Maritime Culture and Everyday Life in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Coastal Ghana

Maritime Culture and Everyday Life in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Coastal Ghana PDF Author: Kwaku Nti
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253067944
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The communities along the coastline of Ghana boast a long and vibrant maritime culture. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the region experienced creeping British imperialism and incorporation into the British Gold Coast colony. Drawing on a wealth of Ghanian archival sources, historian Kwaku Nti shows how many aspects of traditional maritime daily life—customary ritual performances, fishing, and concepts of ownership, and land—served as a means of resistance and allowed residents to contest and influence the socio-political transformations of the era. Nti explored how the Ebusua (female) and Asafo (male) local social groups, especially in Cape Coast, became bastions of indigenous identity and traditions during British colonial rule, while at the same time functioning as focal points for demanding a share of emerging economic opportunities. A convincing demonstration of the power of the indigenous everyday life to complicate the reach of empire, Maritime Culture and Everyday Life in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Coastal Ghana reveals a fuller history of West African coastal communities.

Maritime Culture and Everyday Life in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Coastal Ghana

Maritime Culture and Everyday Life in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Coastal Ghana PDF Author: Kwaku Nti
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253067944
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The communities along the coastline of Ghana boast a long and vibrant maritime culture. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the region experienced creeping British imperialism and incorporation into the British Gold Coast colony. Drawing on a wealth of Ghanian archival sources, historian Kwaku Nti shows how many aspects of traditional maritime daily life—customary ritual performances, fishing, and concepts of ownership, and land—served as a means of resistance and allowed residents to contest and influence the socio-political transformations of the era. Nti explored how the Ebusua (female) and Asafo (male) local social groups, especially in Cape Coast, became bastions of indigenous identity and traditions during British colonial rule, while at the same time functioning as focal points for demanding a share of emerging economic opportunities. A convincing demonstration of the power of the indigenous everyday life to complicate the reach of empire, Maritime Culture and Everyday Life in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Coastal Ghana reveals a fuller history of West African coastal communities.

Facing Two Ways

Facing Two Ways PDF Author: Roger Gocking
Publisher: Rlpg/Galleys
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Facing Two Ways explores the interaction between European and African cultures within the setting of Ghana's main coastal communities. Roger S. Gocking focuses on the emergence of a distinctive ethno-cultural constellation that arose from the interaction between African and European cultures and between African cultures in the heterogeneous social setting of the coast. He recognizes nationalism as the most visible, but not necessarily the most important feature of life in coastal Africa from the late nineteenth century through the 1940's. Instead, Gocking emphasizes local initiatives in shaping African reactions to the colonial situation, including the policies of the mission churches, the operation of the judicial system, political life, and the institution of the family. He also discusses the escalation of cross fertilization of African cultures, known as the "Akanization" of the Southern Ghana area indirectly caused by colonialism.

Between the Sea & the Lagoon

Between the Sea & the Lagoon PDF Author: Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780821414088
Category : Anlo (African people)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This study offers a "social interpretation of environmental process" for the coastal lowlands of southeastern Ghana. The Anlo-Ewe, sometimes hailed as the quintessential sea fishermen of the West African coast, are a previously non-maritime people who developed a maritime tradition. As a fishing community the Anlo have a strong attachment to their land. In the twentieth century coastal erosion has brought about a collapse of the balance between nature and culture. The Anlo have sought spiritual explanations but at the same time have responded politically by developing broader ties with Ewe-speaking peoples along the coast.

Red Sea Citizens

Red Sea Citizens PDF Author: Jonathan Miran
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253220793
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
In the late 19th century, the port of Massawa, in Eritrea on the Red Sea, was a thriving, vibrant, multiethnic commercial hub. Red Sea Citizens tells the story of how Massawa rose to prominence as one of Northeast Africa's most important shipping centers. Jonathan Miran reconstructs the social, material, religious, and cultural history of this mercantile community in a period of sweeping change. He shows how Massawa and its citizens benefited from migrations across the Indian Ocean, the Arabian peninsula, Egypt, and the African interior. Miran also notes the changes that took place in Massawa as traders did business and eventually settled. By revealing the dynamic processes at play, this book provides insight into the development of the Horn of Africa that extends beyond borders and boundaries, nations and nationalism.

Ghana on the Go

Ghana on the Go PDF Author: Jennifer Hart
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253023254
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
As early as the 1910s, African drivers in colonial Ghana understood the possibilities that using imported motor transport could further the social and economic agendas of a diverse array of local agents, including chiefs, farmers, traders, fishermen, and urban workers. Jennifer Hart's powerful narrative of auto-mobility shows how drivers built on old trade routes to increase the speed and scale of motorized travel. Hart reveals that new forms of labor migration, economic enterprise, cultural production, and social practice were defined by autonomy and mobility and thus shaped the practices and values that formed the foundations of Ghanaian society today. Focusing on the everyday lives of individuals who participated in this century of social, cultural, and technological change, Hart comes to a more sensitive understanding of the ways in which these individuals made new technology meaningful to their local communities and associated it with their future aspirations.

Modes of Resistance

Modes of Resistance PDF Author: Kwaku Nti
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781124844244
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description


Zimbabwe's Cinematic Arts

Zimbabwe's Cinematic Arts PDF Author: Katrina Daly Thompson
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253006465
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This timely book reflects on discourses of identity that pervade local talk and texts in Zimbabwe, a nation beset by political and economic crisis. As she explores questions of culture that play out in broadly accessible local and foreign film and television, Katrina Daly Thompson shows how viewers interpret these media and how they impact everyday life, language use, and thinking about community. She offers a unique understanding of how media reflect and contribute to Zimbabwean culture, language, and ethnicity.

The Making of the Everyday

The Making of the Everyday PDF Author: Samantha Moyes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : University of Ottawa theses
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Everyday practice often goes unquestioned. Yet in Gold Coast society during the early twentieth century, everyday habits and practices served as an important device for both subalterns and elites to negotiate status or contest colonial control. Between 1900 and 1920, the Gold Coast was experiencing many changes that offered opportunities for actors to influence, negotiate, or contest emerging everyday habits and experiences. The monitoring and modification of everyday habits provided a way for the British colonial government to consolidate its rule in the Gold Coast following the period of military expansion in the late nineteenth century. For many Gold Coasters, increased access to education, the expansion of wage labour and the cocoa industry, led to a reconfiguration of social status and relations affecting daily life. While scholars are increasingly examining the theme of everyday practices, many tend to focus on the experiences of subaltern peoples. This study focuses instead on the role of an emerging, yet subjected, urban elite comprised of educated Africans. Caught between their understanding of African ztraditiony and Western ideas of modernity, educated African elite attempted to influence everyday experiences and habits as a way to claim greater authority and enhance their position in the colony. Furthermore, this study examines how colonial administrators, too, used everyday habits and experiences to reinforce colonial governance in Gold Coast. In early twentieth century Gold Coast society, everyday habits and practices served as a battleground for contests for authority and influence as educated Africans and colonizers narrativized their own concepts of modernity and visions of the Gold Coast's future in the pages of colonial reports, diaries, missionary correspondence, and Gold Coast newspapers. Using this and other primary source material, this thesis demonstrates how space, personhood, and food became important arenas through which various actors --African and European --vied to control, construct, and influence everyday habits and experiences in early twentieth century Gold Coast.

A Cultural and Social History of Ghana from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century

A Cultural and Social History of Ghana from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description


Ghana's Concert Party Theatre

Ghana's Concert Party Theatre PDF Author: Catherine M. Cole
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253108985
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Ghana's Concert Party Theatre Catherine M. Cole An engaging history of Ghana's enormously popular concert party theatre. "... succeeds in conveying the exciting and fascinating character of the concert party genre, as well as showing clearly how this material can be used to rethink a number of contemporary theoretical themes and issues." -- Karin Barber Under colonial rule, the first concert party practitioners brought their comic variety shows to audiences throughout what was then the British Gold Coast colony. As social and political circumstances shifted through the colonial period and early years of Ghanaian independence, concert party actors demonstrated a remarkable responsiveness to changing social roles and volatile political situations as they continued to stage this extremely popular form of entertainment. Drawing on her participation as an actress in concert party performances, oral histories of performers, and archival research, Catherine M. Cole traces the history and development of Ghana's concert party tradition. She shows how concert parties combined an eclectic array of cultural influences, adapting characters and songs from American movies, popular British ballads, and local story-telling traditions into a spirited blend of comedy and social commentary. Actors in blackface, inspired by Al Jolson, and female impersonators dramatized the aspirations, experiences, and frustrations of their audiences. Cole's extensive and lively look into Ghana's concert party provides a unique perspective on the complex experience of British colonial domination, the postcolonial quest for national identity, and the dynamic processes of cultural appropriation and social change. This book will be essential reading for scholars and students of African performance, theatre, and popular culture. Catherine M. Cole is Assistant Professor in the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has published numerous articles on African theatre and has collaborated with filmmaker Kwame Braun on "passing girl; riverside," a video essay on the ethical dilemmas of visual anthropology. June 2001 256 pages, 26 b&w photos, 3 maps, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, notes, bibl., index cloth 0-253-33845-X $49.95 L / £38.00 paper 0-253-21436-X $19.95 s / £15.50