This thesis examines the role of chiefs and chieftaincy in Ghana’s Fourth Republic. It focuses on the interactions between chieftaincy, the state apparatus and society in areas of local government, land administration and democratic politics, using Hohoe and Kumasi as case studies. The central objective is to explore the legitimation processes of chiefs and chieftaincy, especially how chiefs in both areas seek to assert authority with respect to the state and society. By taking a closer look at how chiefs negotiate the modern political order, this research takes a position between those who see chieftaincy as an indigenous institution deserving recognition and protection, and those who view it as incompatible with the modern political dispensation. The research describes how a network of legal and informal strategies has influenced the ways in which state and chiefs interact. By focusing on this interaction, the thesis also reveals the on‐going legitimation processes at the local and national levels in Ghana with respect to chiefs and chieftaincy. The thesis reveals that even though both state actors and chiefs want, and are constitutionally obliged, to exercise political control in certain distinct ways, the reality is that neither is able to do so completely. To remain relevant, both the state and chieftaincy asserted a hybrid authority in their relation with society, thereby blurring the boundaries between their primary identities. Thus rather than establishing a ‘bifurcated state’, these processes revealed a ‘syncretic’ authority relations overlapping in ways that blend political norms, processes and rules associated with each.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2006. Graduate Programme in Social Anthropology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 564-614). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR19768

Thesis (M.A.). / Written for the Dept. of Integrated Studies in Education. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/05/12). Includes bibliographical references.

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The Birrimian System forms most of the exposed Precambrian shield of West Africa. About half of Ghana is underlain by Birrimian metamorphic and granitic rocks. In the Dunkwa S. E. area (Field Sheet 48) of south-central Ghana, interlayered sedimentary and volcanic rocks were metamorphosed to greenschist and amphibolite facies. These sheared and tightly folded metamorphic rocks have incipient retrograde metamorphism of biotite and garnet to chlorite or hornblende to biotite. Two large intrusive bodies in the metamorphic terrain may be partly the result of granitization: (1) the Pra River complex, an albitized laccolith or sill, consisting of quartz monzonite, quartz diorite, and granodiorite; (2) the Twifu Praso complex of albite granite and granodiorite gneiss. All of the above rocks were folded along northeast-trending fold axes. Then a third granitic body, the Wuwu River albitized quartz monzonite, intruded and locally re-folded the older rocks. / text

The West African savanna is characterized by limited and erratic rainfall in one rainy season, increasing degradation of plant and soil resources, a rapidly growing population, and annual food shortages. Zorse is a Kusasi village in Bawku District, Upper Region, northeast Ghana. The Kusasis are intensive farmers of millet and sorghum who live in villages of houses dispersed over the savanna. Surrounding each house is the continuously cultivated field called the saman whose fertility is maintained by annual applications of manure and compost. Field work in Zorse from October, 1978, to March, 1978, included an intensive study of a 50% sample of all houses in the village (n = 126) containing 900 people. In the traditional farming system each household grows and consumes its food as a unit. During the wet season there is a high demand for labor, especially for weeding, but food supplies are at an annual low. In the dry season farming activity is limited to those with dry season gardens. Agricultural development began in earnest in the 1930's but annual food shortages continue to worsen and famine, such as the one in 1976-77 has not been uncommon. Population growth and structure is determined by fertility, mortality, and migration, and reflects the population's relationship to its environment. Population pyramids for Zorse are like those for other areas of the savanna. Their broad bases reflect high mortality and fertility and their skewed sex ratios are the result of excessive outmigration by males 15-45 years old. Migration has been increasing since the beginning of the century and presently about 50% of males 15-45 years old are absent from Zorse and the Upper Region for extended periods of time. Fertility has also been increasing, primarily as a result of decreasing birth intervals, but also as a result of decreasing age at marriage. Birth intervals are controlled by postpartum sexual abstinence. Kusasi couples make the decision to resume intercourse based on the health and development of the youngest child. The shortening of birth intervals reflects the decreased mortality and increased personal security. The pace of social change has increased greatly since the establishment of the British in 1900. The endemic warfare and feuding were stopped and personal security was greatly increased. Public health programs and Western medical treatment were introduced and links with the rest of Ghana and the world were established and began to grow. The savanna environment is fragile and agriculture in Bawku depends on highly variable rainfall of about 1000 mm per year, and on maintaining fertility on the thin, erosion-prone soils. In areas of high population density like Bawku, there is much evidence of soil erosion, loss of soil structure and fertility, and degraded vegetation. The rapid population growth and high emigration rate in Bawku and similar areas of the savanna jeopardize the possibility of improving the food supply. People's decisions about migrating and birth spacing are adaptations to an intensive agricultural system in an environment where productive potential is decreasing under the present system. For the situation to improve it will be necessary for community resources management systems to develop so that demographic and farming behavior by individuals and households will be linked to community well being.

This dissertation is a video ethnography of the enculturation and learning patterns among children on three school playgrounds in the Central Region of Ghana, West Africa. It includes a) a discussion of colonialism on the redefinition of Ghanaian cultural identity in relation to play culture and the school curriculum b) performance-based case studies of six singing games, which comprise a description of sound and structural features and an explanation of cultural forms evident in singing games and c) a discussion on the role multimedia technologies (video, audio, and computer technologies) played in configuring my explanations and the explanations of all participants: children, teachers, and community members. Goldman-Segall' s "configurational validity" is the conceptual basis of this ethnography of Ghanaian children's music cultures. Configurational validity is a collaborative theory for analyzing video documents that expands on the premise that research is enriched by multiple points of view. Performance stylistic features of singing games emerge that reflected the marriage of two music cultures, indigenous Ghanaian and European. These include: speech tones, onomatopoeia, repetition and elaboration of recurring melodic cliches, portamentos or cadential drops, syncopations, triplets, melisma, polyrhythms, vocables, anacrusis, strophic, circle, lines, and partner formations. During play, the children were cultural interlocutors and recipients of adult cultural interlocution as they learned about accepted and shared social behavioural patterns, recreated their culture, and demonstrated the changing Ghanaian culture. The culture forms that emerged include community solidarity, inclusion, ways of exploring and expressing emotions, coordination, cooperation, gender relations, and linguistic code switching. For children in Ghana, knowledge is uninhibited shared constructions; knowledge grows when every one is involved; and knowledge is like "midwifery." I recommended a teaching style that encouraged the expression of children's wide ranging knowledge by a) offering opportunities for cooperative learning through group work, b) encouraging continuous assessment, c) establishing stronger ties with the adult community, and d) recognizing that the ability of children to hear, interpret, and compensate for dialectic differences in closely related languages can be used to enrich the language arts curriculum and also e) recognizing that the cultural studies curriculum can be enriched by the ability of children to re-create hybrid performing arts cultures.

The study explores trainee teachers' perceptions and experiences of sexual harassment in Teacher Training Institutions in Ghana. Guided by the research literature on sexual harassment and a feminist framework, the study seeks to understand how sexual harassment and its subtleties are experienced by trainee teachers in Ghana. It particularly throws light on the coping strategies of these trainee teachers in different sexual harassment scenarios. The study also seeks to increase awareness of sexual harassment in the Teacher Training Institutions and the population at large. This study is also a contribution to the scanty literature in the area of sexual harassment in Africa and has recommended options available to enlighten educational and policy planners on areas of priorities for action and to ensure a more effective response to sexual harassment in the Ghanaian society. / Extensive review of the pertinent literature on sexual harassment was undertaken to support a critical analysis of the expressed perceptions and experiences of these students. Methods such as focus group discussions were employed with semi-structured interviews (open-ended questions) and memory writing as qualitative data gathering techniques to conduct group interviews and individual sessions with a random sample of 40 participants from two teacher training institutions of the country, the University College of Education in Winneba and Bagabaga Training College in Tamale. Female participants were engaged individually in memory writing using procedural guidelines. / The study found out that the main factors predisposing trainee teachers to sexual harassment in Ghanaian Teacher Training Institutions are Institutional practices by both teachers and students and the Institutional environment created from inadequate or complete absence of physical structures aimed at preventing sexual harassment and assaults. The lack of explicit policies to check sexual abuse, including sexual harassment, work in concert with the aforementioned institutional characteristics to create conditions that facilitate sexual harassment of female trainee teachers in the Ghanaian context. All these accumulate into an apparent institutional framework of sexual harassment that supports a regime of blatant disregard of the safety concerns of female trainee teachers. / Based on the testimonies of the students, it would appear that the problem of sexual harassment perpetrated by people in positions of authority is widespread in Ghana. Female student teachers are regularly exposed to a range of sexually motivated abuses within the learning environment, and these abuses are often carried out by tutors, professors, administrative staff and senior students. These three categories of agents of sexual harassment take advantage of available or perceived institutional power to abuse vulnerable female students. Also, perpetrators of sexual harassment against female students are not held accountable for their acts, thus perpetuating these abuses. By their very nature, the institutions of learning in Ghana are very hierarchically structured, such that power, might and right are often easily accorded to tutors over students, administrative staff over students and senior students over their junior counterparts. Most often they abuse the power and influence of their positions with threats of reprisals when the females refuse to consent to their sexual demands. The victimized females suffer untold consequences, which are minimized at every step in this structured power system.

Despite the established relationship between Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression in Western cultures, research concerning the prevalence rates and relationship between the comorbid disorders in Non-Western communities remains sparse. The present study explored the relationship between PTSD and comorbid depression in citizens currently living in Ghana, West Africa. Ghanaian Nationals (n=140) completed the PTSD and demographic sections of the Structured Clinical Interview for the DSM-IV (SCID-I), as well as the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Both measures were administered through interview format. Results revealed a lower prevalence rate of PTSD than expected. Further analysis demonstrated that meeting the diagnostic criteria for PTSD increased the chance of meeting the diagnostic criteria for depression, as well as increased depression scores. To confirm that the prevalence rates found in this study were reflective of actual cases of depression (not measurement error) a scale reliability analysis was conducted on the CES-D. The results of this analysis confirmed internal consistency. Results suggest that although the prevalence rate of PTSD was low, a relationship is present between the disorders in a non-Western sample. The reliability of the measures means that PTSD and depression were assessed for, but what is not certain is whether the actual construct of the disorders could occur differently in a non-Western sample, causing a different presentation of symptoms. Future research is needed to examine the Western construct of PTSD and depression to determine if there is a different presentation of symptoms not accounted for by Western measures. / Department of Psychological Science