Truly National? Social Exclusion and the Ghana@50 Celebrations

Abstract

GHANA STUDIES / Volume 11 ISSN 1536-5514 / E-ISSN 2333-7168© 2010 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 139 TRULY NATIONAL? SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND THE GHANA@5O CELEBRATIONS1 NANA AKUA ANYIDOHO KOFI TAKYI ASANTE Introduction In 2007, Ghana celebrated fifty years as an independent nation. The program drawn up to commemorate this occasion, dubbed Ghana@50, was described as an opportunity to “celebrate, reflect and look forward.”2 Thus, while much was written and said about the Ghana@50 program—especially about the composition and work of the National Planning Committee and the decision to spend twenty million dollars on the celebrations—members of the public also took the occasion of the jubilee to reflect on the state of the Ghanaian nation over the past fifty years and to project its future. This paper makes use of the concept of social exclusion to analyze public perspectives and experiences of the Ghana@50 celebrations. Social exclusion as an analytical tool has gained popularity in recent years in policy circles. However, the phenomena that it describes are not new (Jehoel-­ Gijsbers and Vrooman 2007), nor is the concept, which goes back to sociologist Max Weber’s theory of social closure or the “attempt of one group to secure for itself a privileged position [in society] at the expense of some other group through a process of subordination” (Parkin 1979 in Todman 2004: 2). 1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the panel “Ghana@50: Celebrating the Nation” at the African Studies Association (ASA) Conference in Chicago, on November 15, 2008. We wish to thank Carola Lentz and Isidore Lobnibe, the organizers of the panel, and Jean Allman, the discussant, for their comments on the paper. A grant from the University of Ghana Research Committee made attendance at the ASA possible. We also thank Mark Obeng and Evans Afful, both of the Sociology Department of the University of Ghana, for assistance with data collection and coding. 2. N. Dadson, How Ghana@50 is heading towards a no-celebration, Daily Graphic, 17 January 2007, p. 21. 140 Ghana Studies • volume 11 • 2010 Despite its uptake by some scholars, there continues to be vigorous debate about the suitability of the concept of social exclusion as a measure of disadvantage and about its critical distinction from other concepts. There are questions raised also about the political intentions of scholars and policy makers in promoting social exclusion as an analytical concept, with some charging that it reflects collusion by academics and politicians to veil the bare face of poverty and social inequality (Gray 2005; Oyen 1997). Nonetheless, its proponents maintain that social exclusion marks an advance beyond the narrow conceptual focus on poverty as the measure of marginalization and disadvantage (Burchardt et al. 1999; Room 1999); it is argued—and usefully for our discussion—that the multi-dimensional approach to social exclusion allows it to engage with non-economic and non-monetary dimensions of social disadvantage (Rodgers 1995; Todman 2004). The literature highlights a number of dimensions of exclusion, including political participation, social interaction, consumption, production, economic benefits, as well as characteristics relating to individuals, neighborhoods , religious groups and spatial groupings. These dimensions interact so that marginalization in one context may result in marginalization in other aspects of life. As a result, the concept of exclusion can be used to analyze manifestations of social inequality as wide-ranging as political alienation , unemployment and homelessness (Percy-Smith 2000; Room 1999). The utility of a tool of policy research for the analysis of public discussions of the Ghana@50 celebrations might not be immediately obvious . However, we make an argument for the relevance of the concept of social exclusion for such an analysis on the following grounds: first, the commentaries and reports on the Ghana@50 celebrations make explicit and implicit statements about the dynamics of social exclusion in the Ghana@50 celebrations. Further, as we show in our analysis, connections are made between exclusion in the Ghana@50 activities and histories of systematic exclusion of certain groups. This brings us to the doorstep of Anyidoho and Asante • Truly National? 141 policy, and having arrived there, social exclusion allows us to...