Social Capital, political empowerment and social difference: a mixed-methods study of an ecotourism project in the rural Volta region of Ghana

Abstract

Claims abound regarding the empowering possibilities of community-based natural resources management (CBNRM). Social capital is seen as a key element towards that end, yet there is a paucity of critical research testing these connections. This study examines two aspects of social capital (cognitive and structural) in a community-based ecotourism (CBE) project in Ghana as they relate to social difference (notably gender and ethnicity) and political empowerment (i.e., access to political involvement, and political efficacy). Quantitative results highlight specific gendered and ethnic differences in political empowerment and social capital that, when combined with qualitative analysis, reveal how those inequities in ecotourism may be rooted in socio/cultural norms. In addition, a novel contribution from this study is that political empowerment seems to be partly mediated by peoples’ access to social capital. This suggests that, regardless of one’s gender and ethnicity, social capital helps to empower individuals. We conclude by describing what an intervention could look like in the context of this CBE project when informed by qualitative feminist as well as quantitative social capital analysis. Doing so we illustrate how a mixed-methods approach to the study of social capital and empowerment may offer important insights towards more equitable CBE.Abbreviations: CBE: Community Based Ecotourism; CBNRM: Community Based Natural Resources Management; NCRC: Nature Conservation Research Centre; FPE: Feminist Political Ecology; PCA: Principal Component Analysis; ANOVA: Analysis of Variance

Keywords:

• social capital
• social networks
• feminist political ecology
• gender
• ethnicity
• political empowerment

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the local community for their engagement and participation in this study. Also instrumental was the fine work of the research assistants: Opoku Otto, Etse Peace, Vordzorgbe Wisdom, Halivor Noble, Nyakoli Josua and Amey Leticia. We also wish to thank the Nature Conservation Research Centre for being and advisor and a connector to the community. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on various drafts of this article. All shortcomings remain entirely ours.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

Notes

1 After careful consideration and consultation with the community the name of the village and its specific location are not cited to protect anonymity.

2 “Native” and “local” versus “non-native”, “stranger” or “non-local” are locally accepted ways to differentiate between descendants from families/clans who settled in the area prior to colonial times versus those who arrived subsequently from other lands in search of farmland. Such denominations have been critically discussed as part of the legacy of colonial capitalist territorialisation (Bernstein, 2007).

3 When in Ewe, answers were recorded verbatim in English.

4 Partaking in local community activities such as communal labour, community meetings, cleaning campaigns, funerals, etc. allowed for the establishment of trust with a range of community members during pre-fieldwork and fieldwork stays.

5 Convergent triangulation is used to validate qualitative results with quantitative data or vice-versa (Nightingale, 2009).

6 Complementary triangulation is employed to when analyzing two or more different datasets to help create a fuller picture of the research problem by creating more complete in- formation about a topic (Nightingale, 2009).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a SSHRC Insight Development (430-2012-0158, UBC BREB H10-02499), various grants from the University of British Columbia and the UBC Public Scholar Initiative; we appreciate their support.

Notes on contributors

Ana-Elia Ramón-Hidalgo

Ana-Elia Ramón-Hidalgo is a PhD graduated from the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia. Her work focuses on social capital and social difference in the context of CBNRM and ecotourism in Ghana.

Leila M. Harris

Leila Harris is an Associate Professor in the Institutes for Resources, Environment and Sustainability; and Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia. Her work focuses on politics, governance, and equity considerations related to resources, with recent work focused on contexts of Africa and Canada.