This dissertation examines the explicit and implicit currency of indigenous religious thought on political, moral, and social formations from precolonial through colonial to postcolonial Ghana. It advances new answers to debates in Ghana about the role, if any, indigenous religion has to play in a modern Christian-dominated public sphere that simultaneously defines itself as secular by situating these debates in the history of the suppression and appropriation of so-called “undesirable customs” and their agents by both British and Ghanaian government officials. Based on archival research (colonial reports, government records, legal documents, newspapers, diaries, etc.,) and a dozen oral interviews (with former and current politicians, indigenous religious priests, chiefs, and elders), (Un)Desirable Customs argues that despite its “unpopularity” and decline, indigenous religion critically shaped the construction of the colonial and postcolonial Ghanaian state. I highlight the inherent paradox in how the state morally and culturally stigmatized indigenous religious beliefs and practices, in an attempt to perform certain conceptions of secular modernity and Christian morality, yet, at the same time, appropriated indigenous religious rituals and symbols. These contradictory measures, I argue, are better understood as strategies of purifications that the state has enacted and continues to perform on itself in its attempt to define itself as “modern.” My study fundamentally shifts the attention from Christianity and Islam in relation to politico-moral formations to a focus on indigenous religion.
This historical project complicates current scholarship on secularism in both the West and non-West. It challenges us to examine the political, ethical, and conceptual limits of secularism and religious tolerance in the modern period. My research makes clear that the debate about the place of indigenous religion was, and continues to be, couched as an issue of public morality and wellbeing. This approach to the study of indigenous religion also calls into question the longstanding perception about its irrelevance, showing how various elements of indigenous religious beliefs and practices have left their imprint on the political, moral, and social fabric of society. I also attend to how Africans, particularly traditionalists, responded to their marginalization, the appropriation of their symbols, and the changing religious landscape. This work responds to the necessity to complicate the triumphant narrative of the implacable dominance of Christianity and Islam in the African political and public sphere. / Religion, Committee on the Study of
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:harvard.edu/oai:dash.harvard.edu:1/17467246 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Amponsah, David Kofi |
| Contributors | Olupona, Jacob |
| Publisher | Harvard University |
| Source Sets | Harvard University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | embargoed |
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