0000000000033514
AUTHOR
Carola Lentz
showing 19 related works from this author
Eugene L. Mendonsa, Continuity and Change in a West African Society: Globalization's Impact on the Sisala of Ghana. Durham NC: Carolina Academic Pres…
2003
Across regional disparities and beyond family ties: A Ghanaian middle class in the making
2021
Despite its fuzziness, the term middle class has become increasingly attractive in the past two decades, not only among social scientists and market analysts but also as a term of self-description ...
DEFYING DICHOTOMIES OF TRADITION VERSUS MODERNITY Tongnaab: The History of a West African God. By JEAN ALLMAN and JOHN PARKER. Bloomington and Indian…
2007
THE WRITTEN WORD AND THE COLONIAL ENCOUNTER Writing and Colonialism in Northern Ghana: The Encounter between the LoDagaa and ‘the World on Paper’. By…
2004
Mortgaging the Ancestors: Ideologies of attachment in Africa, by Parker Shipton
2010
Einleitung: der Sonderforschungsbereich 268 - ein interdisziplinäres Projekt: 1.2 Interdisziplinarität. Erfahrungen und Probleme
2005
Alexander Keese. Ethnicity and the Colonial State. Finding and Representing Group Identifications in a Coastal West African and Global Perspective (1…
2017
"This is Ghanaian territory!": Land conflicts on a West African border
2003
Most African borders have remained permeable, not least because the colonial and postcolonial states have lacked the necessary resources to enforce them more rigidly, "top-down." In this article, I analyze the ways in which an African border has been dealt with "from below," partly ignored or subverted and partly appropriated. The border between Ghana and Burkina Faso, drawn up in 1898, was soon adopted by the borderlanders as a political resource, capable of shielding them from colonial tax and forced-labor requirements. Local networks of kinship and strategies of land use, on the other hand, usually ignored the border. Although the border cut through many earth-shrine areas, the indigenou…
The 2010 independence jubilees: the politics and aesthetics of national commemoration in Africa
2013
In 2010, as many as seventeen African states celebrated their independence jubilees. The debates surrounding the organisation of these celebrations, and the imagery and performances they employed, reflect the fault lines with which African nation-building has to contend, such as competing political orientations as well as religious, regional and ethnic diversity. The celebrations represented constitutive and cathartic moments of nation-building, aiming to enhance citizens' emotional attachments to the country and inviting to remember, re-enact and re-redefine national history. They became a forum of debate about what should constitute the norms and values that make-up national identity and,…
Celebrating independence jubilees and the millennium: national days in Africa
2013
Embodying the nation: The production of sameness and difference in national-day parades
2018
National-day parades constitute a common format of embodying the nation. Composed of numerous distinct bodies of persons with individual characteristics (being short or tall) and multilayered societal roles (being a nurse, a father etc.), parades primarily evoke an image of sameness, while they also display differences. Focusing on the preparation of the Burkinabè national-day parades, this paper explores practices of disciplining bodies and making them appear similar and/or different. We ask how national-day parades mirror and produce images of the nation and how they treat differences like sex, ethnic belonging and occupation. The paper highlights that performances of the nation, as prod…
Gesellschafts- und Landschaftswandel: 4.3 Von Bäumen und Erdschreinen. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf die Siedlungsgeschichte der westafrikanisch…
2005
Decentralization, the State and Conflicts over Local Boundaries in Northern Ghana
2006
Decentralization projects, such as that initiated by the Rawlings government in Ghana at the end of the 1980s, create a political space in which the relations between local political communities and the state are re-negotiated. In many cases, the devolution of power intensifies special-interest politics and political mobilization aiming at securing a ‘larger share of the national cake’, that is, more state funds, infrastructure and posts for the locality. To legitimate their claims vis-a-vis the state, civic associations (‘hometown’ unions), traditional rulers and other non-state institutions often invoke some form of ‘natural’ solidarity, and decentralization projects thus become arenas of…
Danouta Liberski-Bagnoud, Les Dieux du territoire: penser autrement la généalogie. Paris: CNRS Éditions/Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme…
2007
Performing the national territory: The geography of national-day celebrations
2017
The nation is a relatively abstract imagined community that is visualised through a variety of symbols as well as communicative and performative practices. In this paper, we explore how the national territory, one of the foundations of the nation-state, is performed on national-day celebrations and brings the nation into being. Drawing on ethnographic research on national days in Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana, we show how the state's internal administrative divisions and ethnic differences are at once made explicit but also subordinated to the nation. Moreover, we show how in such celebrations, potentially disruptive or competing affiliations such as ethnicity and regional loyalties…
“I take an oath to the state, not the government”: Career Trajectories and Professional Ethics of Ghanaian Public Servants
2014
This chapter explores normative statements and narratives that feature role models or castigate discrimination and patronage. It argues that these ideals and stories create moral boundaries and support an 'esprit de corps' of dedicated public servants. The chapter discusses how such particularist identities are mobilised in the construction of a universalist ethos of public service. It gives an overview of the educational background of the public servants. The chapter discusses their experiences and views with respect to two major themes: firstly, the motivation to join the public service and the factors they identify as determining their own and other public servants' career trajectories; …
ARROWS AND EARTH SHRINES: TOWARDS A HISTORY OF DAGARA EXPANSION IN SOUTHERN BURKINA FASO
2002
The history of the Black Volta region in what is currently south-west Burkina Faso and north-west Ghana has been marked by the agricultural expansion of Dagara-speaking groups. This article explores how and why these groups were able to expand at the expense of neighbouring segmentary societies such as the Phuo and the Sisala. Violence certainly played a role in their territorial expansion, but so did specific strategies of ritual appropriation of new territories. The Dagara system, with its characteristic fission of existing earth shrines and networks of interlinked shrines, allowed mobility and helped the migrants bring new territories under their ritual control. In addition, patriclans a…