Ethnicity in Ghana: The Limits of Invention

Description

Although African ethnicity has become a highly fertile field of enquiry in recent years, most of the research is concentrated on southern and central Africa, and has passed Ghana by. This volume extends many of the distilled insights, but also modifies them in the light of the Ghanaian evidence. The collection is multidisciplinary in scope and spans the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial contexts. A central contention of the volume is that, while there were significant regional variations, ethnicity was not purely a colonial `invention'. The boundaries of `we-groups' have constantly mutated from pre-colonial times, while European categorization owed much to indigenous ways of seeing. The contributors explore the role of European administrators and recruitment officers as well as African cultural brokers in shaping new identities. The interaction of gender and ethnic consciousness is explicitly addressed. The volume also examines the formulation of the national question in Ghana today - in debates over language policy and conflicts over land and chieftaincy. Front Matter....Pages i-xi Ethnicity in Ghana: a comparative perspective....Pages 1-28 In the mix: women and ethnicity among the Anlo-Ewe....Pages 29-48 ‘We stay, others come and go’: identity among the Mamprusi in northern Ghana....Pages 49-67 Asante nationhood and colonial administrators, 1896–1935....Pages 68-96 Be(com)ing Asante, be(com)ing Akan: thoughts on gender, identity and the colonial encounter....Pages 97-118 Imagined martial communities: recruiting for the military and police in colonial Ghana, 1860–1960....Pages 119-136 Contested identities: the history of ethnicity in northwestern Ghana....Pages 137-161 ‘A few lesser peoples’: the Central Togo minorities and their Ewe neighbours....Pages 162-182 The 1994 civil war in northern Ghana: the genesis and escalation of a ‘tribal’ conflict....Pages 183-203 Promotion of Ghanaian languages and its impact on national unity: the Dagara language case....Pages 204-225 Back Matter....Pages 226-236