Modern chiefs: Tradition, development and return among traditional authorities in Ghana

African Affairs

Volumn 110, Issue 441, 2011, Pages 629-647

  Kleist, Nauja ^a  

^a DANISH INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES   (Denmark)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

INDIGENOUS POPULATION; LEADERSHIP; MODERNITY; MODERNIZATION; NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION; RETURN MIGRATION; SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT;

GHANA;

EID: 80053521092     PISSN: 00019909     EISSN: 14682621     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adr041     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. For example, Helene Maria Kyed and Lars Buur, 'Introduction: traditional authority and democratization in Africa' in Lars Buur and Helene Maria Kyed (eds), State Recognition and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa: A new dawn for traditional authorities? (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY and Houndmills, 2007), pp. 1-28.
2. Pierre Englebert, 'Patterns and theories of traditional resurgence in tropical Africa', Mondes en Développement 30, 118 (2002), pp. 51-64.
3. Kyed and Buur, 'Introduction'.
4. Francis B. Nyamnjoh, 'Chieftaincy and the negotiation of might and right in Botswana democracy', Journal of Contemporary African Studies 21, 2 (2003), pp. 233-50.
5. Kwame Boafo-Arthur, 'Chieftaincy in Ghana: challenges and prospects in the 21st century', African and Asian Studies 2, 2 (2003), pp. 125-53.
6. Irene K. Odotei and Albert K. Awedoba (eds), Chieftaincy in Ghana: Culture, governance and development (Sub-Saharan Publishers, Accra, 2006).
7. George M. Bob-Milliar, 'Chieftaincy, diaspora, and development: the institution of Nkosuohene in Ghana', African Affairs 108, 433 (2009), pp. 541-88.
8. Rijk van Dijk and E. Adriaan B. van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal, 'Introduction: the domestication of chieftaincy in Africa: from the imposed to the imagined' in E. Adriaan B. van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal and Rijk van Dijk (eds), African Chieftaincy in a New Socio-Political Landscape (African Studies Centre, Leiden, 1999), p. 17.
9. See Bob-Milliar, 'Chieftaincy, diaspora and development'.
10. Boris Nieswand, 'Ghanaian migrants in Germany and the social construction of diaspora', African Diaspora 1, 1-2 (2008), pp. 28-52.
11. Charles Piot, Remotely Global: Village modernity in West Africa (Chicago University Press, Chicago, IL and London, 1999).
12. For example, Maurice Schiff and Caglar Ozden, International Migration, Remittances and the Brain Drain (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005).
13. Raj Bardouille, Muna Ndulo, and Margaret Grieco (eds), Africa's Finances: The contribution of remittances (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2008).
14. Interview, senior divisionary chief in the Volta Region, Accra, 4 June 2008.
15. John A. Arthur, The African Diaspora in the United States and Europe: The Ghanaian experience (Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2008).
16. Savina Ammassari, Migration and Development: Factoring return into the equation (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2009).
17. Carola Lentz, 'The chief, the mine captain and the politician: legitimating power in northern Ghana', Africa 68, 1 (1998), p. 46.
18. Janine Ubink, 'Traditional authority revisited: popular perceptions of chiefs and chieftaincy in peri-urban Kumasi, Ghana', Journal of Legal Pluralism 55 (2007), pp. 123-61.
19. Emmanuel Akyeampong, 'Africans in the diaspora: the diaspora and Africa', African Affairs 99, 395 (2000), pp. 183-215.
20. Kwaku Twum-Baah, 'Volume and characteristics of international Ghanaian migration' in Takyiwaa Manuh (ed.), At Home in the World? International migration and development in contemporary Ghana and West Africa (Sub-Saharan Publishers, Legon, 2005), pp. 55-77.
21. Giles Mohan, 'Embedded cosmopolitanism and the politics of obligation: the Ghanaian diaspora and development', Environment and Planning A 38, 5 (2006), pp. 867-83.
22. Nauja Kleist, '"Let us rebuild our country". Migration-development scenarios in Ghana' in Darshan Vigneswaran and Joel Quirk (eds), Theorizing the State and Mobility in Africa (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA, forthcoming).
23. Arthur, The African Diaspora.
24. Ammassari, Migration and Development.
25. Francis B. Nyamnjoh, '"Our traditions are modern, our modernities traditional": chieftaincy and democracy in contemporary Africa' (Occasional paper, CODESRIA, Dakar, n.d.), pp. 1-28.
26. Wolfgang Zeller, '"Now we are a town": chiefs, investors, and the state in Zambia's Western Province' in Buur and Kyed, State Recognition and Democratization, pp. 209-31.
27. The most detailed interviews were carried out with the two senior divisionary chiefs whom I met on several occasions. Respecting wishes of privacy, I have changed personal details about their backgrounds and here call them Nana and Togbe, which is how chiefs are addressed in the Eastern and Volta Regions, where their traditional areas are located.
28. Peter Geschiere, Birgit Meyer, and Peter Pels, 'Introduction', in Peter Geschiere, Birgit Meyer, and Peter Pels (eds), Readings in Modernity in Africa (International African Institute, London, 2008), p. 3.
29. Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, NY, 1993).
30. Piot, Remotely Global.
31. van Dijk and van Nieuwaal, 'Introduction'.
32. Kyed and Buur, 'Introduction', p. 23.
33. Lentz, 'The chief, the mine captain and the politician', pp. 46-67.
34. Bronwyn Davies and Rom Harré, 'Positioning: the discursive production of selves', Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 20, 1 (1990), p. 62.
35. Nyamnjoh, 'Chieftaincy and the negotiation of might and right'.
36. Bob-Milliar, 'Chieftaincy, diaspora, and development', p. 543.
37. Boafo-Arthur, 'Chieftaincy in Ghana'.
38. Boafo-Arthur, 'Chieftaincy in Ghana'.
39. Lentz, 'The chief, the mine captain and the politician'.
40. Interview, Eastern Region, 16 March 2008.
41. Interview, Accra, 5 June 2008.
42. Lentz, 'The chief, the mine captain and the politician'.
43. Max Weber, 'The types of legitimate domination' in Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (eds), Max Weber: Economy and Society. An outline of interpretive sociology (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1978), p. 227.
44. Interview, Accra, 3 February 2010.
45. Bob-Milliar, 'Chieftaincy, diaspora, and development', p. 544.
46. Indeed, when I discussed my research project with my interlocutors, almost everybody suggested that I speak with the Okyenhene.
47. See also Boafo-Arthur, 'Chieftaincy in Ghana'.
48. Interview, Accra, 25 April 2008.
49. Interview, Accra, 18 January 2010.
50. See Zeller, '"Now we are a town"'.
51. Lentz, 'The chief, the mine captain and the politician'.
52. Interview, Accra, 4 June 2008.
53. Interview, Accra, 5 June 2008.
54. Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (James Currey, London, 1992), p. 9.
55. Pierre Bourdieu and Löic Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992).
56. Carola Lentz, 'Home, death and leadership: discourses of an educated elite from north-western Ghana', Social Anthropology 2, 2 (1994), pp. 149-69.
57. Piot, Remotely Global.
58. Mohan, 'Embedded cosmopolitanism'. However, as these authors have also shown, obligations are under constant negotiation and thus should not be perceived as static or all-encompassing.
59. Patrick Chabal, Africa: The politics of suffering and smiling (Zed Books, London and New York, NY, 2009), p. 80.
60. The only exception was the Okyenhene - arguably the most powerful chief interviewed - who explained that he sees his office as a platform for speaking and being heard, rather than a personal sacrifice.
61. Lentz, 'The chief, the mine captain and the politician'.
62. Bourdieu and Wacquant, An Invitation.
63. Giles Mohan, 'Making neoliberal states of development: the Ghanaian diaspora and the politics of homelands', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26, 3 (2008), pp. 464-79.
64. Kyed and Buur, 'Introduction'.
65. Boafo-Arthur, 'Chieftaincy in Ghana'.
66. Alex B. Asiedu, Kwame A. Labi and Brempong Osei-Tutut, 'An Asanteman-World Bank heritage development initiative in promoting partnership with Ghanaian traditional leaders', Africa Today 55, 4 (2009), pp. 3-26.
67. See (13 May 2010).
68. Interview, Accra, 3 February 2010.
69. With the exception of a paramount chief in the Northern Region, from where there are only few international migrants.
70. See also Richard Crook and Gideon Hosu-Porblev, 'Transnational communities, policy processes and the politics of development: the case of Ghanaian hometown associations' (NGPAWorking Paper Series, 13 (2008), pp. 1-45).
71. Mohan, 'Embedded cosmopolitanism'.
72. Valentina Mazzucato and Mirjam Kabki, 'Small is beautiful: the politics of transnational relationships between migrant hometown associations and communities back home', Global Networks 9, 2 (2009), pp. 227-52.
73. Another example is the Okyenhene. See Samuel Zan, 'One nation, one people, one destiny? The Ghanaian diaspora's contribution to national development using diverse channels' (Research study, SEND Foundation of West Africa, Accra, 2004), pp. 1-21.
74. Interview, Accra, 22 January 2010.
75. 'The official website of His Royal Majesty King Tackie Tawiah III Ga Mantse King of Greater Accra', Ghana, (13 May 2010).
76. For examples of how migrants negotiate power relationships to local and traditional authorities, see Mohan, 'Embedded cosmopolitanism'.
77. Nieswand, 'Ghanaian migrants in Germany'.
78. Mazzucato and Kabki, 'Small is beautiful'.
79. Telephone interview, Accra, 27 July 2008.
80. Nieswand, 'Ghanaian migrants in Germany'.
81. Field notes, Eastern Region, 28 June 2008.
82. Chabal, Africa, p. 40.
83. See also Bob-Milliar, 'Chieftaincy, diaspora, and development'.
84. Marijke Steegstra, '"White" chiefs and queens in Ghana: personification of development', in Odotei and Awedoba, Chieftaincy in Ghana, pp. 603-20.
85. Interview, paramount chief, Volta Region, 8 May 2008.