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Abstract
This dissertation situates food insecurity as a phenomenon that complexly intersects with quotidian economic and emotional life in semi-arid Ghana. The semi-arid region of northern Ghana is uniformly identified as food insecure by institutions such as the World Food Program, but there is a lack of substantive empirical inquiry into the causes and the embodied experience of food insecurity. I therefore employ a mixed methods ethnographic approach to investigate the distress that emerges as households negotiate linked environmental and economic constraints in two neighboring subsistence-oriented agricultural communities. I question how food, as a fundamental bio-cultural need and a product made accessible through diverse economic processes, intersects with a nexus of immediate and long-term household level goals. This leads to an examination of how achieving or not achieving these goals affects peoples mental health. I begin analysis by considering food insecurity as a relational experience rather than just a condition, focusing in particular on ways to assess how people relate to the foods that compose daily dietary practice. I then explore how food and other immediate household needs intersect with more long-term household goals, particularly the costs associated with education. I conclude by assessing how food insecurity may be considered a trigger for poor mental health outcomes in this context. I conduct gendered analysis of the household economy to identify particular pathways that contribute to a burden of gendered distress. Ultimately, this research shows that while meeting food needs is important for both social prestige and health, long-term household viability is often prioritized over a diverse and satisfying diet. This demonstrates that health outcomes associated with food insecurity should be considered in terms of the global and local political economies and ecologies that structure daily life and decision-making. This consideration structures an understanding of the ultimate causes of food insecurity as well identifies the particular pathways by which generalized distress can be explained.