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

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 are
happier, 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