Changing Social Structure in Ghana


Book Description

Originally published in 1975, this book presents the results of research into social change in Ghana. The book looks in detail at the problems of particular sub-groups and sectors in one single nation and they show that the field-worker with a wide comparative background in the range of pre-industrial societies has a positive role to play in contemporary social science.




Migrants and Strangers in an African City


Book Description

Finding place and identity in a globalized world




An Anatomy Of Ghanaian Politics


Book Description

The paths of African states have diverged markedly since the termination of colonial rule. Nevertheless, Ghana, the first African state to achieve independence, epitomizes both the political gyrations and the overall stagnation common to many other countries on the continent. This work concentrates on the 1969–1982 period in Ghana, focusing on two interrelated facets of African politics: the decline of state power and authority, and adjustments to political recession. The author traces the dual patterns of diminution of the state and the adaptation of autonomous coping mechanisms in the separate spheres of political leadership, political structures and institutions, ideology, and political economy. The dynamic of state-society interactions is then treated in terms of the rhythm of dissent, conflict, and disengagement. Dr. Chazan provides a comprehensive study of Ghanaian politics from the 1970s to the present. By systematically analyzing the process of political decline and regeneration, she highlights similar processes apparent elsewhere in Africa. The stress on the subtleties and direction of political change has important implications for policymakers and policy analysts alike.




Tongnaab


Book Description

For many Africanist historians, traditional religion is simply a starting point for measuring the historic impact of Christianity and Islam. In Tongnaab, Jean Allman and John Parker challenge the distinction between tradition and modernity by tracing the movement and mutation of the powerful Talensi god and ancestor shrine, Tongnaab, from the savanna of northern Ghana through the forests and coastal plains of the south. Using a wide range of written, oral, and iconographic sources, Allman and Parker uncover the historical dynamics of cross-cultural religious belief and practice. They reveal how Tongnaab has been intertwined with many themes and events in West African history -- the slave trade, colonial conquest and rule, capitalist agriculture and mining, labor migration, shifting ethnicities, the production of ethnographic knowledge, and the political projects that brought about the modern nation state. This rich and original book shows that indigenous religion has been at the center of dramatic social and economic changes stretching from the slave trade to the tourist trade.




Mobile Africa


Book Description

This anthology deals with the complexity, variety and experience of all the forms of mobility we witness today in Sub-Saharan Africa. Three sets of issues are being discussed. First, the concept of mobility itself is considered and how it is conceived of in distinction from sedentarity. Second, which forms of mobility can be distinguished, not only from the perspective of Western social sciences, but also from the perspective of people's own experiences, ideas, notions, etc? Social science in Africa has particularly focused on rural-urban migration, but it is clear that there are many other forms as well. Third, the concept of mobility concerns not only geographical space, but there are other 'spaces' to consider as well. In addition to 'forms of mobility' there is a 'mobility of forms' in which the perception of those other spaces plays a crucial role. In short, the book intends to turn the whole notion of mobility as a supposedly rupturing phenomenon on its head, emphasizing that rather through travelling connections are established and continuity is experienced. We are challenged to delve into the traveller's mind, to think and follow their multi-spatial livelihoods and to explore what it means to people if they move in a variety of spaces.




Strangers and Traders


Book Description

In the inter-war years, groups of enterprising Yoruba traders from a few towns in Western Nigeria established a successful trading network throughout the Gold Coast (Ghana). Then, in 1969, they were abruptly ordered to leave the country. At the time of the exodus, Jerry Eades followed the traders back to Nigeria. There, on the basis of extensive interviews and archival sources, he reconstructed the history of the migration from four Yorubu towns to northern Ghana. The result is one of the fullest and most detailed accounts of chain migration and its implications for economic development ever written.




Africa's Return Migrants


Book Description

Many African migrants residing abroad nurture a hope to one day return, at least temporarily, to their home country. In the wake of economic crises in the developed world, alongside rapid economic growth in parts of Africa, the impetus to ‘return’ is likely to increase. Such returnees are often portrayed as agents of development, bringing with them capital, knowledge and skills as well as connections and experience gained abroad. Yet, the reality is altogether more complex. In this much-needed volume, based on extensive original fieldwork, the authors reveal that there is all too often a gaping divide between abstract policy assumptions and migrants’ actual practices. In contrast to the prevailing optimism of policies on migration and development, Africa’s Return Migrants demonstrates that the capital obtained abroad is not always advantageous and that it can even hamper successful entrepreneurship and other forms of economic, political and social engagement.




Reading the Bible in Islamic Context


Book Description

In the current political and social climate, there is increasing demand for a deeper understanding of Muslims, the Qur’an and Islam, as well as a keen demand among Muslim scholars to explore ways of engaging with Christians theologically, culturally, and socially. This book explores the ways in which an awareness of Islam and the Qur’an can change the way in which the Bible is read. The contributors come from both Muslim and Christian backgrounds, bring various levels of commitment to the Qur’an and the Bible as Scripture, and often have significantly different perspectives. The first section of the book contains chapters that compare the report of an event in the Bible with a report of the same event in the Qur’an. The second section addresses Muslim readings of the Bible and biblical tradition and looks at how Muslims might regard the Bible - Can they recognise it as Scripture? If so, what does that mean, and how does it relate to the Qur’an as Scripture? Similarly, how might Christian readers regard the Qur’an? The final section explores different analogies for understanding the Bible in relation to the Qur’an. The book concludes with a reflection upon the particular challenges that await Muslim scholars who seek to respond to Jewish and Christian understandings of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. A pioneering venture into intertextual reading, this book has important implications for relationships between Christians and Muslims. It will be of significant value to scholars of both Biblical and Qur’anic Studies, as well as any Muslim seeking to deepen their understanding of the Bible, and any Christian looking to transform the way in which they read the Bible.




African Economic Development


Book Description

In a sweeping survey of African economies, leading scholars offer the latest research into the biggest current influences on African growth and development, taking account of relevant institutional contexts as well as significant or unique problems that have slowed Africa’s progress.




Invisible Users


Book Description

An account of how young people in Ghana's capital city adopt and adapt digital technology in the margins of the global economy. The urban youth frequenting the Internet cafés of Accra, Ghana, who are decidedly not members of their country's elite, use the Internet largely as a way to orchestrate encounters across distance and amass foreign ties—activities once limited to the wealthy, university-educated classes. The Internet, accessed on second-hand computers (castoffs from the United States and Europe), has become for these youths a means of enacting a more cosmopolitan self. In Invisible Users, Jenna Burrell offers a richly observed account of how these Internet enthusiasts have adopted, and adapted to their own priorities, a technological system that was not designed with them in mind. Burrell describes the material space of the urban Internet café and the virtual space of push and pull between young Ghanaians and the foreigners they encounter online; the region's famous 419 scam strategies and the rumors of “big gains” that fuel them; the influential role of churches and theories about how the supernatural operates through the network; and development rhetoric about digital technologies and the future viability of African Internet cafés in the region. Burrell, integrating concepts from science and technology studies and African studies with empirical findings from her own field work in Ghana, captures the interpretive flexibility of technology by users in the margins but also highlights how their invisibility puts limits on their full inclusion into a global network society.