The Urban Culture of the “Model” Christian Settlement at Abokobi, Ghana, 1854–1929

Abstract

Although the built spaces created by the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society (the Basel Mission) at Abokobi, Ghana, prioritized missionary ideals, these designs also demonstrated striking similarities with existing Indigenous Gã patterns of sociospatial organization, including both the patrilineal household (weku shiã) and the neighborhood (akutso). In The Urban Culture of the “Model” Christian Settlement at Abokobi, Ghana, 1854–1929, E. Sasu Kwame Sewordor describes how, beginning in the late nineteenth century, the members of an emerging Gã middle class projected and redefined Gã Christian ideas of “modernity” through architectural forms that enabled them to negotiate and sometimes contest the Basel Mission’s domination of the built environment in Abokobi. Drawing on material and archival evidence as well as oral testimony, Sewordor explores how Abokobi converts to Christianity reconfigured Indigenous domestic spaces, spatial practices, and cosmological notions to accommodate and also transform the religious and cultural framework imposed by the Basel Mission.