1. A NEW TYPE OF CITIZEN: YOUTH, GENDER, AND GENERATION IN THE GHANAIAN BUILDERS BRIGADE.
- Author
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AHLMAN, JEFFREY S.
- Subjects
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URBANIZATION , *WORK camps , *YOUTH , *UNEMPLOYMENT , *GENDER & society , *SOCIAL policy -- History , *STATE farms , *TWENTIETH century , *HISTORY , *SOCIAL history - Abstract
This article analyzes one key feature of the Convention People's Party's youth policy in postcolonial Ghana: the Ghana Builders Brigade. Founded as a response to rapid urbanization and growing unemployment, the Builders Brigade aimed to create a new productive and modern citizenry by returning the country's young men and women to the land through a network of mechanized work camps and state farms. Remembered as both a locus for party intimidation and indiscipline as well as a source for political and social opportunity, the Brigade emerged as a key site for a generationally-defined and gendered debate over the roles and responsibilities of the country's youth in the first decade of self-rule. Through an interrogation of this debate, this article argues that the Brigade provided a space for its members to explore a socially recognized yet politically conceived notion of adulthood under Kwame Nkrumah's rule. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2012
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