Examining Ghana’s Cash Transfer Programme Outcomes in the Ejisu-Juaben Municipality from Conversation and Membership Categorisation Analyses Perspectives

Dennis Puorideme

doi:10.4314/gjds.v18i1.6

Abstract

Since the start of cash transfer programmes in developing countries in the late 1990s and its spread, studies have demonstrated a variety of outcomes comprising education, health, and nutrition for the poorest households. These studies focused on macro analysis of programmes’ outcomes but paid little attention to an indepth micro study of the everyday intersubjective accounts and actions of local community focal persons and caregivers, which construct programme outcomes. The objective of this study is to highlight the everyday concrete outcomes of a cash transfer programme in Ejisu-Juaben Municipality in Ghana. This study draws on Foucault’s notion of subjectivation and discourse to construct a conversation and membership categorisation analyses framework to explore community focal persons’ and female caregivers’ conversations from focus group discussions. The Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty cash transfer programme in Ghana is the empirical case. This article demonstrates that caregivers and poor households arehappier, practice joint decision-making, and have cohesive social relations in poor households. Thus, localised programme outcomes improved participation in the decision-making, happiness, and social cohesion of beneficiary poor households. Evaluation mechanisms for programme outcomes could consider the everyday intersubjective accounts, practices of focal persons, caregivers/beneficiaries in poor households at the micro-level. Keywords: Social Protection, Ethnography, Discourse, Subjectivation, Governmentality

Highlights

Cash transfers (CT) programmes including Ghana’s Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) outcomes have been studied extensively (Fiszbein & Schady, 2009; Díaz Langou, 2013; Handa et al, 2014; Carvalho & Rokicki, 2019) since the unprecedented spread of these programmes in developing countries in the past two decades (Barrientos & Hulme, 2009; Fiszbein & Schady, 2009)
This study is a Foucault-based analysis that combines the features of governmentality studies, ethnography, and discourse studies approaches – conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorisation analysis (MCA) – to investigate the micro-ethnographic actions and practices of community focal persons and caregivers in relation to the LEAP CT programme practice
The data analysis section demonstrates that the community focal persons (CFPs) and the caregivers of the LEAP CT programme concretely construct programme outcomes at the intersection of everyday actions and practices of self and the LEAP CT programme as it extends itself into the local communities beyond the core regions of national government (Puorideme, 2018)

Summary

Introduction

Cash transfers (CT) programmes including Ghana’s Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) outcomes have been studied extensively (Fiszbein & Schady, 2009; Díaz Langou, 2013; Handa et al, 2014; Carvalho & Rokicki, 2019) since the unprecedented spread of these programmes in developing countries in the past two decades (Barrientos & Hulme, 2009; Fiszbein & Schady, 2009). 199), households’ consumption, and recently gender relations outcomes have come to the fore (Barber & Gertler, 2009; Camfield, 2014; de Brauw et al, 2014; Scarlato et al, 2016) at a macro-level. In this way, CT programmes outcomes appear unproblematic essential elements, which deny local community representatives and recipients participating in CTs programmes a little space of agency in constructing programme outcomes intersubjectively. How do caregivers and community focal persons concretely and intersubjectively construct the LEAP cash transfer programme outcomes in local communities? Adding to the already documented dominant macro level outcomes of these programmes in developing countries, this article highlights the taken-for-granted everyday concrete outcomes of a cash transfer programme in Ejisu-Juaben Municipality in Ghana

Objectives

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion