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  • Writing and Colonialism in Northern Ghana: The Encounter between the LoDagaa and the ‘World of Paper’
  • David Owusu-Ansah (bio)
Sean Hawkins. Writing and Colonialism in Northern Ghana: The Encounter between the LoDagaa and the ‘World of Paper’ University of Toronto Press 2002. xv, 468. $80.00

Since 1983, when Eric Hobsbawm published his Invention of Tradition, scholarly analysis of the cultural impact of colonial rule in Africa has become more focused. In the former British colony of the Gold Coast, now Ghana, scholarship pertaining to the colonial presence has not been lacking. To mention a few studies, Sandra Greene's Sacred Sites (2002) and the various publications of Carola Lentz on colonial creation of ethnic identities in the northwestern part of Ghana are refreshing departures from studies of colonial history that overemphasized the political and economic. Sean Hawkins's Writing and Colonialism in Northern Ghana: The Encounter Between the LoDagaa and the 'World on Paper' is an excellent addition to the study of cultural history of colonialism.

Hawkins's 'world on paper' can be equated to what Jack Goody and Ian Watt once defined as 'alphabetical culture.' Compared to the non-literate, mythical-poetic world of practice, the literate world was presented as being logical, rational, civilized, and therefore superior to the superstitious cosmologies and peoples that were written about in colonial records and anthropological literature. The writings of the 'world on paper' included missionary accounts, as well as the thoughts and expressions of those educated in colonial and missionary schools. In the fashion of R.G. Collingwood,Hawkins argues that representations in these sources should not be accepted without questioning. They are not 'authority'; rather they are evidential representations. The author observes that anthropologists write so as to understand the society being studied, while colonial records often depicted administrative endeavours to tame the colonized. The [End Page 530] premise of Hawkins's argument is that if one studied the true Aboriginal characteristics of the LoDagaa or the acephalous Dagaare-speaking population of northwestern Ghana on which the book focuses, the intentions of British administrators, and therefore the records that codified and distorted LoDagaa culture and practices, would be obvious. It is Hawkins's conclusion that despite the lack of a traditional state of the LoDagaa, and notwithstanding the fact that their dispersed settlements were connected only by footpaths, the 'stateless people' of what became the administrative district of Lawra did have a history and possessed a historical consciousness that was obvious only to the most 'unusual of officers.' However, colonial rule 'denied the LoDagaa the right to describe their culture in their own terms,' and consequently 'created unresolved cultural, political, religious, and social tensions that continue to affect their capacity to regain lost sovereignty.'

In reconstructing the history of the Dagaare-speaking people and the colonial state, Hawkins focuses on the issue of how the LoDagaa environment was controlled. Through the process of mapping, the territories were delineated and named to meet administrative interests (chapter 1). Chiefs were also 'invented' and appointed for the LoDagaa who hitherto had only known family headmen (chapters 2 and 3). The position of chief was imposed - a development that contributed to the erosion of influence of traditional elders and the Earth priest. Chiefs became labour agents for the colonial government - an administrative presence that was responsible for encouraging labour migration southwards to mining towns and to the cocoa producing territories. This point is made not so much to engage in discussion of the colonial economy, but rather to demonstrate the impact of colonial currency on local cultural practices - on the cultural use of cowries for transacting marriages, on purchasing hoes for local farming, and even on dressing in the European way (chapters 2, 3, and 7). The author makes every effort to show that the impact of the colonial world was deliberate. Hawkins points to the strategies of religious conversion, and the numerous court cases relating to conjugal issues. In the end, the author argues that both the colonial and postcolonial administrations categorically defined conjugal unions to mirror their interests - a situation that hitherto had been ambiguous and had afforded women degrees of autonomy (chapters 7 and 8).

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