Oxford Street, Accra

Oxford Street, Accra PDF

Author: Ato Quayson

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2014-09-03

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 0822376296

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In Oxford Street, Accra, Ato Quayson analyzes the dynamics of Ghana's capital city through a focus on Oxford Street, part of Accra's most vibrant and globalized commercial district. He traces the city's evolution from its settlement in the mid-seventeenth century to the present day. He combines his impressions of the sights, sounds, interactions, and distribution of space with broader dynamics, including the histories of colonial and postcolonial town planning and the marks of transnationalism evident in Accra's salsa scene, gym culture, and commercial billboards. Quayson finds that the various planning systems that have shaped the city—and had their stratifying effects intensified by the IMF-mandated structural adjustment programs of the late 1980s—prepared the way for the early-1990s transformation of a largely residential neighborhood into a kinetic shopping district. With an intense commercialism overlying, or coexisting with, stark economic inequalities, Oxford Street is a microcosm of historical and urban processes that have made Accra the variegated and contradictory metropolis that it is today.

State and Culture in Postcolonial Africa

State and Culture in Postcolonial Africa PDF

Author: Tejumola Olaniyan

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2017-10-16

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 025303017X

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How has the state impacted culture and cultural production in Africa? How has culture challenged and transformed the state and our understandings of its nature, functions, and legitimacy? Compelled by complex realities on the ground as well as interdisciplinary scholarly debates on the state-culture dynamic, senior scholars and emerging voices examine the intersections of the state, culture, and politics in postcolonial Africa in this lively and wide-ranging volume. The coverage here is continental and topics include literature, politics, philosophy, music, religion, theatre, film, television, sports, child trafficking, journalism, city planning, and architecture. Together, the essays provide an energetic and nuanced portrait of the cultural forms of politics and the political forms of culture in contemporary Africa.

Heritage of Osu, Ghana. Past and Present

Heritage of Osu, Ghana. Past and Present PDF

Author: Kwabena Ankoma

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2020-06-16

Total Pages: 68

ISBN-13: 3346183076

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Bachelor Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject History - Africa, University of Ghana, Legon, language: English, abstract: The town of Osu, being a Danish colonial town in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana, has a rich cultural heritage. The heritage of Osu can be traced from its contact with the Danes which led to the adoption of the name, Danish Osu or Danish Accra. Their heritage has however grown from being a colonial town into a contemporary urban settlement which is noted as one of the most vibrant places in Accra with its night life and massive inflow of tourists. This apparent rich history of Osu has called for the study into the heritage of Osu, as heritage is believed to be all aspects of culture that are part of a society. The study sought to establish among others what tangible sites have existed in the past and what have propelled their existence presently. Particular reference was made to the Christianborg Castle, Richter Fort, Nii-Okantey Shikatse We, Osu Salem School and Frederichs Minde which were all developed in the Danish era. The study also covered other heritage sites such as the Danquah Circle in Osu, the Osu Ebenezer Presbyterian Church, Osu Cemetery and the State House. The study furthermore brought into light the distinction of the economics, governance system and education in Osu in terms of how these features were in the past and how they are presently. At the end of the study, findings (primary and secondary sources) established that the heritage of Osu have been propelled by culture contact and globalization and with the implementation of sustainable development the heritage of Osu will be properly protected for an increasing tourists’ consumption. Recommendations were made for further research into the intangible heritage of Osu as well as establish the divergent cultural traits between those living around the "Oxford Street" and those in the traditional quarters.

Accra Noir (Akashic Noir)

Accra Noir (Akashic Noir) PDF

Author: Nana-Ama Danquah

Publisher: Akashic Books

Published: 2020-12-01

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1617758949

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Accra joins Lagos, Nairobi, Marrakech, and Addis Ababa in representing the African continent in the Noir Series arena. “Superb . . . Each story reaffirms how fundamental ‘place’ is to the noir genre and how the locale shapes the story as much as the characters themselves . . . Strongly recommended.” —Library Journal “There’s good writing as well as a strong sense of place and culture, and the reader will absorb a side of Accra that doesn’t make it into the tourist brochures.” —New York Journal of Books Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Brand-new stories by: Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, Kwame Dawes, Adjoa Twum, Kofi Blankson Ocansey, Billie McTernan, Ernest Kwame Nkrumah Addo, Patrick Smith, Anne Sackey, Gbontwi Anyetei, Nana-Ama Danquah, Ayesha Harruna Attah, Eibhlín Ní Chléirigh, and Anna Bossman.

Ghana on the Go

Ghana on the Go PDF

Author: Jennifer Hart

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2016-10-03

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0253023254

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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.

Unreasonable Histories

Unreasonable Histories PDF

Author: Christopher J. Lee

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2015-02-20

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 0822376377

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In Unreasonable Histories, Christopher J. Lee unsettles the parameters and content of African studies as currently understood. At the book's core are the experiences of multiracial Africans in British Central Africa—contemporary Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Zambia—from the 1910s to the 1960s. Drawing on a spectrum of evidence—including organizational documents, court records, personal letters, commission reports, popular periodicals, photographs, and oral testimony—Lee traces the emergence of Anglo-African, Euro-African, and Eurafrican subjectivities which constituted a grassroots Afro-Britishness that defied colonial categories of native and non-native. Discriminated against and often impoverished, these subaltern communities crafted a genealogical imagination that reconfigured kinship and racial descent to make political claims and generate affective meaning. But these critical histories equally confront a postcolonial reason that has occluded these experiences, highlighting uneven imperial legacies that still remain. Based on research in five countries, Unreasonable Histories ultimately revisits foundational questions in the field, to argue for the continent's diverse heritage and to redefine the meanings of being African in the past and present—and for the future.

Tail of the Blue Bird

Tail of the Blue Bird PDF

Author: Nii Ayikwei Parkes

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2011-03-31

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1446466256

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'A delightful book that combines the basic tug of the whodunit with the more elegant pleasures of the literary novel' Independent Sonokrom, a village in the Ghanaian hinterland, has not changed for hundreds of years. Here, the men and women speak the language of the forest, drink aphrodisiacs with their palm wine and walk alongside the spirits of their ancestors. The discovery of sinister remains - possibly human, definitely 'evil' - and the disappearance of a local man brings the intrusion of the city in the form of Kayo, a young forensic pathologist convinced that scientific logic can shatter even the most inexplicable of mysteries. As old and new worlds clash and clasp, and Kayo and his sidekick, Constable Garba, delve deeper into the case, they discover a truth that leaves scientific explanations far behind.

Aesthetic Nervousness

Aesthetic Nervousness PDF

Author: Ato Quayson

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2007-06-29

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0231511175

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Focusing primarily on the work of Samuel Beckett, Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, and J. M. Coetzee, Ato Quayson launches a thoroughly cross-cultural, interdisciplinary study of the representation of physical disability. Quayson suggests that the subliminal unease and moral panic invoked by the disabled is refracted within the structures of literature and literary discourse itself, a crisis he terms "aesthetic nervousness." The disabled reminds the able-bodied that the body is provisional and temporary and that normality is wrapped up in certain social frameworks. Quayson expands his argument by turning to Greek and Yoruba writings, African American and postcolonial literature, depictions of deformed characters in early modern England and the plays of Shakespeare, and children's films, among other texts. He considers how disability affects interpersonal relationships and forces the character and the reader to take an ethical standpoint, much like representations of violence, pain, and the sacred. The disabled are also used to represent social suffering, inadvertently obscuring their true hardships.

New Frontiers in the Study of the Global African Diaspora

New Frontiers in the Study of the Global African Diaspora PDF

Author: Rita Kiki Edozie

Publisher: MSU Press

Published: 2018-10-01

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 1628953462

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This anthology presents a new study of the worldwide African diaspora by bringing together diverse, multidisciplinary scholarship to address the connectedness of Black subject identities, experiences, issues, themes, and topics, applying them dynamically to diverse locations of the Blackworld—Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the United States. The book underscores three dimensions of African diaspora study. First is a global approach to the African diaspora, showing how globalism underscores the distinctive role that Africa plays in contributing to world history. Second is the extension of African diaspora study in a geographical scope to more robust inclusions of not only the African continent but also to uncharted paths and discoveries of lesser-known diaspora experiences and identities in Latin America and the Caribbean. Third is the illustration of universal unwritten cultural representations of humanities in the African diasporas that show the distinctive humanities’ disciplinary representations of Black diaspora imaginaries and subjectivities. The contributing authors inductively apply these themes to focus the reader’s attention on contemporary localized issues and historical arenas of the African diaspora. They engage their findings to critically analyze the broader norms and dimensions that characterize a given set of interrelated criteria that have come to establish parameters that increasingly standardize African diaspora studies.

A Life in the Political History of Ghana

A Life in the Political History of Ghana PDF

Author: Mumuni Bawumia

Publisher: Ghana University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13:

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Mumuni Bawumia served as a Member of Parliament and Government Minister in Ghana's first independence government, working closely with Kwame Nkrumah through to the period of the Fourth Republic. He is remembered particularly for his role in bridging the development gap between the north and south of the country. He was later a barrister and played a prominent role in the all-important cocoa industry. In this book he recounts his memoirs over a period of some 80 years, situating them within the historical context of the country. He covers his early years, role with the Northern Territories Council, role in the independence struggle and experiences of working with Nkrumah, his working life after the 1981 revolution, and its culmination when he returns to traditional chieftancy.