People of the Zongo
The Transformation of Ethnic Identities in Ghana

Questions of ethnicity, religion, cultural change and the African national identity are probed in this study of the immigrant community of Kumasi, Ghana.

Enid Schildkrout (Author)

9780521040532, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 September 2007

320 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.9 cm, 0.485 kg

Dr Schildkrout probes questions of ethnicity, religion, cultural change and the African national identity in this study of the immigrant community of Kumasi, Ghana's second largest city. She compares first- and second-generation immigrants - those born in their rural homelands, and those born in Ghana - in terms of their orientation to politics, to kinship, and to community participation. The author explores the meaning of ethnic identity for rural- and urban-born immigrants, and establishes certain generalizations about ethnicity based on these comparisons. The book discusses the issues of migration, particularly interregional migration; the position of the 'stranger'; questions of cultural change in modern Africa; the 'generational gap' in the African context; the questions of citizenship and national identity in Africa today, and the emergence of new identities, regional, national and religious. This book has importance not only as a local case study that gives a full description of West African urban life, but also as a theoretical reconsideration of ethnicity that has application outside the African context.

List of tables, figures and maps
Preface
Glossary
Part I. Ethnicity and Migration: 1. Introduction: conceptual approaches to the study of ethnicity
2. The Mossi: ethnicity in Voltaic society
3. Migration and settlement of Mossi in Ghana
Part II. Kinship and Community: 4. The growth of the zongo community in Kumasi
5. Ethnicity and the domestic context
6. Ethnicity and the idiom of kinship
7. Kinship and marriage in the second generation
Part III. Politics and Change: 8. The political history of the zongo community: 1900–1970
9. The social organization of the Mossi community
10. Ethnicity, generational cleavages, and the political process
11. Conclusion: ethnicity, cultural integration and social stratification
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]