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The Pattern of Ethnicity in Ghana: a Research Note

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Robert M. Price
Robert M. Price
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

In almost any analysis of contemporary African society, ethnic affiliation is an important independent variable. A wide range of behaviour, particularly of a political nature, has been explained and understood in terms of presumed intra-tribal solidarity and inter-tribal tension. Most of the evidence of ethnically-oriented behaviour is drawn from the actions and public rhetoric of political and journalistic élites or, if concerned with the phenomenon on a mass level, is indirect – e.g. inferences from patterns of voting behaviour. There is relatively little in the way of‘hard’ data on the ethnically oriented perceptions of Africans, and it is important that we collect direct evidence of their existence, so as to confirm our inferences based on indirect and impressionistic methodological techniques. One method of obtaining such evidence is by survey research.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , September 1973 , pp. 470 - 475
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

Page 470 note 1 See Price, Robert M., ‘The Social Basis of Administrative Behavior in a Transitiona Polity: the case of Ghana’, Ph.D. thesis, Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, 1971.Google Scholar

Page 470 note 2 For a detailed description of my sampling methods, see ibid. pp. 131–2.

Page 471 note 1 Designation given in response to the question, ‘What tribe are you?’

Page 471 note 2 This category combined members of several Akan-speaking tribes: Kwahu, Nzima, Akim, Akwapim, and Brong.

Page 474 note 1 Cf. Rouch, Jean, ‘Migrations au Ghana,’ in Journal de in socété des africonistes (Paris), XXVI, 19, 1956Google Scholar; Young, Crawford, Politics in the Congo (Princeton, 1965), pp. 240–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wallerstein, Immanuel, ‘Ethnicity and National Integration in West Africa,’ in Cahiers d'études africaines (Paris), 3, 10 1960, pp. 129–38.Google Scholar

Page 475 note 1 Mitchell, J Clyde, The Kalela Dance (Manchester, 1956), p. 28.Google Scholar

Page 475 note 2 E.g. Card, Emily and Callaway, Barbara, ‘Ghanaian Politics: the elections and after,’, in Africa Report (New York), XV, 3, 03 1970, pp. 10–15Google Scholar; and The Legon Observer (Accra), IV, 09 1969, passim.Google Scholar