Ghana has played a key role in African/Western relations since medieval times. For this reason and others, Ghana has evolved into a linguistic quilt that contains forty-four indigenous languages and several exotic ones, of which most Ghanians speak at least two. Using Accra, Ghana's capital, as a microcosm, Dakubu conducts a linguistic, historical, and ethnographic investigation of the origins and durability of this multilingualism and how it has effected Ghanaian society.

Philosophical Foundations of the African Humanities through Postcolonial Perspectives critiques recent claims that the humanities, especially in public universities in poor countries, have lost their significance, defining missions, methods and standards due to the pressure to justify their existence. The predominant responses to these claims have been that the humanities are relevant for creating a “world culture” to address the world’s problems. This book argues that behind such arguments lies a false neutrality constructed to deny the values intrinsic to marginalized cultures and peoples and to justify their perceived inferiority. These essays by scholars in postcolonial studies critique these false claims about the humanities through critical analyses of alterity, difference, and how the Other is perceived, defined and subdued. Contributors: Gordon S.K. Adika, Kofi N. Awoonor, E. John Collins, Kari Dako, Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu, James Gibbs, Helen Lauer, Bernth Lindfors, J.H. Kwabena Nketia, Abena Oduro, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Olúfémi Táíwò, Alexis B. Tengan, Kwasi Wiredu, Francis Nii-Yartey

This book shows African heritage to be a mode of political organisation - where heritage work has a uniquely wide currency.

Between HIV Prevention and LGBTI Rights investigates the transformative impacts of global development's sexual rights agenda on queer politics and activism in Ghana. With queer men bearing a disproportionate burden of HIV in Africa, rights-based health interventions have sought to tackle the epidemic by bringing together, educating, and ‘empowering’ queer African communities. Gore argues that queer Ghanaian men are not benefiting from development’s turn to sexual health and sexual rights. Instead, HIV and other sexual rights–based initiatives operate through neoliberal paradigms that reinforce class divides and de-politicize queer struggle. These dynamics are further shaping and shaped by the politicization of homophobia within the contemporary Ghanaian state. Gore combines original ethnography, documentary analysis, and the examination of development and global health data to connect the struggle for queer liberation in Ghana to broader trajectories of capitalist transformation and crisis and the afterlives of colonialism. In doing so, Between HIV Prevention and LGBTI Rights offers fascinating insights into the political economy of sexuality and global development for scholars, activists, and policymakers seeking to understand and address sexual injustice and oppression, both in Africa and beyond.

This is the first of three volumes offering a new history of lexicography in and beyond the early modern British Isles. This volume focuses on the period from the end of the Middle Ages to the year 1600, exploring the first printed dictionaries, Latin and foreign language dictionaries, and specialized English wordlists.

Translating Religion advances thinking about translation as a critical category in religious studies, combining theoretical reflection about processes of translation in religion with focused case studies that are international, interdisciplinary, and interreligious. By operating with broad conceptions of both religion and translation, this volume makes clear that processes of translation, broadly construed, are everywhere in both religious life and the study of religion; at the same time, the theory and practice of translation and the advancement of translation studies as a field has developed in the context of concerns about the possibility and propriety of translating religious texts. The nature of religions as living historical traditions depends on the translation of religion from the past into the present. Interreligious dialogue and the comparative study of religion require the translation of religion from one tradition to another. Understanding the historical diffusion of the world’s religions requires coming to terms with the success and failure of translating a religion from one cultural context into another. Contributors ask what it means to translate religion, both textually and conceptually, and how the translation of religious content might differ from the translation of other aspects of human culture. This volume proposes that questions on the nature of translation find particularly acute expression in the domains of religion, and argues that theoretical approaches from translation studies can be fruitfully brought to bear on contemporary religious studies.

Dancing with the Gods: Essays in Ga Ritual explores cosmological concepts and ritual actions of the Ga people of southeastern Ghana through case studies of calendrical agricultural rites, social status transition rites, and redressive rites. Based on fieldwork in the 1960s, the essays present descriptive analyses of verbal and non-verbal ritual action. While verbal ritual actions specify ideas pertinent to a particular rite, non-verbal ritual actions express more general concepts. Kilson's analyses show how the same motifs of non-verbal ritual action recur in sacred and secular Ga rites. Whenever and wherever such motifs occur, they convey the same basic underlying Ga concepts, thereby creating a unified conceptual network of belief that is the foundation of the Ga ritual system. The essays in this collection previously appeared in Anthropos, Journal of African Studies, Journal of Religion in Africa, Parabola, and Sextant.