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Focusing on a sub-set of the Dagomba of northern Ghana, this book looks at the first generation to go through secondary school in the north. After university and post-graduate education, they relocate to Accra, the capital, hundreds of miles south. They crossed social and physical space and have become cosmopolitan while holding on to tradition and attachment to their home town. This bridge generation are patrons to those living up north. This book charts their path into elite status and argues that they use the tools gained through education and social connections to influence politics back home.

This is a book rich in ethnography. Adeline Masquelier covers considerable ground in her return to the provincial town of Dogondoutchi, Niger, but also moves into the urban sphere of Niamey, to exp...

Meaning is inscribed in the material/built environment and this article considers the materiality of change in urban Africa, focusing particularly on the kitchens of a group of first-generation pro...

This paper focuses on the culture within which the architect operates in contemporary Ghana, but outside of the office, in society at large, theorising that this professional is a cultural mediator, a translator of cultural and aesthetic trends for the lay population. I take the perspective of the architect who is consulted or hired to design new houses and must navigate between the formalities of good design, the clients' financial limitations and cultural requirements, and the cultural intermingling, which has produced hybridised tastes and designs. I trace the development of modern architecture in Ghana and the constraints on the architect as a practitioner: their training, their concerns as practitioners, and the various strategies that they use to legitimate their knowledge and negotiate the field of contemporary building practices.

In this article, I focus on a tiny elite community of Dagomba from Ghana's Northern Region. These men (and a handful of women) were among the first to attend secondary school once it was established in the North. Highly visible professionals, these Dagomba are internal migrants, whose new world in Accra is socially and spatially vastly different from the old in the hometown area of Dagbon. Members of this diaspora are cosmopolitans, intermingling with new kinds of people and transforming ideas and practices, but, at the same time, they maintain complex social relationships with their home communities, serving as a bridge between home and host societies.

Accra has been Ghana's primate city since the British moved their administrative headquarters there in 1877. The city took shape under British site planning and like many colonial cities, it developed a spatial layout that distinguished different neighborhoods, such as the old core, the European section, and the Muslim zongo or stranger area. Accra's Sabon Zongo (”new zongo”) was founded in the first decade of the 20th century, as a refuge for migrant Hausa who had been living in the original zongo in the city's core. House ownership continues to confer status in the community but there is little room left for building. Hausa transmigrants from Sabon Zongo have been going abroad and remitting money back home, largely to build homes in the new peri-urban margins of Accra. This paper focuses upon the latter phenomenon – the new styles of houses they are building, the process this involves, and how these styles may accommodate worldview, lifestyle and behaviors different from those with which these men were raised in Sabon Zongo. [transmigration, housing, Ghana]

In this article, I expand on Coquery-Vidrovitch's observation (1991) that to understand each African urban milieu, we must view it as more than a fusion of European, American, or traditional culture. Rather, we must see each African city as unique, that is, in fact, internally differentiated, containing a multitude of enclaves that vary one from another in their respective social, physical, and architectural spatial forms. I focus on one community in Accra known as Sabon Zongo. Founded by migrant Hausa from northern Nigeria almost a century ago, it is neither typically southern Ghanaian nor Hausa, having adapted to a mixed cultural milieu. Laid out by the British as part of their town plan, its manner of growth has blurred the original scheme. I examine a number of components that define the uniqueness of this particular urban community, including physical delineations (within Sabon Zongo and between it and the city at large), local knowledge, the landscape, the infrastructure, market and street trade, and centripetal socio-spatial structures such as the family compound. [Ghana, zongo, social-spatial linkage]

JM: Yes. I have been struck so often when reading books and articles by other anthropologists that I would give much to know something of their earlier experiences so as to know where they are coming from; yet most writers are coy about this. And if, as is commonly (and mistakenly) held today, there are no firm criteria for evidence or analysis, why should any kind of foundation matter? Yet it does, and the interviews with Aidan Southall and Bill Epstein published in CA recently showed how important the beginnings are for understanding someone’s work.

In a classic essay M. G. Smith (1957) analysed praise-singing in northern Nigeria as an institution that regulates social behaviour, by validating status, wielding sanctions, and generally maintaining social norms. Hausa praisesinging is a low-status occupation, whether carried out by men or by women. For men it is particularly so, given the gendered nature of status relations. In this article I focus on Hausa praise-singing in one of Accra's zongos (stranger quarters), and more specifically on the role of the male praisesinger. The topic of praise-singing brings together issues of micro-politics and Islam with zongo dwellers in Accra and the construction of the separate worlds of men and women. I situate the zongo praise-singer by exploring zongo culture, especially male-female relations, occasions for praisesinging, and the importance of patronage in this status-conscious society. Interwoven throughout is a contrast with praise-singing in northern Nigeria. I consider how gender relations change and get reformulated while continuing to be salient. I suggest that the role of praise-singer males who perform in Accra, like that of females who sing in Kano, Nigeria, carries gender-neutral status which enables the performers to mediate between the sexes. THE PRAISE-SINGER In northern Nigeria, the Hausa live in a group of states that are organised centrally; each contains a hierarchy of offices competed for by important men, an electorally based chieftainship, and a set of occupational titles. `Occupational classification is the most important factor in the evaluation of social status' (Besmer, 1983: 31). Many crafts and trades operate alongside agriculture, differentiated according to whether they are hereditary (gargajiya) or freely chosen (shigege). The former carry greater status and prestige than the latter, indicating low occupational mobility and expressing `the general preference for social continuity and for stability in the status order' (Smith, 1959: 248). Occupational groups are also ranked in order of status, with officials, mallams, and well-to-do merchants at the top (Smith, 1959). The segregation of Muslim Hausa men from women is epitomised by the institution of purdah, or kulle; housing is appropriately designed to protect adult women from the gaze of unrelated men (Pellow, 1988). Men and women share neither social nor physical space, and most women's activities--work or leisure--are carried out within the women's quarters (Callaway, 1987; Pittin, 1984). Market trading, so popular among coast West African women, is confined to the compounds, with young children acting as runners, carrying the products to sell to women secluded in other compounds (Schildkrout, 1983). Not only are men and women kept separate--they are also ranked, in keeping with the pervasiveness of hierarchy in Islam and in the Hausa social system. The lowest social category includes praise-singers (marokil marokiya) who engage in praise-singing (roko, `eulogy'), a Hausa craft (Besmer, 1983; Smith, 1957).(1) Praise-singing, a traditional form of oratory, is actually proclaiming another's name to honour him/her. Traditionally, each Hausa has at least one personal praise song (take), which relates genealogy and life accomplishments. The praise-singer recites the praised person's genealogy, recounting his/her feats, fame, prosperity, and influence. Roko is an expression of status, for which one needs an audience and publicity. And, while it is also a craft, `its product is an incorporeal good incapable of further exchange, an article of immediate consumption' (Smith, 1957: 27). It has a primarily social function, informally regulating the distribution of praise or shame. The praise songs are a kind of cultural capital, through which an individual articulates and defines social status.(2) In other words, they impose social control and reflect honour on formal agencies of social control. …

In this chapter, I consider the multiple roles that remittances play in the social and cultural life of Ghana. I show that the subject of remittances, when viewed as a social rather than as a purely economic activity, is especially complex. Migrants send money back to Ghana, which creates an important revenue stream for the country. Among the things that remittances support are social programs and benefits that are properly in the purview of government, but which it cannot afford. In this sense, remittances function as a kind of safety valve; they prevent frustration with an ineffective public sector from boiling over into generalized social strife.

How can we understand a city in the era of globalization? Globalization researchers typically view the city as an economic system and concentrate on explaining the main circuits of capital. Such an economistic lens focuses attention on the command and control functions of global corporations, the (global) central business district, and specific (global) areas where producer and consumer services concentrate. As a direct result people only think of “slums” when they juxtapose run-down buildings against the glittering architecture of the global financial and services sector.

Gonorrhea and other infectious diseases were introduced to Ghana prior to the colonial period by European settlers. By the 1920s, both gonorrhea and syphilis were widespread in southern Ghana (3760 and 1503 cases, respectively, in 1925-26) and soon disseminated throughout the country. By 1946, there were 82,430 cases of gonorrhea and 9340 cases of syphilis--an increase exacerbated by the influx of laborers and troops during World War II. Although there was no government department responsible for the control of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), sulpha drugs were widely utilized and distributed through the black market. It was not until 1986, when the first case of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was diagnosed in Ghana, that government health officials gave serious attention to STDs. At that time, the most prevalent STDs were gonorrhea, chlamydia, and trichomonas. By 1992, 10,285 AIDS cases had been reported to the National AIDS Control Program and high rates of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection existed in prostitutes and blood donors. Awareness of the role that STDs play as co-factors in HIV acquisition prompted in 1993 the decision to integrate AIDS and STD control programs. Campaigns to train health workers in AIDS/STD detection, treatment, and prevention were initiated. Women's subordinate socioeconomic status, which renders them unable to insist on condom use and denies them access to STD treatment, remains a major obstacle.

When I arrived at Somo’s, she was cooking palm nut soup alongside the wall of the showerroom, in the shaded area at the rear of the compound. Her sister’s daughter came out to help her, by preparing cassava and plantain to be cooked. After bathing, her sister Faustina also came outside to cook, situating herself near the kitchen shelter. While Somo cooked, her eldest son bathed her youngest daughter. Another member of the patrilineage and resident of the compound sat in the yard. But there was no cross-conversation; each was attending to his or her task. There were no apparent physical divisions bounding each activity area, yet territories were recognized and respected. I wondered how each knew where her cooking spot was, how she maintained her distance, or sensed when it was appropriate to chat up one of the others.1

This article examines the culture of space and its relationship to com- munity development and leadership, using an Accra zongo (stranger community) as a case example. The situation of Accra's Muslims in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries was one of social and spatial unity, even as they fought to main- tain ethnic distinctiveness. One Hausa faction formed a separate enclave, known as Sabon Zongo. As a "stranger" group, they had no inherent rights to land but were granted rights by the local Ga, which were confirmed by the British. Over the years, the chieftaincy and the status of the original chiefly family have changed. The community's social and spatial history demonstrates how these are ordered by and reflect the power structures to which the community is subordinated. This article analyzes the impact of exogenous forces on the social institu- tions and the physical space of the community known as Sabon Zongo, "new stranger community." Pursuant to the thesis that control over land carries political power, I shall first explore issues of community develop- ment and political legitimacy when rights to land are absent or expropri- ated and indigenous leaders are constrained by colonial and indigenous authority systems. One aim is to analyze changes or persistence in the cul

This paper evaluates the autonomy that a group of nonelite urban Ghanaian women possess in their work options. To that end, I examine those factors that have been influential. These include: the association of education and employment and the exclusion of women, both outgrowths of Victorian attitudes; traditional notions about “the woman's place” and female occupations; the influence of others; and financial considerations. I suggest that the women operate in a society in which dependencies exist and shift, in which they are dependent upon the guidance of others. Furthermore, they have internalized the same values that have kept them out of the modern occupational structure. As a consequence, they are not free to make their own decisions and go into new fields of endeavor.

c HICAGO'S COMMUNITY AREAS in the 1920s and 1930s were objects of study for the Chicago School of Sociology. They were described as stable, homogeneous enclaves, which adhered to their respective social traditions and bore unique historic identities (Kitagawa and Taeuber 1963; Wirth 1964). They evolved "naturally," not as products of conscious design (McKenzie 1971; Short 1971). South Commons, a Chicago community of the 1970s, was decidedly different. It was created on the drawing boards of architects and developers, one of many urban renewal projects. It was intended to be heterogeneous in population and housing form, while contrasting with the surrounding community in both of these two components. Unanticipated changes in the character and composition of South Commons occurred after a few years as residents grew dissatisfied and moved away. It is my thesis' that the shifts were due to a lack of congruence between the physical environment and the social structures that it housed.

This is a study of feuding and conciliation, fissioning and fusing, among the constituent segments of Accra's Muslim community. It articulates the argument of legitimacy – to build a new mosque, to choose a new leader, in effect, to direct the group – and in so doing, politically delineates the principle that by excluding rivals it is feasible to gainsay power for one's own group.

For years, indeed until the recent emergence of feminism, the worlds of women were relatively unexplored. Social scientists solicited neither women's thoughts nor their opinions. They highlighted child-bearing and rearing as women's productive activities. Any roles other than the domestic were often misconstrued, if not entirely ignored. Women were written off to a mundane existence in the home. Now that the study of women has become respectable, a new literature has blossomed. As a discussant on a panel entitled "Women in the Migratory Process," Anthony Leeds stressed his "ever-increasing malaise with the spurious reification of 'women' as a unit of analysis-a unit I see ideologically generated, not scientifically" (Leeds, 1976: 69). Leeds's primary objection is with the individualistic emphasis of the category. Women should not be studies qua women, but as players in role-sets who articulate with the larger social fabric and whose activities are socially determined. Leeds's complaints are not uncommon. They are addressed, for example, by the editors of the anthologies under review. The collected pieces illustrate that often the biological fact of "woman" determines the kinds of roles that women play. The editors justify the publication of their respective volumes by setting forth explanations of why and how the subject of women has suffered, and why and how it should be pursued. Although the two books are related, they vary substantially. The Hafkin/Bay authors represent a variety of disciplines, but all are Africanists focusing upon African women. The Ardener contributors are all anthropologists, but their female subjects inhabit different geographic areas. The Hafkin/Bay