Race, identity and citizenship in Black Africa: The case of the Lebanese in Ghana
Published: 1/Jan/2006
Source: Africa (Journal of the International African Institute)
Abstract
The growth in studies of diaspora, globalization and transnationalism in the past decade has equipped us with unique tools and insights that can be deployed in approaching what are in reality historic phenomena. Frederick Cooper has remarked on how discussions of globalization today lack historical depth in the interconnections they draw, and how in the excitement we overlook globalization’s flows and blockages, that it empowers some and disempowers others (Cooper 2001).2 Anthony Appiah (2005: 216) comments on the longue duree of globalization, describing the entire history of the human species as the history of globalization.3 As I have become conscious of my existence as a transnational citizen of Ghana and the United States, residing in the African diaspora (the United States) but as a member of more recent dispersions, and connected intimately to the country of my birth (Ghana) and the international world of Africanist scholarship through global flows, my mind has turned to issues of polity and citizenship, of territoriality and transnationalism, of race and identity.
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