Emotions as a (dis)entangling factor in co-creating gendered decisions and practices among small-scale fisher couples in Ghana: towards new theoretical insights

Women experience the brunt of inequality in fishery tasks and decision-making despite their crucial contributions to the industry. This paper examines the micro-processes of gendered fishery decisions and practices based on interviews with 20 female and 18 male fisherfolk in coastal Ghana. The paper draws on a new materialist framing inspired by Deleuzian assemblage theory, which delineates the different tangible and intangible factors that work together (i.e., the assemblage) to shape attitudes, behaviours, and practices among a group of people. Dwelling on this theory, this paper highlights the role of women’s embodied feelings (as physically and emotionally expressed through fear, wobbly voice, and love) as they entangle with discourses of their emotionality and other non-human factors to co-create gendered fishery decisions and practices. The paper: (1) highlights the importance of moving beyond economic and bargaining models towards non-rational and emotional factors in explaining the complexities of couples’ decision-making and practices, (2) moves theoretically from the traditional understanding of emotions as cognitive or socially determined towards what emotions do within relations of socio-material, spatial and discursive contexts and how such assemblages could be untangled to address gender inequality in couple’s fishery decision-making and practices.