Chiefs Know Their Boundaries: Essays on Property, Power and the Past in Asante, 1896-1996 (Social History of Africa) - Softcover

Berry, Sara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0852556446 ISBN 13: 9780852556443

Publisher: James Currey Ltd, 1717

Synopsis

This text explores the changes and continuities in the ways people have made and exercised claims on the land in Asante, Ghana, during the colonial and postcolonial era. North America: Heinemann

About this title

About the Author

SARA S. BERRY is Professor of History and Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University and the author of several books, including Fathers Work for their Sons, winner of the 1985 Herskovits Award. Her most recent book is No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa. _

Review

... a fascinating study of Africa's legal, political and economic modernity ... a rich enquiry into the ways in which the constant re-interpretation of history is crucial to a definition of what constitutes ownership of land. And since the issues of land tenure and entitlement are at the heart of the relationship between wealth and power, in Africa as elsewhere, this discussion casts a revealing light on the relevance of tradition to modernization of the continent. It also brings to the fore the vexed subject of continued significance of customary authority, especially local chiefs, within a political framework that has no constitutionally relevant place for them. - Patrick Chabal in INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Edition details

• Publisher: James Currey Ltd
• Publication date: 1717
• ISBN 10: 0852556446
• ISBN 13: 9780852556443
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 226