Ethnicity in Ghana The Limits of Invention

by Lentz, Carola; Nugent, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780312224059
• ISBN10: 0312224052
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-07-07
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

These essays address the neglected theme of ethnicity in Ghanaian history, society, and politics. The essays qualify the notion that ethnicity was purely a colonial "invention" by demonstrating the ways in which the boundaries of "we-groups" have mutated from pre-colonial times onwards. The collection also considers the particular manner in which the national question is posed today in terms of language policy and conflicts over land and chieftaincy.

Author Biography

Carola Lentz is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Frankfurt, Germany.

Paul Nugent is Senior Lecturer in African history at the University of Edinburgh.

Table of Contents

List of tables	vii
List of figures	viii
Foreword	ix
Kenneth King
Notes on the contributors	x
Ethnicity in Ghana: a comparative perspective	1	(28)
Carola Lentz
Paul Nugent
In the mix: women and ethnicity among the Anlo-Ewe	29	(20)
Sandra E. Greene
`We stay, others come and go': identity among the Mamprusi in northern Ghana	49	(19)
Michael Schlottner
Asante nationhood and colonial administrators, 1896-1935	68	(29)
Ivor Wilks
Be(com)ing Asante, be(com)ing Akan: thoughts on gender, identity and the colonial encounter	97	(22)
Jean Allman
Imagined martial communities: recruiting for the military and police in colonial Ghana, 1860-1960	119	(18)
David Killingray
Contested identities: the history of ethnicity in northwestern Ghana	137	(25)
Carola Lentz
`A few lesser peoples': the Central Togo minorities and their Ewe neighbours	162	(21)
Paul Nugent
The 1994 civil war in northern Ghana: the genesis and escalation of a `tribal' conflict	183	(21)
Artur Bogner
Promotion of Ghanaian languages and its impact on national unity: the Dagara language case	204	(22)
Sebastian K. Bemile
Index	226