“It makes you want to eat it”.: everyday food, cooking and the making of gustatory identities in Northern Ghana

This anthropological research is concentrated around everyday practices of food production and commensality in Northern Ghana. It treats them as a springboard to tackle contemporary approaches to identity-making among middle-class Ghanaians in two urban centres, Tamale and Wa. To achieve its goals, this research employs anthropology of senses, food and embodiment as the theoretical apparatus behind the analysis. It also proposes an innovative methodological angle through the application of sensory ethnographic methods. This research treats culture primarily as practice, thus it has been designed to follow certain activities and spaces in which those activities take place. Women as social actors stand at the centre of this study, as it follows their daily activities both in domestic and public spheres. The research tackles issues such as gender, ethnic and class identities, agency, traditionalism and changemaking, embodied spaces of gustatory encounters and professionalism in a persistently colonial educational environment. The thesis presents how food-centred practices and gustatory narratives can provide a springboard for scholarly analysis of other cultural phenomena. It also provides insights into practising sensory ethnography and supplies feedback on the scope of its feasibility. Ultimately, this thesis highlights the fact that embodied approaches to autoethnography provide a deeper understanding of culturally-created sensibilities.