Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana

“The Truth about the Desert”: Exile, Memory, and the Making of Communities among Malian Tuareg Refugees in Niger

“…Brenner concludes that both Muslim and non-Muslim identities are formulated through appropriation and reassortment of various elements or building blocks, which may be religiously significant, but which are also socially and politically motivated.29 What these terminologies have in common is that they depict social processes of closure and exclusion that symbolically fix boundaries and exclude everything that does not belong. It is precisely this closure and exclusion, and the formation of symbolic boundaries, that make Brenner, Hall, and Tambiah's works similar to Barth's insights into how social actors develop a range of options of collective identifications to achieve inclusion and exclusion in group membership in specific social situations (Barth 1969;see also Epple 2014;Geschiere 2009;Kopytoff 1987;Lentz 2006;Lentz 2013;Schlee 2002;Schlee 2008). For example, Barth stresses that ethnic boundaries are socially constructed and that ethnic boundaries can be strategically manipulated so that individuals can be included and excluded according to group interests (Barth 1969, 9f.).…”

“…In my view, Brenner's study of labels among Muslims in southern Mali (Brenner 1993), Hall's work on stereotyping (Hall 1997), and Tambiah's on classification (Tambiah 1985), complement most of these anthropological analyses that conceive of identity formations mainly (or exclusively) as a matter of discourses on exclusion and inclusion (e.g. Barth 1969;Epple 2014;Geschiere 2009;Kopytoff 1987;Lentz 2006;Lentz 2013;Schlee 2002;Schlee 2008), by explicitly examining how people tend to construct themselves as an opposite group (morally superior to others) through depicting negatively the others that are said to be different. This implies that "othering" practices entail the positing not only of social difference, but of moral hierarchies.…”

Land Access, Agricultural Land Use Changes and Narratives about Land Degradation in the Savannahs of Northeast Ghana during the Pre-Colonial and Colonial Periods

“…The history and origins of many ethnic groups in Africa is one that is very difficult to trace [20,21]. This difficulty stems largely from the lack of systematic documentary evidence.…”

“…But it was not until 1896/7 that Britain annexed the whole northern regions of present-day Ghana after warding off the advances of the French and Germans as well as the campaigns of African slave raiders such as Babatu and Samori Toure [20,34]. Formal treaties were signed between the British, the French and the Germans to demarcate the boundaries of the Northern Territories, and in 1901 the area was officially made a Protectorate of the British.…”

Legible Pluralism: The Politics of Ethnic and Religious Identification in Malaysia

“…3 Prior to 1971, the BN was known as the Alliance and was composed of fewer parties. (Lentz 2006;Ratcliffe 1994;Ukiwo 2005). Colonial Malaya is no exception and has provided rich historical evidence of such processes of colonial 'racialisation'.…”