exporting to other countries. So Ghana has historically been an exporter in the region. So they sort of reversed that and borrowed for that game. So everybody was able to watch. So that was good. That was good. So, you know, what's important is, and I think, you know, a lot of my work too, I'm really interested in sort of how these institutions and expectations get created historically. Because if you, if you went, if you were in so in Uganda or Kenya or another or Togo, you wouldn't have the same expectations that Ghanaians did. And they wouldn't. They don't talk. So Ghanaians talk about their expectations of electricity in terms of citizenship. And I think that's really important because of the way that Nkrumah, who is the first post independence leader, he really, even before independence, is starting to negotiate trying to build the first massive hydroelectric dam. And there's no way to just underestimate the sort of symbolic power of Okasombo, like the whole community in the town around the dam, the way that, you know, school kids are brought there as a point of pride, of national pride to see the dam. And, you know, so this is one of the first, one of the earlier hydroelectric dams that's built. And until really the 1990s, all of the power for Ghana's electric grid is all coming from hydro, which was fine then, but we'll shift in a minute to talk about climate change and how that's really dramatically changed the situation. So what's really important is that Nkrumah's really arguing that this building of electric power is not just for business, but it's for citizens. And it's as new citizens in this new nation of Ghana that this is really important, that it's a way of sort of uniting the country and that people in every. He talks about, in every corner of the country would have the benefits of electricity. And so there is a way that Ghanaians continue to talk about the grid as the national grid. And if you talk to people in New York or in Boston, they don't talk about the national grid. Hanyans don't talk about the national grid. So there's something very different about the way the system was created. And even though there was a pause, you know, in the 70s with military regimes and instability, economic instability, as soon as Rawlings, especially with the pressure when the PNDC, the military regime of Rawlings gets changed to the NDC political party with a new democracy in the early 1990s, there's this connection of electricity and expanding electricity to the people and a lot of political pressure around that. So I think that this is a very important history in Ghana that's been still, even though it dates from the 60s, has still been sort of continued with the ways that politicians talk about these public services and the way that citizens think about them. Yeah. High interest debt can be a real vibe killer. Credit cards, personal loans, and more can make you feel uncomfortable even in the sanctuary of your own home. Well, what if you knew that some sofi could help you leverage your home's equity to feel more at ease? It's called a SOFI Home equity loan and it could consolidate your debt at a typically lower interest rate than existing debt with lower monthly payments, and all while keeping your existing mortgage rate. View your rate@sofi.com payoffdebt today mortgages originated by sofi bank na member fdic nmls 696891 terms and conditions apply Equal Housing
- [17:05]
B
lender yeah, and I think, you know, it's a good place to sort of move on to the, to talking about doomso. Right. Which is every Ghanaian will recognize this word. People have very strong opinions about it. Visceral emotions are sort of evoked by that word. So can you say what doomso is? Right. Like there's a sort of a colloquial understanding of it. But I think you, you really sort of, you historicize it in a way. Right. Like the word itself and specifically what it refers to. So can you talk about doomsaw, what it is when you know when it is? What does it mean for, for the people that you, you spoke to in this book?
- [17:58]
C
Yeah. So doomsur. So people were talking about doomsur when I was there in 2014, 2015. It's so in the local, in the most prevalent African language, in the Akan language, it means doom soar. So off on what's really, really interesting is all of the variations. So when people get really frustrated, they say, no, this isn't doom soar. This is doom doom, which is just off, off. Or if you're really frustrated, doom, doom, doom. Right. It's just really bad. Yeah. So there's. And this is the. So what's interesting is I did a lot of interviews in 2018 when arguably doomslore wasn't as bad as it had been, you know, in a few, a few years earlier. And so people would talk like they would historicize themselves. This period as well today is not as bad as the doomsore period. So it was this particular period and what was really hard. And so you talked about the visceral reaction. I think it's really important because Ghanaians can relate to this, but people maybe who have experienced power outages in other countries may not relate to sort of how damaging and physically threatening these power outages were. So one, because of how long they were. So at one point they were 12 hours off and then 24 hours with power. And then when things got really bad, that was reversed. So it was 24 hours off with 12 hours on. So that was the plan. But a lot of times that would be longer, it would be extended. It was also, it wasn't just how long but how frequent they were. So they were rolling around the country. So they were load shedding around the country, but they were very frequent. And the other, you know, so if, if a community in New York has a power outage once, it's a big problem. If they had it every couple of days or every week or every couple of weeks, like it's a big problem. And, and for households, if you have, if you lose your power for more than 24 hours, you've just lost everything that was in your refrigerator, which is a lot of money. And especially if you're close, if you're at all close to the margin, that makes a big difference. So a lot of the interviews we did, they talked about how hard it was because they could only. So a lot of women were talking about the gender division of labor, that they were having to go to the market to do food shopping on a daily basis because they couldn't store anything in the refrigerator because you never knew when the refrigerator was going to be off. Or women who are, who might have a cold store and they had these big, big deep freezes would literally go bankrupt because they would lose everything in the deep freeze. So they were long, they were frequent, they had a huge economic impact. But they were also unexpected. And so there were these load shedding tables that looked, that were published by the regulatory agency. And the idea was a good one to try to make sure that this cost was shared across the nation. But what all of the interviewees were talking about was that this wasn't actually happening like that. It was much more unequally experienced and that it really depended on where you lived. I can't tell you the number of times people have said, well doom swear I depend on where you live. And we can talk more about what that meant. But people were really, it was difficult to plan. So one of the things I talk about is that there's this sort of post traumatic stress of people talked about, well, you know, whenever we do have power, I try to do as many things as possible to try to take advantage because you never know. And so there was this feeling of uncertainty that made it difficult for people as they were going on, you know, with their lives. But there was this, this. So when people talked about the inequality, they talked about that certain, not just. So it was certain regions experienced it more, but even certain cities and then certain neighborhoods within cities. And so they felt like there were neighborhoods and there were many different theories about why a neighborhood might have more electricity and fewer outages. And some of them were very. People would say, well that's where the politicians live or that's where the military barracks are, or that's where a hospital is. And that's critical. So sometimes there would be a sort of understanding like I understand this, this is a public good, that's really important. And I understand that. But then they said, you know, well, that's where the ministries live or that's where the foreigners and the expats live. And so you could hear that there was this resentment for these inequalities and how this hardship was experienced and people were struggling to kind of figure out why this was happening and then responding in very different ways to articulate to the state that this was not okay and that they needed better public service provision. And so that's what I found really, really interesting was that it might not be surprising that there is some inequality in how this happens, but it was the very surprising ways that people talked about trying to demand accountability that was very, very different. So, so this is the idea of doomsur that's like really, really serious. And then I'm talking to people when it's a little better. But then the big political problem is, is doomsur back. And so, and, and then this period social media, so like Hashtag doomsaw, doomsour, must stop. All of these hashtags are just sort of like gaining traction among certain communities and with the Ghanaian diaspora. So when power goes out in Texas because of a winter storm, people, Ghanaians in Texas are like, I moved to Texas and doomswear is back. You know, so it's crossing the Atlantic, this discussion around Doomsar. And it's really, I think it's a time when you have growing demand for consumer goods and for appliances. So it's affecting the average household in a different way that it might have in the 80s when the power went out. Now you have more people. So we've done some survey work that shows the number of appliances that people have. And you know, now people have not just lights and a radio or lights and outlets for like something to charge their phone, but tv, rice cooker, iron, like just air conditioning, many, many more things that are pulling electric power and are really important to their daily life. And so they're really not happy when it's not there.
- [27:00]
B
Yeah.
- [27:01]
C
So, yeah.
- [27:02]
B
So I want to, we'll talk more, as you, as you said, about sort of the inequalities that do so sort of, you know, made clear if that's, if that's accurate. But for now, I, I want to talk about something else that you, you mentioned very briefly, which is basically what brings us to this crisis point. Right. And one of them, one of them that you discussed being climate change and how that really sort of is integral to the crisis, that crisis of electricity, but is not necessarily top of mind for a lot of people or sort of the thing that people are, you know, discussing on a day to day. So can you talk more about that, about climate change specifically how it's interacting in this space and affecting the electricity crisis and how people are really thinking about it as well, or the different stakeholders.
- [28:06]
C
Yeah, so, so this is such an important thing that's sort of lurking in the background. So when, so again, if you look historically at when there have been major droughts, because there were still in Ghana, there are rainy season and dry season, just, you know, two, there's always temperature variability. Right. But starting in the 1980s, you have more frequent droughts that last longer, that are, that are sort of more severe. And so you also have major bushfires. So you have all of this starting in the 80s and this is the lack of rain is affecting these hydroelectric power plants. So until the 1990s, a hundred, I think it was 100% of the power was generated by hydroelectric power plants. And so if you don't. So I am not an electrical engineer. I now get lots of emails from electrical engineering conferences and things. So I guess I'm becoming part of that network. But. But from my very basic understanding when I was taking a tour of Okosombo and other. Other power plants, I mean, it kind of makes sense. If the water in the reservoir goes down because there's less rain, then there's less water. So. And you can see it like you can see where the water was and see the sticks if you. At the time, I haven't checked it super recently, but when you open up the Okosombo or the Volta River Authority website, one of the first things on the website that you can see is the water level at the power plant. So people would talk about it, it would be talked about on the radio. How high was the water at Okusombo? And so when there's not enough water, there's not enough water to turn the turbines. And so what will happen is just the amount of power coming out of that power plant is a lot less. And what. And the timing of it is that the heat and the droughts and the lack of rain is happening at the same time as you have this sort of economic surgeon in the 2000, 2000 and tens. So you're having less power generated at a time when Ghanaian households are demanding more power and at a time politically where politicians have a lot of pressure to connect households. And so you have communities who are arguing no power, no vote. Like, if you don't connect us and deliver us electricity, we're not going to vote for you. So there's this very sort of obvious kind of exchange being talked about and it's becoming more and more difficult. Another thing that I think is relevant, so we're talking about how the rainfall is going down, the demand for electricity is going up. Another thing that's very relevant in many countries like Ghana, in the global south, is that you have an incredibly young population. So if you think about the demographic bulge, it's in the youth who also want to be connected through devices and through electricity. And so there's this demand by young people. Younger generations bore more and more power in particular. And so the photograph of the COVID of the book is actually an artist who is doing a photo essay on the effect of dhumsour on the youth. And that becomes one of the themes in the book. And yeah, so, yeah, I think that's it.
- [32:38]
B
Yeah. No, so I. One of the interesting things though, because if you're sort of following right if, if you're in Ghana at this time, you're trying to manage this crisis. Right. That's really affecting your life at the most basic level. And so really that's all you could think about. Right. And it's like, how is this affecting me? Right. You're not thinking about sort of like the bigger trends and that are happening that's causing the crisis or that the government is necessarily, you know, the steps that they are taking at different levels to try and solve this crisis. Because as you say, it becomes a political quagmire. Right. Like the person that solves Doomsaw basically wins. Right. The electorate. And. And it was very like, you lay that all those efforts out very well in that book. Right. Where in the book where you're not going to get sort of like this breakdown in the newspaper or on Instagram or wherever you're getting your news if you're a young person. But what you show is that it becomes really this very tricky international development problem, if I'm analyzing it correctly. And I just want to invite you to talk a little bit more about that, about this sort of network of international politics and aid and negotiation that goes into trying to solve this crisis. Yeah.
- [34:12]
C
So let me add to one more thing that is important for the Ghana case, which is the discovery of oil and, and natural gas in many parts. So you have the West African pipeline, you have like oil fields off the coast of Ghana. And so I think this is one reason why when there is pressure to build more power plants, so the political pressure on these politicians from citizens like, we want electricity, we want it now, we want it to be reliable, affordable. And we can come back to this as well, this idea of cross subsidization. The Ghanaians were sort of willing to cross subsidize across from the south to the north, from the urban to the rural, from the wealthier to the poor, for everyone to have some kind of access to electricity. And so there's this pressure from Ghanaian citizens on politicians. But one of the problems because of the context of climate change on hydrogen is they need to build more power plants. They also need to upgrade the networks that they have. So the transmission, the distribution, like all of this. So there's this aging infrastructure. So part of the book is also just about the politics of infrastructure. And there's a lot of people talking about this across the global south and in the global north as well. But so there's this aging infrastructure that needs to be upgraded and the demand to extend it. So you need to build power plants fast. But Power plants are really expensive, and they had always been hydro, but then it's like, well, we have this fossil fuel that's right off the coast, so maybe we should be building thermal plants. So starting, you know, even before Doomsday is happening, you're starting to get the development of some thermal plants in Tema and elsewhere that are generating electricity. And so. But then you have fuel supply issues, like there's pirates that accidentally cut the West African pipeline. And like there's all of these sort of, you know, sounds like a movie, like all of the things that are happening that are challenging the system. But the political pressure is mounting. And during the Doomsaw period, the incumbent at that time becomes known as Mr. Power Cut. Like not the nickname you want going into a national election. And so these politicians are really desperate to do this fast. And so they're working with international partners, they're working with the Chinese, with the us with the Germans, with the. I mean, anyone. And so you can see this proliferation of independent power producers at this period. Just, you know, it used to be exclusively the Ghanaian state, and then it just becomes more and more all of these different power producers. And these are deals being made by companies by. Also by donors that are financing some of these by multilateral donors. And so deals are being made because, you know, people aren't going to want to build a power plant in Ghana unless it makes sense financially. This is not foreign aid, this is foreign investment. And so there's. By the. By the time Doomsaw, people feel like, so the incumbent Mr. Power Cut loses and a new political party is in power, they have the horror of waking up and realizing how costly a whole lot of these deals are. I mean, they. They sort of helped address a problem. So one of the most striking to me visually is thinking about this power barge that comes in and literally plugs into the national grid and adds like 450, you know, megawatts of power. It's like this unbelievable floating power plant that was expensive. And then it turned out there were a lot of sort of shady minds to some of these deals that, again, create a lot of skepticism for the average person. And they have lagging consequences on Ghanaian finances, so on the sort of macro political economy of the country. So for at one point, the governments, instead of being in a rush to make all these deals, are in a rush to try to unwind some of the deals or to try to renegotiate some of the payment plans. And that didn't go well,
- [39:54]
B
not surprisingly, I guess. Right.
- [39:59]
A
Ever feel like Your brain just won't click. Onnit Alpha Brain is a daily supplement engineered to support memory, focus and mental speed. Made with science backed ingredients, Onnit Alpha Brain helps you lock in, tune out distractions and stay sharp. See what your brain can really do. Visit onnit.com and shop Alpha Brain to unlock your next level. That's o n n I-t.com@blinds.com it's not just about window treatments. It's about you. Your style, your space, your way. Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right. From free expert design help to our 100% satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your window. Because@blinds.com, the only thing we treat better than Windows is you. Visit blinds.com now for up to 50% off with minimum purchase plus a professional measure at no cost. Rules and restrictions apply.
- [40:54]
B
This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Selling your car shouldn't feel like a second job. It should feel easy. With Carvana it is. Just visit Carvana.com, enter your license plate or VIN, answer a few quick questions and get an offer in minutes. Like what you see, we'll pick it
- [41:12]
A
up right from your door and hand you your check.
- [41:15]
B
No haggling, no hassle, no problem. Car selling made easy on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. So while all this is going on though, and we've talked about the just the people, which I think is such a wonderful part of this book is we just hear from the people directly because you, you spoke to all these people, did all these focus groups and you start this. I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but the book begins with these vignettes, right, that you, you sort of write from again, talking to people about people's actual like day to day experience with Dunso. And it sort of feeds into your, your central question, right, the big question that you're asking, which is why citizens who are most affected by doomsday are also less likely to participate politically. And then you introduce the two key concepts, spatial inequality and then citizenship as reciprocity. So I want to invite you to talk about these two concepts, what you found from talking to all these people and how they're interacting with each other during this crisis. And what are they telling you really about politics in Ghana and political participation by different groups of people in Ghana.
- [42:55]
C
So one of the things that was really so first of all, one of the things that was really important for this project for me was again a mentor. So this is a mentor, Jima Bwadi, who was the. He was a professor at the University of Ghana at Lagon. He had been the PhD student for a professor that I had taken a class in when I was at Berkeley. So way back in the day. So I had met him when I had done my dissertation as a small girl and then come back as a professor to do this project. And he was still primarily working at CDD and with Afrobarometer, but he was still advising some students who were then working at CDD and recommended that they would be great research team members. And so Mohamed Awal and Guilford Asyama. I would not have been able to do this project without them. But also mentorship of Gima and of all of the support from all of cdd. So I was an affiliate when I was there and that was my home base in airport residential was to be at cdd. So one of the things that we did was I, I worked with Gima and I mean with Guilford and Nawal on the research design. So we really talked about how the theory that we had coming into this project in the question would shape what regions of the country. We would study what cities, what towns. So we were really trying to identify what was theoretically relevant. Like because if we only spoke to people in cantonments in Accra, a sort of upper class neighborhood with a lot of gated villas, expatriates, high level politicians, we would get a very different perspective than if we only conducted interviews in Teshi or Nima. Right. And so we wanted to be really. So you couldn't just think about Accra. You had to really think about. And so part of that was this theory that there was spatial inequality. It wasn't. We couldn't select individuals who were better off or worse off that it was. This was really. There was space that inequality was sort of concentrated in certain areas and it was in terms of housing, schools, infrastructure, all kinds of things. And so it was really important to look across, across Ghana, multiple regions. So we looked in the greater Accra region, in three neighborhoods in Accra, the capital city itself, and then in and around Ada, including an island in the Volta river that did have a small scale renewable power generator, which was very unique, but really interesting to talk to people there. And then similarly a bunch of people in Kumasi and then also in rural areas of Ashanti region and then in Tamale and then again in the rural part about an hour outside of Tamale and then in Bogatanga. And so that was really, really important to get different voices and different perspectives. And you really could observe spatial inequality. And one of the things you could observe visually were some of the things that people talked about was the increase of illegal wiring and illegal connections. And so when you walked into certain communities, you could see the elect coming from the transformer, this like just tangled mess of electric wires, and how difficult it was to sort of sort out which wires were going to which places and how. Who is paying for any of that. And then in other communities, you could see, you know, massive generators in sort of under a carport where a security guard was sort of sitting not far, that if there was ever a power outage, they would be the first and they could quickly flip on the generator that was so big it would it likely power, you know, not just emergency, but like really sort of the everyday use of electricity in the whole household. And. And what was interesting was these perceptions were then discussed in these interviews and in the focus groups. And this is where I would say that focus groups sort of maybe a couple decades ago, and maybe there's some lingering negativity that focus groups have this weakness that people talk about group think like, you know, you have a focus group and everybody ends up in the same thing or talk, you know, that there's social pressure and you have this like, conversion around a poll or a similar viewpoint. And I would say that I. I just would completely disagree that if you carefully design and select the participants for a focus group, it can be so generative because you really have a conversation and so you're. You're getting. A focus group is not an interview of eight to ten people at once. It is a group discussion and a group exchange. And so for something like this, where doom sword, the actual period known as doomsaw, had happened, say two to four years earlier, this was a fantastic opportunity because a focus group sort of people were challenging each other and they were remembering something that was then triggering somebody else's memory. And it was just phenomenal to see the discussion. There was definitely a focus group was also great. So I think it's great with things that are perhaps a little bit farther in the past that you might want to kind of jog people's memories or have multiple perspectives. ASU is something that's contentious, but not so contentious that people just completely shut down. And doom sword people loved to talk about like it was, and they didn't feel. They didn't feel shy about challenging each other about, you know, what the explanations were or how they responded. And it was far enough in the past that it wasn't so sensitive. So it really was a phenomenal way to sort of uncover lots of different experiences. And then we would follow up with qualitative interviews. In a qualitative interview, somebody might share something that's, you know, they wouldn't share in front of a group and go into a little more depth with a single person. So it was just a great combination. So the, so the vignettes were really to try to compare how Doomsur was experienced in a less well off community compared to a better off community. And then to also compare not just the experience of the crisis, but how people responded. And that was some of what was really, really just surprising about some of the focus groups and interviews were how people were talking about it. One of the things that I think really surprised me, based on my decades of work in Ghana, was how frustrated. So the frustration didn't surprise me, but how people openly discussed sort of what I call low intensity violence against state agents. So they sort of acknowledged sometimes a little proudly or like kind of, kind of in a taunting way, that they had roughed up somebody who had come demanding the bill payment, for example, because that was a point of conflict when the power's out all the time and yet they send the people to collect some money. It's like, what? And so, you know, you had to feel, I always felt when I would hear these stories, you know, these agents that are wearing ecg, so the National Electric distributor vests. And some of them would say, like, I would take off my vest if I didn't have to wear it, I would take out and put it in my backpack. But if they're walking around a neighborhood and, and sometimes they're trying to chase people down for bill payment or to try to figure out if there's illegal connections. Everybody supposed to actually be on this meter, that with all the wires come out, or is there a problem with the meter? And then meanwhile the citizens are complaining like we haven't got power and yet they're sending these guys out to collect the money. And a big complaint was that they were changing the meters. And what people, people felt was that the meter was running faster than it had in the past. So they called them the Eustine bolt meters, that they were really running fast. And yeah, so these kinds of comments, I think. But also, you know, another thing that came out from these discussions was sort of the human impact, like how hard it was on families, like just it was difficult to sleep. Their children weren't sleeping well, people were getting sick. There were many sort of horrific examples of hospitals that had lost their power that people had seen clearly in the news and sort of were repeating. And so there was a lot of trauma associated with doomsore. But there was, there was also, when we would talk about the politics, there was what I call in the book silent resignation from especially people in the worse off kinds of communities where like, you know, there's nothing we can do. So there was this sort of like just this calm kind of defeated feeling that the state was more powerful and that there was no use in really doing anything and that, you know, the powers that be would fix whatever they could whenever they could. And so there was this from those communities. It seemed like there was some frustration, low intensity violence that surprised me and then also a lot of resignation. So this pulling away, whereas there was a different kind of pulling away from the better off communities where people talked about, you know, well, I invested, I went off the grid, I'm not going to pay for those services, I'm going to get my own system, I'm going to be totally autonomous, totally independent from the state. And I had done some research on some of this with regard to private schools and private hospitals and clinics in my earlier work. But here, this is with electricity, people are really becoming autonomous from the state in terms of electricity. Or people in those communities would talk openly about sort of their political connections and how they were able to call someone up to get something fixed or to try to get the grid to go back on, even to have or that they were able to pay privately for streetlights to be repaired or transformers to be repaired and that they had to kind of call their own technicians to get them to come out. And so again then there's this pulling away that you're not in the same kind of situation. And so that's what I'm trying to start the book with is this, this very different experience and how it's really fraying this idea of citizenship as reciprocity. Because one of the real goals of the book is to challenge or to reveal how the social contract is just one way of thinking about citizenship and that Ghanaians in fact have sort of had a very different way of thinking about citizenship that is much less sort of me I as an individual vis a vis the state. It's much more sort of a more group based idea and it's an idea of reciprocity over time. So it's not sort of like a contract in the sense of like I owe this I get this. And it balances out. It's more like we all give in different ways and we all take in different ways. Over time. It balances out and there may be greater needs in certain parts of the country or for certain people. And that's part of being a citizen. And what I would argue is that, you know, just in the social sciences in particular, in this time of democratic backsliding and democratic erosion, not just in the global south, but all over in the global north, that citizenship is reciprocity is something that we really need to be thinking about and thinking about how to develop and how to support because we need to be able to trade off across groups rather than see everything as sort of an individual, sort of entitlement exchange kind of a relationship.
- [59:37]
A
Your little one grew three inches overnight. Adorable. Also expensive. Sell their pint sized pieces on Depop and list them in minutes with no selling fees because somewhere a dad refuses to pay full price for the clothes his kids will outgrow tomorrow and he's ready to buy your son's entire wardrobe right now. Consider your future growth bird budget secured. Start selling on Depop where taste recognizes taste. Payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details.
- [60:08]
B
It's crunch time at work and you
- [60:10]
C
need to bring wings to your workday.
- [60:12]
B
Visit redbull.com gettingitdone and answer a couple
- [60:15]
C
questions about your work style to get a Spotify customized playlist tuned to your productivity.
- [60:20]
B
Plus, score a can of Red Bull on us while you go from to do to done. And remember, Red Bull gives you wings.
- [60:28]
C
Supplies are limited.
- [60:29]
B
Terms apply.
- [60:30]
C
Visit the website for more information. Fox News is now streaming live on Fox 1.
- [60:38]
A
When news breaks, we don't just report it.
- [60:41]
C
We go beyond the headlines to get the full story.
- [60:45]
A
Get live coverage in depth analysis and perspectives from the voices you trust all in one place. Whether you're at home or on the go. Stay connected to the stories shaping our world stream.
- [60:58]
C
Fox News on Fox 1 download today.
- [61:04]
B
Yeah, and I mean I think it's again, like I said, it's, it's a really, I think, compelling and you know, sort of thought provoking analysis that you provide in terms of, you know, so you look at like you said, right, the relationship between citizens and the state, but also among citizens which in a, you know, your focus groups really sort of like highlight that, right? Because you get a group of citizens in a room and they have to talk to each other, right? And they are actually confronted with, in a, in a space together. There are different experiences of of the same state breakdowns and crises that happen. And then you sort of get to talk to them about their responses, right? Which it's always interesting because you have these sort of absurd. Absurdist, I should say, responses that, you know, it's like you laugh at it, but it's like serious, right? Like an electricity, an ecg, person being roughed up. It's not funny. It's silence. But it's like people are so frustrated. So these absurdist moments pop up. One of the things that's really enjoyable about your book is that you use a very. An eclectic and fun sort of source base, right. And one of the things that you do is that you look at how young people are responding to or responding to crisis, but also how young artists respond to this crisis. And you actually have beautiful art in the book. And you analyze sort of, you know, what the message of these artists and how they speak to the moment. So I want you to talk about that. I don't think people put political science and art together very often. People think about sort of disciplinary methodologies. So can you talk about that and how sort of employing a larger source base, really, within your discipline and other disciplines, how that, you know, provides a special kind of insight into the things that we study. And then, you know, talk a little bit also about the art itself and the artists that you engage with.
- [63:17]
C
Oh, my God. There I. And I was so happy that my Northeastern University was able to provide some support so that those images could be in color. Cause that's also very difficult. And IU Press that published the book really worked hard because a lot of the images are images that I took. But when I took them, I didn't think about the resolution. And, like, I was just taking photos. I wasn't thinking about, like, how quality, you know, the Quality for the Future book. But so one of the things that. So another point that I want to make is how invaluable field work is. And I would say, and if you have the opportunity, these kind of preliminary trips. So the whole question in the book was really from a trip for another project, right? And you're kind of just open. Open to learning, and you're hearing about other questions, and it leads to a new project. And then when I was doing archival work, I was in Accra at the public records, like, going through all of these electricity department records from the 1920s and around the 1970s. And at the end of one of those days, not far from there, there was this exhibit of KNUST students. And one of my. So my Mentor. His wife, Rooks Robinson, is. We would always talk about contemporary art. She was really interested in this. She had been a long time information officer with the US Embassy, so she was a foreign service officer. And so art in Ghana was part of sort of her art and education and all of these things were part of her work. But she was telling me about how people sort of this contemporary art scene was just taking off in Ghana and how exciting it was and mentioned this exhibit. And so I went. And then I was surprised. Like, here I'm doing this project and all this research and then there are these paintings and it's the. The artist was Kevin Abancua and he had a. A series of very large portraits in color called the hashtag doomsource series. And he basically shows young people in just, you know, just their everyday dress. And what's so. To me, just almost. It just touches your heart in a way, but it's. It's almost you feel this isolation. So there's something chilling about it. It's not frightening, but it makes you feel alone. Like you feel the loneliness in the picture because the whole back of the painting is just black. So it's like this dark void that these young people are standing and you see and it's painted in a very realist kind of way. And then they're holding their phones and so they're gazing down at their phones. And in the other hand there's usually some other, like either a can with a candle in it or a lantern or some other alternative kind of light, but they're not. They're looking down, so they're not looking at the viewer. And you just get this sense of these young people very much alone. So there's no one else in the picture in this dark void, trying to connect via their technology, but being forced to use this sort of old school kind of light. And it just really resonated and I wasn't sure I would be able to find. So at a certain point I was like, I wonder if I could actually include this artist. And so through some of the context of cdd, I was able to get connected to the artist. And then another one was Bright Aquare, who's a satirical cartoonist. And his work is so brilliant, so insightful, and I love. I love also using this in my teaching. So a lot of, I think we. I think political scientists and all, all of us just need to be thinking about how to communicate. I don't think we should focus so much on impressing the ones in our discipline. And I can Say that I guess as a full professor. So there is a little more maybe freedom you have once you have tenure and you're a full professor. But I really think we should be affording that freedom to our PhD students, to our undergrad students, to all of us to really try to think about how can we connect with different kinds of evidence that say different things. So I know political scientists in the past when they have used art, it's often art created by the state. So they've looked at sort of how states we think of as propaganda, how they try to convince people about the regime or, and, and that can be very interesting. I think that's more in a way, traditional. There are some political scientists now looking at graffiti and protest art. So you can, you can see a number of people analyzing sort of protest signs and graffiti. We can argue whether these artists are somehow, and maybe a political scientist would have an argument about, well, these are not somehow typical people. But to me it doesn't, that doesn't matter. You're not showcasing their work because they're somehow average. You're showcasing it because they are able to communicate something that is more broad, broadly experienced, or broadly felt in a way that I think is really powerful. So in addition to, so the, the artist, the photographer on the COVID is Desiree Vandenberg, and then Kevin Abamqua and Bright Aquair are the ones that are really featured in the book. There's also a lot of lyrics from musicians that are featured in the book. So anytime I'm trying to convince my 18 year old that I'm relevant, I'm like, you know,
- [71:01]
B
I could quote the lyrics of, you know,
- [71:07]
C
so. But that was also just super fun to see how, you know, again, these are not maybe average people. And I make that point when they're organizing these doomsaw protests. Like, they're not average people, they're celebrities. They're very well known, arguably very well paid for what they do. But I do think that they again, are voicing something. And in terms of political science or politics, I think, you know, for a song that's going to be heard across the nation and that people are going to be singing, I think that's an important source of evidence that we haven't tended to look at enough.
- [71:56]
B
No, absolutely. And like I say, it's very compelling and it's, it's also just very enjoyable, which is nice to encounter in an academic book, is like just an enjoyable, you know, piece of writing and analysis.
- [72:10]
C
Well, that's what it was hoped to be, you know, I have to say that I was, when I was writing this book, I was trying to get out of my academic writing style and to try to communicate more broadly. And it is so hard because you are literally trained to work and write in a certain way. So I really worked against it, but then it was like. I felt like things were just unsupported and just hanging in the air. It just, it was, it was tough sometimes. But so there's. I think it's kind of a hybrid. It's not. There are some books that are really marketed towards like broader audiences and, and this I think is a little bit of a hybrid.
- [73:05]
B
I, I would agree as, just as a reader, I would agree it is. I think, you know, academics will find politics, you know, other political scientists, historians, you know, will find a lot to like theoretically just sort of like latch onto and work with. But the average reader as well, or the lay reader, which I also consider myself as it, you know, would just enjoy it. You know, I think just because the citizens voices are very, very like foregrounded here and you just, if you're, if you're Ghanaian, you recognize these voices, which is nice. And then you also just get to look at great art and you know, connect with some of your favorite artists and things like that. So it's great.
- [74:00]
C
And the billboards. Yes. So this is. My next project is looking at the lived experience of inequality and some of the billboards in Ghanaian city, cities primarily. And I've seen this in Nairobi as well, doing work. There are just phenomenal sort of perspectives on how people are living in very different ways and sort of what the expectations are and how they think about, you know, the differences between neighborhoods or between different types of transportation or recreation that there it is. There are some growing gaps, I think between the better off and the less well off. In Accra that was not that way. So I'm old enough that my dissertation, I was doing my dissertation in the 1998 and at that time, at one point I was living sort of on the outskirts of the campus of the University of Ghana at Ligon. And there was. There was a new, a brand new Shell station and that was like such a huge development that there was a Shell station that we could walk and get like a cold drink, you know, and really there. So then when I went back, so then I had three children and, and was not able to go to Ghana. And when I went back and there were rooftop bars and like it was just a whole new world. So.
- [75:55]
B
Yeah, that's, I mean, I. That sounds Like a great project, you know, just delving in. And I think you, you start the work here because you can, you know, you talk about some of these rising inequalities that it kind of built into the environment, right. Where people live, where they sort of get their entertainment, the daily encounters that, you know, ordinary people have with, you know, things like luxury. Talking about the billboards, right, where you do, you do see a lot of ads for luxury products. Right. The Good Life, which I think is interesting. I'm looking forward to sort of reading what you find about that. People's ideas of the Good life and what it means to arrive. Right.
- [76:41]
C
Yeah. I just think there's been a real shift in who the Good Life is referring to. So in the past. So one of the billboards that I find so striking is on the side of a housing block that was across the street from the military hospital. So it was.
- [77:03]
B
Yes, yes, yes.
- [77:04]
C
And yeah, and so that, you know, originally was like really considered to be sort of solidly middle class, if you would say that, but like the Good Life, you know, and satellite dishes on every apartment, but really centrally located, just, you know, fabulous. And over time, you know, if those were built decades ago, they're sort of getting older. And now there's this billboard right on, or it's sort of painted on the side of that building for, you know, this incredibly luxurious kind of place with swimming pool and all of this with. So, and it, it's not necessarily a civil servant that's going to be able to afford that. That there's a very different buyer for that type of community. So. Yeah, no, it's. It's fascinating and I, I have to say that I love doing work in Ghana. It's. It's been, I have so many dear friends there and it's just been. It's been fabulous to be doing work over the decades. And that's where I feel like field work where you can continue to sort of establish those relationships and be a participant, an observer of politics in a place over time. It's just so valuable. So I feel very grateful for all of my colleagues and friends there.
- [78:49]
B
Yeah, obviously I have a bias, slight one, I think. I think Ghana is fabulous. I think it's great. Best place ever. So happy to engage with your very long engagement research with the country. But thank you so much for joining us today, Lauren. This conversation has been lovely and the book is great. And the title of the book again is Negotiating Power and Inequality in Ghana, Electricity and Citizenship as Reciprocity. And everybody should read it.
- [79:22]
C
Thank you so much.
- [79:24]
B
Thank you. Have a lovely day.
- [79:38]
A
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have
- [79:50]
B
one of your assistant's assistants switch you
- [79:52]
A
to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com
- [79:56]
C
Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full terms@mintmobile.com.