Boundaries of Self and Other in Ghanaian Popular Culture

Abstract

Boundaries of Self and Other in Ghanaian Popular Culture. By Joseph K. Adjaye. Westport, Conn., and London: Praeger Publishers, 2004. Pp. viii, 195. $80.00. Joseph K. Adjaye, well-known historian of Asante diplomacy, has set a new standard for studies of African ritual and performance in this important monograph. Blending theoretical approaches from performance studies, history, linguistics, sociology, and anthropology, Adjaye analyzes six rituals from southern Ghana. While his research on such ceremonies as Krobo initiation rites are useful in themselves, his major contribution is his exploration of how individuals-in concert and in conflict-create culture through rituals. Adjaye urges his readers to question whether rituals, cherished for their ability to transmit culture across generations, are enactments of fixed beliefs or an emergent, creative process having diverse meanings for different participants based on different contexts and how actors perceive and internalize their life and death experiences (p. 143). He argues rituals should be understood as of far more antihomogenizing views than previously recognized, arenas in which actors articulate plural selves and anticonsensual motivations (p. 2). Adjaye summarizes his argument thus: while the essential acts within rituals may seem static, unique ways in which they are enacted, appropriation of symbolic objects, and their experiential engagement present sites that are not closed but rather open to new significations and interpretations (p. 11). Here is a refreshing corrective to tendency towards crude summarization of African thought and cultural practice that has persisted since earliest colonial ethnographies were written. Adjaye brings us closer to that happy future when phrases like the Akan believe ... will provoke same disapproving scowl among scholars that word tribe does today. Following his introduction, author offers reader six case studies of contemporary rituals: Akan libations, naming ceremonies, and funerals; Krobo girls' initiation rites; and two festivals, one in Elmina and other in Takyiman region of Brong Ahafo. The work is organized to meet needs of scholars as well as college teachers and their students. Each chapter presents a concise summary and critique of major theoretical approaches to understanding type of ritual (rite of passage or carnival, etc.), a rich eyewitness description of ritual and Adjaye's analysis of it. …