Joseph K. Adjaye

Dangerous crossroads: liminality and contested meaning in Krobo (Ghana) dipo girls' initiation*

Abstract Every spring, groups of Krobo young girls are taken through initiation rites known as dipo. The perpetuation of dipo rests on the conviction that it transforms girls into women. Therefore, the rituals resonate with a powerful voice. But whose voice is it? Is it that of the leaders or the societys? Is there a disparity between the official and unofficial voices? Is the official version real or imagined? And is it shared by the initiands? Contending that dipo girls’ initiation rites exemplify van Genneps concept of liminality, as reformulated and expanded by Turner, that is, marginality, statuslessness, and ambiguity, the essay details the ordered sequence of activities that progressively effect ritual transformation. Each media‐defined action, with its spatial and symbolic resonances, constitutes a specific moment both in itself and in the complex, processual orchestration toward ritual efficacy. However, the essay concludes by questioning cultural assumptions about dipos transformative capacit...

Intergenerational Cultural Transmission Among the Akan of Ghana

ABSTRACT Sociocultural transmission is a necessary ingredient in societal stability, cohesion, and continuity everywhere. For the Akan of central and southern Ghana, an important aspect of societal cohesion occurred through intergenerational solidarity which existed principally in the extended family, with the elders acting as the primary instruments in cultural transmission. The extended family, especially as represented in the Akan traditional household, was regarded as one family. Elders were viewed as the embodiment of the past as well as members with the largest store of memories from the past. Reminiscences, remembrances, and oral narratives were passed down to children in whose lives these elders were intimately involved, and stories always contained some moral values that children were expected to learn from and apply. What appears to be occurring in contemporary Ghana are processes of change and persistence, and the task of this study is to assess changes in the Akan family, particularly the extended family, and their impact on the transmission of cultural values across generations.

PERSPECTIVES ON FIFTY YEARS OF GHANAIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate on African methodology—sources, issues, methods, challenges—by presenting a Ghanaian case study, for, whereas there are a number of broad overviews of African methodology, some of which include surveys of regions such as eastern or southern Africa, as well as countries like Nigeria and Senegal, a study specifically devoted to examining historical production in Ghana is yet to be essayed. This paper, however, shares common concerns with African historiography in general in terms of the quest for distinctly African constructions of history as well as the manifold ways in which African historical production might be made to relate more effectively to local contexts. In a recent contribution to a volume dedicated to honoring Bethwell Ogot, David William Cohen (2001:53) echoed a call which was by no means new but which still has relevance for African historical production today as it did in the 1960s. Emphasizing the need for African voices, he asserted that “…there are realms of knowledge and programs of knowledge production outside the academy, and outside the field situation, that might be understood and drawn upon to work at the reconstruction of the African past.” It is in this light that this piece was originally prepared in connection with Ghanas fiftieth independence anniversary in 2007. Ghana has had a long span of historical writing dating back several centuries, but a tradition of Ghanaian historiography is only about 50 years old, as is the case with the development of national historiographies throughout much of Africa.

Book Review: An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme

Gyekye provides an comprehensive discussion of the nature and content of Akan (Ghana) philosophy and, in the process, defines a model of an indigenous African philosophy. Adopting an integrated approach, the author views Akan philosophy as exhibiting universally held aspects of philosophy, including metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, and ontology. His central thesis is grounded in an interpretation of philosophy as an essentially cultural phenomenon. Thus he sees Akan (and African) philosophical thought as expressed in the oral literature of the people, its material embedded in proverbs, myths, folktales, songs, rituals, beliefs, customs, traditions, art symbols, and its very sociopolitical institutions. An Essay on African Philosophical Thought is structurally organized into three segments, beginning with an introductory section in which the author argues the validity of traditional thought as philosophy and discusses the nature and sources of Akan philosophy. The second part comprises most of the book, where a specific construct of M a n philosophy is detailed through discussions of concepts such as being, causality, the person, destiny, ethics, logic, and other related issues. Gyekye reverts in the third and concluding section to the question of the legitimacy of African philosophy and argues that despite ethnic pluralism and cultural diversity, there are threads of underlying affinity in the thought systems of the peoples of Africa. Gyekye manifests a fundamental preoccupation with justifying African thought as traditional philosophy, painstakingly demonstrating that the African mode of knowing, for example, developed epistemological concepts such as truth, reasoning, and explanation in its preliterate environment. Indeed, the absence of a written philosophical literature, he argues, does not in any way imply the absence of philosophical thinking or philosophical ideas, for neither Socrates nor Buddha wrote anything. Philosophy, whether in the sense of a worldview or as a discipline, is discoverable in Akan thought, he emphasizes. However, unlike Western philosophy, which usually reyulves around the philosophical ideas of individual thinkers, Akan (African) traditional philosophical thought has

The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana@@@Murder and Politics in Colonial Ghana

Bearing the traditional symbol of the Asante nation, the porcupine, the National Liberation Movement (NLM) stormed onto the Gold Coasts political stage in 1954. The movement mounted one of the first and most significant campaigns to decentralise political power in an Africa undergoing the process of decolonisation. This is a case study in the social history of African politics. Situated within the context of so much theoretical and historical literature on class, ethnicity and nationalism, its significance is aimed beyond the borders of Asante, and of Ghana.