Overview

As early as the 1910s, African drivers in colonial Ghana understood the possibilities that using imported motor transport could further the social and economic agendas of a diverse array of local agents, including chiefs, farmers, traders, fishermen, and urban workers. Jennifer Hart's powerful narrative of auto-mobility shows how drivers built on old trade routes to increase the speed and scale of motorized travel. Hart reveals that new forms of labor migration, economic enterprise, cultural production, and social practice were defined by autonomy and mobility and thus shaped the practices and values that formed the foundations of Ghanaian society today. Focusing on the everyday lives of individuals who participated in this century of social, cultural, and technological change, Hart comes to a more sensitive understanding of the ways in which these individuals made new technology meaningful to their local communities and associated it with their future aspirations.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jennifer Hart
Publisher:   Indiana University Press
Imprint:   Indiana University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.40cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.345kg
ISBN:  

9780253023070

ISBN 10:   0253023076
Pages:   264
Publication Date:   03 October 2016
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Acknowledgments Introduction: Auto/Mobile Lives 1. ""All Shall Pass"": Indigenous Entrepreneurs, Colonial Technopolitics, and the Roots of African Automobility, 1901-1939 2. ""Honest Labor"": Public Safety, Private Profit, and the Professionalization of Drivers, 1930-1945 3. ""Modern Men"": Motor Transportation and the Politics of Respectability, 1930s-1960s 4. ""One Man, No Chop"": Licit Wealth, Good Citizens, and the Criminalization of Drivers in Postcolonial Ghana 5. ""Sweet Not Always"": Automobility, State Power, and the Politics of Development, 1980s-1990s Epilogue. ""No Rest for the Trotro Driver"": Ambivalence and Automobility in 21st Century Ghana Notes Bibliography Index"

Reviews

Jennifer Hart's text sweeps triumphantly across a century of authomobility in colonial and post-colonial Ghana. . . sophisticated, clear and inspiring account. . . * Journal of Transport History *

Jennifer Hart has an acute ear for listening to stories and noticing important themes in the narratives and archives. Such fascinating material. -Jamie Monson, author of Africa's Freedom Railway Automobile technology was quickly and fluidly remade and redefined to suit local uses--in ways that alter how we think about economy, society, and modernity, as well as modes of African inventiveness: the capacity to divert, adapt, or redesign material goods or objects, how we think about them, their histories, and cultural possibilities. -William Cunningham Bissell, author of Urban Design, Chaos, and Colonial Power in Zanzibar

Jennifer Hart's text sweeps triumphantly across a century of authomobility in colonial and post-colonial Ghana. . . sophisticated, clear and inspiring account. . . * Journal of Transport History * This well-written book deeply engages with the dynamics of African mobility and constitutes a major contribution to twentieth-century Ghanaian history. * International Journal of African Historical Studies *

Author Information

Jennifer Hart is an Assistant Professor of African History at Wayne State University.

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