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OverviewFull Product DetailsAuthor: Stephan F. MiescherPublisher: Indiana University Press Imprint: Indiana University Press Weight: 0.748kg ISBN: 9780253059956ISBN 10: 025305995 Pages: 598 Publication Date: 12 July 2022 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print  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"Acknowledgment List of Abbreviations Prologue Introduction Part I. The Volta River Project 1. The Volta Project and the Promise of Modernization 2. ""Nkrumah's Baby"": Realizing Akosombo within the Cold War Part II. The Volta Aluminium Company 3. Volta Aluminium Company: A U.S. Outpost in West Africa 4. Working on VALCO's American Island Part III. Settlements of Modernization 5. ""No One Should Be Worse Off"": Resettlement 6. Building the City of the Future Part IV. Power Struggles 7. Waiting for Light: Stories of Rural Electrification 8. Electricity Politics, Droughts, Self-Help Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index"ReviewsIn A Dam for Africa, Stephan Miescher explores the history of Akosombo Dam, its role as part of the broader Volta River Project, and its influence on national and pan-African visions for a postcolonial technological future. Miescher draws on a large body of previously underutilized archival sources, as well as extensive interviews with government officials and citizens across regions most directly impacted by the construction of the dam and the resulting resettlement that came in its wake--Jennifer Hart, Wayne State University A Dam for Africa is a stunningly rich examination of Ghana's Volta River Project, an ambitious infrastructural / development scheme that has played a central role in 20th century Ghanaian and African, history. At its core, the book probes the multiple meanings that the project's principle manifestation--the hydroelectric Akosombo Dam--had for Ghanaians, Africans, local bureaucrats, international governments, and transnational business interests from c. 1950 to 2010, a sixty-year period that stretches across not only the colonial / postcolonial divide, but several periods of ranging political ideologies, economic realities, and international transformations.--Nate Plageman, Wake Forest University Based on meticulous archival research carried out across the globe and on countless interviews, A Dam for Africa engages themes as diverse as decolonization, gender, technology, and popular culture in this riveting account of the making of Ghana's Akosombo Dam. Miescher's rich, multiscalar analysis is as adept at reconstructing the Cold War geopolitics of aid and development that form the negotiated prehistory of the dam, as it is at recounting the personal stories of displacement, relocation, and disillusionment of ordinary women and men whose livelihoods and homes, burial grounds, and religious sites were washed away by the Volta Lake. Miescher's A Dam for Africa is quite simply a monumental work.--Jean Allman, Washington University in St. Louis A Dam for Africa is a truly spectacular contribution to global debates about energy justice. Rather than eschewing the contradictions of sustainable development, Miescher explores them with tremendous sensitivity and subtlety. The result is a rich, complex, innovative history that changes the terms of scholarship across a wide range of fields, including African history, global environmental history, the history of technology, and infrastructure studies.--Gabrielle Hecht, Stanford University Author InformationStephan F. Miescher is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is editor (with Luise White and David William Cohen) of African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History and (with Lisa A. Lindsay) of Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa and is author of Making Men in Ghana. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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