Book contents
- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa
- African Studies Series
- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Centring the Margins
- Part I From Frontiers to Boundaries
- Part II States and Taxes, Land and Mobility
- Part III Decolonization and Boundary Closure, c.1939–1969
- Part IV States, Social Contracts and Respacing from Below, c.1970–2010
- 11 Barnacle States and Boundary Lines
- 12 The Remaking of Ghana and Togo at Their Common Border
- 13 Boundaries, Communities and ‘Re-Membering’
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- African Studies Series
13 - Boundaries, Communities and ‘Re-Membering’
Festivals and the Negotiation of Difference
from Part IV - States, Social Contracts and Respacing from Below, c.1970–2010
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2019
- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa
- African Studies Series
- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Centring the Margins
- Part I From Frontiers to Boundaries
- Part II States and Taxes, Land and Mobility
- Part III Decolonization and Boundary Closure, c.1939–1969
- Part IV States, Social Contracts and Respacing from Below, c.1970–2010
- 11 Barnacle States and Boundary Lines
- 12 The Remaking of Ghana and Togo at Their Common Border
- 13 Boundaries, Communities and ‘Re-Membering’
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- African Studies Series
Summary
In this final chapter, I round off the extended comparison by returning to the borderlands as spaces where claims to place and expressions of identity played off one another. In particular, I consider how far the dynamics of international boundaries affected the ways in which ‘community’ was imagined and acted upon: in a nutshell, the question is whether borders were internalized in such a manner that they became part of the building blocks of community, or conversely community was defined in opposition to the existence of the borders. As indicated in Chapter 1, I deploy ‘community’ in a deliberately broad sense, connoting a shared feeling of belonging, but manifested in an organized form and arranged spatially – whether that be membership of a village or a religious grouping. I will also address ethnicity as a mode of ‘we-group’ identification that builds on conceptions of community but operates at a broader and more discursive level.
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- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West AfricaThe Centrality of the Margins, pp. 396 - 522Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019
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