Director: Prof Dr Carola Lentz
Committee on African Studies
1730 Cambridge St, Rm S401
Cambridge MA 02138
617-576-9053
Prof Dr Carola Lentz is a non-resident fellow at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. She is in Cambridge this year as a Fulbright Scholar, and will work with the Du Bois Institute in pursuing her project.
Project description
There is a remarkable dearth of in-depth anthropological and historical research on African elites, despite frequent assertions of their strategic importance for ‘good governance’ and economic development and despite repeated calls for anthropologists to ‘study up’. The proposed project will therefore explore the history of an African elite, focusing on changing patterns of elite recruitment and reproduction, including elite relations with the state; practices of elite cohesion and exclusivity; elite discourses of distinction and legitimacy; and the elite’s relations with broader non-elite constituencies. It will pursue these themes in a case study covering three generatiions of elite men and women from Northern Ghana who work in the public administration as well as in the educational sector, the free professions (lawyers, doctors, etc.), the army, and the Catholic church. During my sabbatical 2008/09, I intend to write a book manuscript which offers an empirically rich study of an African elite that will constitute a valuable contribution to a critical discussion of broader issues such as the debate on the legtimacy of upward social mobility, the increasing exclusivity of educational institutions, and the political potential of and challenges for elites in developing countries.
The case study and its relevance
In recent years, Ghana has often been commended for its peaceful transition to a stable multi-party democracy, for its relatively well-functioning public administration and for its vibrant ‘civil society’. In short, it has been regarded as an African success story that defies the dominant image of a continent of ‘failing states’. Furthermore, although Ghana is characterized by ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity, the degree of ethnic violence and interregional or religious conflict on the whole has been low. A central role in securing societal peace and operating a viable state has been played by the Ghanaian modern, educated elite(s), serving in the bureaucratic apparatus as well as active in regional and national politics. Elites are integral to processes of socio-political change, and ties or conflicts between elites as well as their relationship to both the state and local communities are essential to the working or collapse of the polity.
Who are, then, these elite men and women, and how do they balance regional commitments and national aspirations in their careers and activities? How do urbanized elite men and women perceive their roles with regard to their rural ‘home’ communities (to which Ghanaians generally feel deeply connected) and non-elite families, and what role do they envision themselves playing within the nation-state? What are their expectations from the state? How have the resources on which elite status rests (education, networks and patronage, access to the international system, availability of ‘history’ and ‘tradition’, etc.) changed since independence? Is there a tendency towards greater ‘closure’ in elite ranks?
These and related questions are at the heart of my project which will explore the career trajectories, lifestyles, home ties, associational activities, self-perceptions and personal ideals of three generations of Dagara elite men and women from North-Western Ghana that emerged from distinct politico-historical circumstances. The project will pay close attention to the contested criteria of 'eliteness' as defined by these three elite generations themselves, by other Ghanian elite groups, and by non-elite constituencies. The imbalances in elite trajectories between the regional and the national arenas provide a particularly fertile ground for studying individual as well as collective strategies of self-advancement and exploring the elite’s ideas regarding their own biographies, regional identities, education, and national politics. The intended case study, therefore, promises important insights not only into the experiences of a particular group, hailing from Ghana’s marginalized rural north, but also into the general history and current politics of elite formation and elite consciousness in Ghana and beyond.
The broader perspective
Early work on African elites concentrated on the first generation of educated African leaders and civil servants these early studies were ‘male-biased’. Taking a decidedly ‘moralistic tone’, they were generally informed by widespread hopes that Western educated African elites would play a crucial role as modernizing agents in the newly independent states. Such hopes soon gave way to trenchant critiques of the parasitism plaguing African bureaucracies, and to analyses of their role in ‘neopatrimonial’ political systems.
Only rather recently has a more nuanced and sympathetic perspective on African elites begun to be rehabilitated, and a number of authors have returned to use the term ‘elite’ rather than class terminologies, because of its emphasis on agency and its centrality to the elite’s own discourses. There is also a growing body of work on women as members of modern elites in their own right. In Ghana too we find renewed interest in the lives, careers, transnational networks and political perspectives of elite men and women, and an increasing number of ‘first’-generation educated elite men (including Northerners) have published autobiographies. Luckham et al’s programmatic paper on the Ghanaian ‘middle classes’ has emphasized the potential of younger elite men and women, whether educated at home or abroad, as ‘drivers of change’.
On the whole, however, in-depth studies on African elites are still scant, and none of them combines a historical-generational with a gendered approach in the way the proposed project intends to do. They rarely complement the analysis of the elite’s professional and political engagement in national and international arenas with an exploration of home ties and social differentiation at the family, village and regional levels. Particularly studies by political scientists, which continue to dominate research on the developing world, often structure their analyses around rather simplistic typologies that are based on (often unreliable) statistical data, and are therefore unable to capture the complex and intricate processes of elite production, reproduction and political action. Nevertheless, the broader discussion on elites in the political sciences and sociology do provide important points of reference for my own findings. It will also be interesting to reconsider one of the issues raised by early elite studies, namely the potential for openness or closure of elite ranks.
An ethnographic-historical study of an African elite provides an enriching contribution to elite theories, and socio-political transformation in general. Beyond engaging with the still embryonic ‘anthropology of elites’, my project addresses a range of core concerns of the social sciences, including language and power, leadership and authority, status and hierarchy, ideology and consciousness, as well as social identities and boundary-maintenance. The Institute’s interdisciplinary context will greatly help to fully develop this multidisciplinary potential.
Methodology, data basis and time schedule
Drawing on a wide range of research methods from anthropology and neighboring disciplines (biographical interviews, discourse analysis, participant observation, archival research, etc.), my study looks at elites in a non-reductionist, non-instrumentalist, historical and comparative perspective which is sensitive to questions of power as well as to the role of symbols and performances. It is part of a long-term research engagement with Dagara and Sisala men and women from north-western