Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism

Author:   Ato Quayson
Publisher:   Duke University Press
ISBN:  

9780822357339


Pages:   312
Publication Date:   03 September 2014
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism


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Author:   Ato Quayson
Publisher:   Duke University Press
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.544kg
ISBN:  

9780822357339


ISBN 10:   082235733
Pages:   312
Publication Date:   03 September 2014
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

"Preface ix Introduction. Urban Theory and Performative Streetscapes 1 Part I. Horizontal Archaeologies 1. Ga Akutso Formation and the Question of Hybridity: The Afro-Brazilians (Tabon) of Accra 37 2. The Spatial Fix: Colonial Administration, Disaster Management, and Land-Use Distribution in Early Twentieth-Century Accra 64 3. Osu borla no, sardine chensii soo: Danes, Euro-Africans, and the Transculturation of Osu 98 Part II. Morphologies of Everyday Life 4. ""The Beautyful Ones"": Tro-tro Slogans, Cell Phone Advertising, and the Hallelujah Chorus 129 5. ""Este loco, loco"": Transnationalism and the Shaping of Accra's Salsa Scene 159 6. Pumping Irony: Gymming, the Kobolo, and the Cultural Economy of Free Time 183 7. The Lettered City: Literary Representations of Accra 213 Conclusion. On Urban Free Time: Vladimir, Estragon, and Rem Koolhaas 239 Appendix. Tro-tro Inscriptions 251 Notes 255 References 279 Index 293"

Reviews

Oxford Street, Accra is an erudite and accomplished book by one of Africa's most prominent literary and cultural critics. Ato Quayson is astute in his use of critical theory to illuminate transforming African urban cultures, and he is creative in the aspects of urban space he chooses to analyze. He inventively depicts the tensions of the diverse imaginaries, calculations, and ethical sensibilities that cut across the conventional zones and distinctions of city life, giving rise to new connections near and far. -- AbdouMaliq Simone, author of For the City Yet to Come: Changing African Life in Four Cities A fresh portrait of a rising African metropolis by one of the most original and skilled critics of the African condition. Deeply researched, packed with detail, and bold in scope and analysis, Oxford Street, Accra is a unique addition to the growing body of work on contemporary African urbanism. This extraordinary book shows the extent to which the future of urban theory might well lie in the global South. -- Achille Mbembe, author of Critique de la raison negre What can a street teach us? In Oxford Street, Accra, Ato Quayson helps us go beyond the superficial spatial cues of this seemingly typical urban African street. He investigates the people and their interactions, in the past and present, and how these cumulatively create a sense of place. It's an anthropological framework for examining Accra from the ground up: not its concrete structures, but its migrations - of Ga, Osu, Afro-Brazilian, Danish and Lebanese, and today's traffic of Ghanaians and expats - and the social, economic and political forces that make the Osu neighborhood. -- Victoria Okoye The Guardian [A] work inspired by more than a decade of research by Professor Ato Quayson into the cultural shifts and influences that inform the bustling, vibrant commercial corridor known as Oxford Street in Accra's Osu district...Quayson traces oral histories, shares pieces of colonial correspondence and recounts conversations with urban denizens on their salsa and gymming hobbies. Even the pithy tro tro and billboard slogans aren't missed in his analysis, which invites the reader to engage with the ongoing discourse on Accra's urban street life. -- Victoria Okoye UrbanAfrica.net


Oxford Street, Accra is an erudite and accomplished book by one of Africa's most prominent literary and cultural critics. Ato Quayson is astute in his use of critical theory to illuminate transforming African urban cultures, and he is creative in the aspects of urban space he chooses to analyze. He inventively depicts the tensions of the diverse imaginaries, calculations, and ethical sensibilities that cut across the conventional zones and distinctions of city life, giving rise to new connections near and far. A fresh portrait of a rising African metropolis by one of the most original and skilled critics of the African condition. Deeply researched, packed with detail, and bold in scope and analysis, Oxford Street, Accra is a unique addition to the growing body of work on contemporary African urbanism. This extraordinary book shows the extent to which the future of urban theory might well lie in the global South.


Author Information

Ato Quayson is Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Strategic Transformations in Nigerian Writing, Calibrations: Reading for the Social, and Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation, as well as editor of the two-volume Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature, coeditor of A Companion to Diaspora and Transnational Studies, and General Editor of the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry.

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