Susan Drucker-Brown

Mamprusi Witchcraft: Subversion and Changing Gender Relations

The former Mamprusi kingdom in north-eastern Ghana is one of a set of loosely centralized kingdoms in the savanna region of the Volta river system. In the 1960s during the first decade of its independence Ghana experienced a remarkable expansion of public services and expectations of future progress soared. In the 1980s central government disposed of greatly curtailed resources for such communal benefits as education health roadworks or investment in local economic development all of which had expanded in the immediate aftermath of independence. The mid-1980s were years of grave food shortage and inflation. Armed conflict among neighbouring ethnic groups had become endemic in some areas of the north and direct army intervention had frequently been used to maintain public order (Drucker-Brown 1988-89). The suppression of civilian political activity by the military government has led at least in the Mamprusi area to greater dependence of national government of chiefly courts which continue to be indispensable centres for gathering and disseminating information locally while at the same time central government provides these rural communities with ever fewer services. In the Mamprusi districts chiefs continue to link national government with the small dispersed village communities in which Mamprusi people live together with other ethnic groups. Mamprusi have never been more than a numerically and politically dominant minority in this culturally and linguistically heterogeneous area. (See Drucker-Brown 1975.). (excerpt)

CAROLA LENTZ, Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana . Edinburgh and London: Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute (hb £45.99 – 978 0 74862 401 0) 2006, 384 pp.

concerned that while Gore utilizes Danto’s theory of artworlds, he does not incorporate Danto’s later arguments regarding ‘art and artifacts’ from the exhibition Art/Artifact by the Center for African Art (1988). In fact, Gore makes no attempt to define his usage of the terms, nor to incorporate a discussion of the paradigm, even in his last chapter entitled ‘Art History and Artefact’. Instead Gore begins the chapter discussing the ‘four main bodies of evidence’ outlined by Ryder (1977). While this establishes a link to Gore’s first chapter, I was hoping for art historical comparisons and implications of these artworlds. In short, Gore’s book is important for its detailed study of numerous contemporary shrines, ohens and artists, as well as its historiography of the field of Benin studies.