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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. / The purpose of this study is to describe American legitimate (i.e., non-slave) commerce with West Africa for the period 1789-1914. Emphasis is placed on the influence of American commerce on historical events in West Africa. The sources include logbooks, merchants' paper and memoirs, colonial records, unpublished theses and published historical studies. Research was carried on in libraries and archives in the United States, Britain, France, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Dahomey and Nigeria. [TRUNCATED]

The purpose of this study is to find out the spiritual meanings behind traditional West African jewelry, more specifically from The Gambia and Casamance in south of Senegal, and how children and youth learn about jewelry production. I want to find out if teaching about jewelry production lies in school’s responsibility—as it does in Sweden where we have our hand-craft education—or if it is learned in another way. I also want to know whether the youth of West Africa value their jewelry traditions, and if it is something they want to pass on to future generations.           This study has a pedagogical perspective with an emphasis on “practical” and “silent” knowledge. Furthermore, this study discusses forms of communication other than verbal, such as visual languages. I have chosen to make a few qualitative interviews with a young woman, a jewelry smith, and a teacher, and to hand out a small questionnaire in a school class. I have chosen these methods of research to discover more about West African traditional jewelry and its meanings. I also seek to know about young people’s views on their ornament traditions.           The result of my study is that traditional West African jewelry often has spiritual meanings and aims to provide divine protection from sickness and other ailments. The jewelry traditions in West Africa are still very popular, even among teenagers. Western African youth is very proud of this tradition and plans to pass it on to future generations, including their own children. I also found out that there is a severe lack of resources in schools, and the handicraft profession, therefore, must be learned from older family members and relatives rather than from school.

The study is a multidimensional analysis of regional economic integration with special reference to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). It looks at the interaction between economics, politics and society in the context of integration and asks if the predominantly economic and mainly a priori advantages postulated by integration theory are feasible in West Africa. The thesis is both descriptive and analytical. First it paints the political and social landscape of West Africa in broad strokes. Using the picture thus created, it analyses integration in the sub-region by measuring the extent of integration achieved by ECOWAS since its formation in 1975. A heuristic paradigm, originally proposed by Leon Lindberg, is used to measure and explain the level of integration achieved so far. Field research, of a preliminary kind, is also used to examine the impact of society on national politics and intra-regional relations, and hence on regional co-operation and integration. The conclusions of the thesis include: the need for a revision of the dynamic theory of regional integration to formulate process mechanisms that can be implemented by developing countries; regional collective decision making is extremely difficult in unstable political systems; the need to tone down the exaggerated expectations of regional integration among developing countries; that tribes across borders have both positive and negative implications for integration; and that the ideology of the dynamic theory of integration is rapidly becoming obsolete in that dirigisme is no longer a viable policy option for most governments. Despite the need for higher levels of economic interaction among developing countries there is no reason, from our study, to believe that such relations will be different from those that pertain in international relations generally. The issues of national interest are just as salient in the interaction between developing countries as they are in the relations between the developed and developing countries. The study did not find any overwhelming desire among West African countries to co-operate. Neither did it find a cosmopolitanism that puts the regional good over the national interest. It therefore calls into question the premise on which integration among developing countries is based; that states ought to rationalise their industries.

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No description available.

This study analyses reproductive changes in Benin, a West African country with high fertility and low prevalence of use of modem contraceptive methods, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Findings indicate that a transition to lower fertility is underway, particularly in the urban areas, as a result of an emerging pattern of birth limitation and continued desire for the traditional long birth intervals. But only a small change has occurred in the main proximate determinants of fertility. The data suggest: that changes in childhood mortality in combination with increased women's education, though modest, have probably created a demand for fertility control among women; that induced abortion among other factors, may be one of the means through which such demand was met, particularly in urban areas; and that the economic crisis of the 1980s was the main catalyst which precipitated the onset of transition. Changes in reproductive preference and practice suggest a diffusion process, from the urban and more educated women to the rural and less educated ones. The data also reveal that the low prevalence of use of modem contraception may be associated with poor knowledge, widespread fear of side effects and complications and poor quality of family planning services. The main policy implication of these results is that an appropriate reproductive health programme is required to address women's needs and reduce the levels of unwanted pregnancies and induced abortion which are likely to be rising rapidly.

This thesis analyses conflict dynamics in West Africa and assesses the role of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as a security organisation in its response to armed conflict. In so doing, it argues that conventional approaches misinterpret key feature of the civil wars in the “Greater Mano River Area” which includes Liberia, Sierra Leone and C??te d’Ivoire. It demonstrates that the progression and spread of conflict is engendered primarily by transversal political structures. The thesis utilises a critical international society approach to consider patterns of security and insecurity across the sub-region of West Africa. However, rather than accepting that West African politics operates within a single, comprehensive international society, it argues instead that it should be understood at two levels. One level is state-centric international society, where West African inter-state relations can largely be explained according to existing constructivist paradigms. At the second level is “transversal” society that cuts across state borders, generating a regional, normative structure that prescribes and constrains behaviour within and between communities outside of the international society framework. The thesis proceeds in two parts. In the first section it works towards an understanding of the transversal politics of regional conflict in the Greater Mano River Area. Conflict is nominally internal, and centralised state authority is the object of both attack and transformation. However, a close examination of civil violence in Liberia, Sierra Leone and C??te d’Ivoire reveals that it cannot be completely understood without recognising the non-state structures of authority and domination that disrupt the traditional domestic/international divide. The transversal communities generated by conflict create a regional cycle of violence that is resistant to efforts made to resolve it. The second section of the thesis is concerned with the ability of ECOWAS to foster durable peace. As West Africa’s key regional organisation, ECOWAS would seem well-placed to respond to regional conflict. It is well-integrated, has significant normative legitimacy and has developed sophisticated security mechanisms. Critically however, as it was created within inter-state international society, ECOWAS is limited by its assumption that states are and should remain unitary actors. Its failure ultimately lies in its inability to respond to the alternative political contours of transversal communities.