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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Cosmopolitan cocoa farmers: refashioning Africa in Divine Chocolate advertisements
Author:Leissle, KristyISNI
Year:2012
Periodical:Journal of African Cultural Studies (ISSN 1369-6815)
Volume:24
Issue:2
Pages:121-139
Language:English
Geographic term:Ghana
Subjects:cocoa
advertising
women farmers
images
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13696815.2012.736194
Abstract:This article concerns a beguiling set of advertisements for Divine Chocolate that feature women cocoa farmers from Ghana, which recently appeared in British magazines and newspapers. In contrast to representations of African women as exotic icons of 'traditional' cultures or leaders of progressive development schemes, the Divine advertisements depict farmers as cosmopolitan consumers of luxury goods and owners of the chocolate company. By representing these Ghanaian women as glamorous business owners, the images invite viewers to see them as potent actors in transnational exchanges of cocoa and chocolate, and as beneficiaries of these exchanges, in contrast to analyses that focus on market exploitation by the nation state or corporate actors. The images pose a challenge to narratives that cast Africa as continually on the losing side of harmful binaries - primitive/civilized, traditional/modern - and in an eternal developmental lag. Instead, they offer an alluring female figure that envisions and promotes Africa's roles in industrial production and luxury consumption. Through a complex rendering of Ghanaian women farmers as attractive, socially mobile beneficiaries of their own development efforts, the adverts invite connections among people who grow, sell, and consume luxuries like chocolate, across a visual gulf that is often too vast to bridge. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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