Making Men in Ghana

by Stephan F. Miescher

Overview

By featuring the life histories of eight senior men, Making Men in Ghana
explores the changing meaning of becoming a man in modern Africa. Stephan F.
Miescher concentrates on the ideals and expectations that formed around men who were
prominent in their communities when Ghana became an independent nation. Miescher
shows how they negotiated complex social and economic transformations and how they
dealt with their mounting obligations and responsibilities as leaders in their
kinship groups, churches, and schools. Not only were notions about men and
masculinity shaped by community standards, but they were strongly influenced by
imported standards that came from missionaries and other colonial officials. As he
recounts the life histories of these men, Miescher reveals that the passage to
manhood -- and a position of power, seniority, authority, and leadership -- was not
always welcome or easy. As an important foil for studies on women and femininity,
this groundbreaking book not only explores masculinity and ideals of male behavior,
but offers a fresh perspective on African men in a century of change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253111654
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	11/24/2005
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	360
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Stephan F. Miescher is Associate Professor of History at the University
of California, Santa Barbara. He is co-editor of African Words, African Voices:
Critical Practices in Oral History (IUP, 2001) and of Men and Masculinities in
Modern Africa.

Table of Contents

<FMO>Contents<\>
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Prologue
and Personae
1. "To Be a Man Is Hard": Masculinities and Life
Histories
2. Children and Childhood: Work and Play,
1900<N>1930
3. Forms of Education: Apprenticeships and
Schools, 1919<N>1947
4. The Employment of Men: Clerks,
Police, Soldiers, and Teachers, 1930<N>1951
5. The Marriages
of Men: Sexuality and Fatherhood, 1930<N>1970
6. Speaking
Sensibly: Men as Elders in the Twentieth Century
Epilogue: "No Condition Is
Permanent"
Postscript
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"After a quarter-century of gender ethnography focusing on women, this study on manhood is long overdue. . . . Apart from being a fascinating retrospective of eight full lives, this book is indeed a mnemonic monument for these same men and their children."—Africa

From the Publisher

After a quarter-century of gender ethnography focusing on women, this study on manhood is long overdue. . . . Apart from being a fascinating retrospective of eight full lives, this book is indeed a mnemonic monument for these same men and their children.

Africa

"After a quarter-century of gender ethnography focusing on women, this study on manhood is long overdue.... Apart from being a fascinating retrospective of eight full lives, this book is indeed a mnemonic monument for these same men and their children."

Africa