CONSTRUCTING AVATIME: QUESTIONS OF HISTORY AND IDENTITY IN A WEST AFRICAN POLITY,c. 1690s TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT Small-scale societies, like Avatime in eastern Ghana, established, maintained and developed themselves in a range of ways, in spaces between large, centralized states, in West Africa in the precolonial era. This essay demonstrates the inclusivity and initiative (in terms of both economic entrepreneurship andbricolage) of this small group before its effective destruction by Asante in about 1870, and looks at the ways in which Avatime was reconstructed in the last third of the nineteenth century. In addition, issues of ethnicity and identity are broadly addressed, comparing Avatime's inclusivity with tropes of difference discussed in recent studies of small-scale societies in this journal.
Source: The Journal of African History
Author: LYNNE BRYDON
Institution: University of Birmingham
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2160353759