As urbanization of the world’s population grows at an ever-increasing pace, the need to understand the effects of globalization on cities is at the forefront of urban studies. Traditional scholarship ...largely employs a framework of analysis based on the globablizing experience of Western cities. In Globalizing City, Richard Grant draws on ten years of empirical research in Accra, Ghana’s capital city, to show how this African metropolis is as deeply transformed by globalization as the cities of other world regions.
The urban youth frequenting the Internet cafés of Accra, Ghana, who are decidedly not members of their country's elite, use the Internet largely as a way to orchestrate encounters across distance and ...amass foreign ties--activities once limited to the wealthy, university-educated classes. The Internet, accessed on second-hand computers (castoffs from the United States and Europe), has become for these youths a means of enacting a more cosmopolitan self. In Invisible Users, Jenna Burrell offers a richly observed account of how these Internet enthusiasts have adopted, and adapted to their own priorities, a technological system that was not designed with them in mind. Burrell describes the material space of the urban Internet café and the virtual space of push and pull between young Ghanaians and the foreigners they encounter online; the region's famous 419 scam strategies and the rumors of "big gains" that fuel them; the influential role of churches and theories about how the supernatural operates through the network; and development rhetoric about digital technologies and the future viability of African Internet cafés in the region. Burrell, integrating concepts from science and technology studies and African studies with empirical findings from her own field work in Ghana, captures the interpretive flexibility of technology by users in the margins but also highlights how their invisibility puts limits on their full inclusion into a global network society.
Assembling Export Markets explores the new ‘frontier regions’ of the global fresh produce market that has emerged in Ghana over the past decade. -Represents a major and empirically rich contribution ...to the emerging field of the social studies of economization and marketization -Offers one of the first ethnographic accounts on the making of global commodity chains ‘from below’ -Denaturalizes global markets by unpacking their local engagement, materially entangled construction, need for maintenance, and fragile character -Offers a trans-disciplinary engagement with the construction and extension of market relations in two frontier regions of global capitalism -Critically examines the opportunities and risks for firms and farms in Ghana entering global fresh produce markets
Seizing Power Singh, Naunihal
2014, 2014-07-01
eBook
While coups drive a majority of regime changes and are responsible for the overthrow of many democratic governments, there has been very little empirical work on the subject. Seizing Power develops a ...new theory of coup dynamics and outcomes, drawing upon 300 hours of interviews with coup participants and an original dataset of 471 coup attempts worldwide from 1950 to 2000. Naunihal Singh delivers a concise and empirical evaluation, arguing that understanding the dynamics of military factions is essential to predicting the success or failure of coups.
Singh draws on an aspect of game theory known as a coordination game to explain coup dynamics. He finds a strong correlation between successful coups and the ability of military actors to project control and the inevitability of success. Using Ghana’s multiple coups as well as the 1991 coup attempt in the USSR, Singh shows how military actors project an image of impending victory that is often more powerful than the reality on the ground.
Singh tests his coordination theory by analyzing ten coups in Ghana from 1967 to 1981. In the process he identifies three distinct points of origination: coups from top military offices, coups from the middle ranks, and mutinous coups from low-level soldiers.
Singh’s theory will provide scholars with insight into the dynamics of authoritarian regimes, democratic transitions, and political instability. Seizing Power will appeal to scholars and students of civil-military relations, democracy transition studies, and the politics of Africa.
A Decade of Ghana Amoah, Michael; Aning, Kwesi; Annan, Nancy ...
2015
eBook
This chronology for 2004 to 2013 compiles the chapters on Ghana previously published in the Africa Yearbook. Politics, Economy and Society South of the Sahara. Political stability in Ghana in the ...last few years contrasted with dramatic developments in other West-African countries. Ghana has a relatively high growth-rate, and also plays a role in regional security issues.
Ghana has committed politically, legislatively, and fiscally to providing universal health insurance coverage for its population with the intent of reducing financial barriers to utilization of ...health care.. However, under current cost and enrollment projections the system will not be financially sustainable in the long term, so there is more work to do. This book provides an important evidence-based review of the current performance of Ghana's health system and options for reform. As such, it provides an overall picture of the Ghana health sector, how things were and how things have changed, as well as a situational analysis of the performance of the health delivery and health financing systems using the latest available data. Finally, it discusses key reform issues and options in the context of the country's likely fiscal space. An important and valuable contribution of this book is its examination of how Ghana is performing compared to its neighboring countries and compared to other countries with similar incomes and health spending, providing global benchmarks for Ghana's health system performance.
Witchcraft violence is a feature of many contemporary African societies. In Ghana, belief in witchcraft and the malignant activities of putative witches is prevalent. Purported witches are blamed for ...all manner of adversities including inexplicable illnesses and untimely deaths. As in other historical periods and other societies, in contemporary Ghana, alleged witches are typically female, elderly, poor, and marginalized. Childhood socialization in homes and schools, exposure to mass media, and other institutional mechanisms ensure that witchcraft beliefs are transmitted across generations and entrenched over time. This book provides a detailed account of Ghanaian witchcraft beliefs and practices and their role in fueling violent attacks on alleged witches by aggrieved individuals and vigilante groups.
Spatial Inequalities Weeks, John R; Hill, Allan G; Stoler, Justin
2013, 2013-06-14, Volume:
110
eBook
This book uses a wide range of GIScience methods, supplemented by field work, to analyze emerging socio-economic and demographic differentials in the city of Accra where stark contrasts between rich ...and poor are highlighted by their geographical proximity.
Brazilian-African Diaspora in Ghanais a fresh approach, challenging both pre-existing and established notions of the African Diaspora by engaging new regions, conceptualizations, and articulations ...that move the field forward. This book examines the untold story of freed slaves from Brazil who thrived socially, culturally, and economically despite the challenges they encountered after they settled in Ghana. Kwame Essien goes beyond the one-dimensional approach that only focuses on British abolitionists' funding of freed slaves' resettlements in Africa. The new interpretation of reverse migrations examines the paradox of freedom in discussing how emancipated Brazilian-Africans came under threat from British colonial officials who introduced stringent land ordinances that deprived the freed Brazilian- Africans from owning land, particularly "Brazilian land." Essien considers anew contention between the returnees and other entities that were simultaneously vying for control over social, political, commercial, and religious spaces in Accra and tackles the fluidity of memory and how it continues to shape Ghana's history. The ongoing search for lost connections with the support of the Brazilian government-inspiring multiple generations of Tabom (offspring of the returnees) to travel across the Atlantic and back, especially in the last decade-illustrates the unending nature of the transatlantic diaspora journey and its impacts.
