oxford street, accra by ato quayson

8/12/2019 Oxford Street, Accra by Ato Quayson

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OSA

FRC

OER

REA

DT

XTC

,

City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism Ato Quayson


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2014 Duke University PressAll rights reserved

Printed in the United States

o America on acid- ree paper

Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan

Typeset in Quadraat by

Westchester Book Group

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Quayson, Ato.

Ox ord Street, Accra : city li e and the

itineraries o transnationalism / Ato Quayson.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical re erences and index.

978-0-8223-5733-9 (cloth : alk. paper)

978-0-8223-5747-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Ox ord Street (Accra, Ghana)

2. Accra (Ghana)History. I. Title.

512.9. 3 39 2014

966.7dc23

2014000767

Cover art: Thomas Cockrem / Alamy


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For Rosina Ayeafermother, trader, storyteller (?2006)

and Keshav, Kamau, and Kairav

for playing with my head


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viii Contents

On Urban Free Time: Vladimir, Estragon,and Rem Koolhaas 239

Tro-tro Inscriptions 251

255

279

293


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It was a casual conversation with Jeeba in 2003 that gave birth to this book. We met as teenagers while at boarding secondary school some sixty milesoutside Accra, he a class above mine and me counting him as a mentor andcon dant. Leaving Ghana rst to go and study abroad and then to work hasnot abated our riendship. Like me he was and still is an avid reader and afermonths without any communication we would relight our riendship simplyby sharing with each other what we had been reading in the interim. Jeeba was also blessed with a highly acerbic sense o humor, the brunt o whichcould be directed at any subject, including himsel . On this occasion I wasin Accra or a ew weeks visiting and, as usual, had gone to his house at theRingway Estates not ar rom Ox ord Street to have lunch and to shoot thebreeze, one o our avorite pastimes. I lef his place in the middle o the afer-noon to check my e-mail at a cyberca e on Ox ord Street. At that time cyber-ca es were only then getting in vogue, and it was not unusual or them to alsodouble up as communication centers (or comm centers or short), with therequisite array o telephones, ax machines, and photocopiers in addition tothe standard set o computers. This par ticular cyberca e was different and

cultivated a more elite ethos by serving the clients coffee while they sat atthe computers. I nished my business airly quickly that afer noon, whichmainly comprised clearing my in- box and replying to some pressing mes-sages rom my students and a couple o colleagues in the UK. Stepping outo the ca , I took a deep breath, inhaling all the ervent smells o an Accraafernoon and declared to mysel proudly: this is globalization. I rushedback to Jeebas place in excitement to share my insight. His response wasspontaneous and characteristically wry: Ato, your problem is that you mis-

take Ox ord Street or a street inRomeo and Juliet . He never explained whathe meant by that remark and I never asked. We just laughed at his usual turn

PREFACE


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x Pre ace

o wit and lef it at that. But the remark haunted me: what did it mean that I was mistaking Ox ord Street or a street in Shakespeare? Two things gradu-ally crystallized in my mind as explanations: rst was that I was overly ro-manticizing the street and what I thought to be its globalized character, andsecond and perhaps more unsettling was that despite growing up in Accra Iknew more about Shakespeare than the city that had shaped my childhood,adolescence, and young adulthood. I was so shaken by this insight that Idecided to test his hypothesis by asking casual preliminary questions aboutthe street rom riends and acquaintances. The more I asked, the more con-

used I became. This book is the product o that quest or understanding themeaning o Ox ord Street and o Accra and my thanks go rst to Jeeba ortriggering the long and complicated pro cess by which I sought to respond

to his witty remark.

Many people have helped me on my way in the course o researching thisbook. They are too many to name or even remember. But o those that cometo mind readily, I want to say a special thanks to Kwaku Sakyi- Addo, who

rst helped me articulate the concept o horizontal archaeologies in an earlyinterview he conducted with me on the project in 2005. Kwaku was per sis-tent over the years in reminding me about the term, and it nds its way intothis book mainly due to his prompting. I should also like to thank the manymarvelous research assistants I have had over the years and without whom Icould not have brought this project to ruition: Barbara Archampong, EvansMensah, A ua Prempeh, Emma Pimpong, Vera Adu, Esther de Bruijn, Jes-sica Cammaert, and Samuel Ntewusu. Ntewusu grew to be more than just aresearch assistant. In his own research on the Tudu Lorry Park in Accra andhis phenomenal acility or unearthing the most arcane documents rom thehistorical archives, he provided me with very welcome instruction on how to

think like a historian. That I may have ailed signally in thinking like one isno ault o his, yet without a doubt whatever comes through these pages as ahistorical account comes rom the numerous conversations I have had withhim rst as a research assistant, then as a riend, and subsequently as myteacher. To Evan Snyder I want to express special gratitude or stepping into edit and ormat the manuscript at the last minute be ore I submitted it tothe press and to Antonela Arhin, Ken MacDonald, Anna Shternshis, KevinONeill, Girish Daswani, and Alejandro Paz or being such great colleagues

at the Centre or Diaspora and Transnational Studies. They were among mymost stimulating interlocutors in Toronto at various stages in the progress


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Pre ace xi

o researching and writing the book. To Pekka Sinervo and Meric Gertler,successive deans o the Faculty o Arts and Sciences at the University o To-ronto, warm thanks are due or the approval o generous research unding.This was in urther support o a Standard Research Grant awarded to me bythe Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council o Canada ( )

rom 2009 to 2012, without which the project would have turned out muchdifferently.

I also want to thank Emmanuel Akyeampong, Joanna Lewis, Carina Ray,Ray Kea, Naborko Sackey o, Irene Odotei, John Parker, Carmela Garittano,Ananya Kabir, Lloyd Amoah, Sylvia Amoah, Ken Mills, Valentina Napolitano,Ayebia Clarke, Amarkai Amartei o, Diana Quayson, and Tejumola Olaniyan

or variously reading and commenting on versions o chapters, pointing out

interesting ideas and sources, or or just tolerating me while I got incoher-ently excited about yet another discovery on Accra. Martina Odonkor was in-strumental in putting me in touch with Jurgen Heinel, who was extraordinarilygenerous in sharing with me books, documents, maps, and the hundreds opictures he had accumulated rom the late 1950s to the early 2000s on theevolution o Accra. Mr. Heinel went urther to welcome me into his home inHamburg in the spring o 2012, where I spent an amazing ew days listening tosome o the wonder ul stories he had to share about his time as a merchantsrepresentative and later businessman in Ghana. Martina hersel also turnedout to have an incredible reservoir o stories about Accras salsa and leisurescene and was kind enough to introduce me to a wide range o salseros andsalseras. Without her the chapter on salsa would have been very different rom what it is now.

For invitations to share my work on Accra at various orums, I wish to sayspecial thanks to Tejumola Olaniyan (again!) at the University o Wisconsin,Madison; Percy Hintzen, then at the University o Cali ornia, Berkeley; HeikeHrting at the University o Montreal; and Samuel Ntewusu and Akosua Ado-

mako at the University o Ghana. The Johannesburg Workshop in Theory andCriticism held in June 2013 provided an invaluable opportunity or me to testout my concluding chapter, and the shape that it takes comes directly rom theinsight ul conversations I had with the participants. Achille Mbembe, SarahNuttal, Leigh- Ann Naidoo, and Kelly Gillespie were magni cent hosts with whom I had many lively conversations both at the orum and beyond.

To Carol Dougherty, Jane Jackson, Elena Cree , Yoon Sun Lee, and Yu JinKo, and all the Fellows at the Newhouse Centre a very special thanks or

making my stay as the Corneille Distinguished Visiting Pro essor in the Hu-manities at Wellesley College in 2011 2012 such a memorable and productive


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xii Pre ace

time. Anjali, Ral , Keshav, and Kairav deserve more than thanks or offer-ing me a home away rom home during my yearlong sabbatical in Boston.

I dedicate the book rst to my mother, Rosina Ayea er, whose numerousstories rom the markets o Accra rst alerted me to the trea sure troves that were rumors and urban myths, and to Keshav, Kairav, and Kamau or shar-ing with me generously o their childhood during my sabbatical year duringthe course o which the large bulk o this book was written. I am very muchhumbled by their dedication to all aspects o the beauti ul game that is soc-cer and rom which we had some heated i inconclusive arguments aboutthe relative strengths and weaknesses o Arsenal, Barcelona, Real Madrid,Bayern Munich, Chelsea, and Manchester United and many others. Thesethree reminded me o one o my avorite sayings, rom the bookBig Panda,

Little Panda, by Joan Stimson: Sometimes you want to be little, even though you are big.


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The news caused ripples on ghanaweb .com, the Ghanaian website that car-ries in ormation and news on the country or both locals and those abroad.Ghanaweb posted an item rom the New York Times listing Accra as the ourthmost desirable destination out o orty- six places surveyed or 2013. Accracame hard on the heels o Rio de Janeiro (who would dare compete with Rioanyway?), Marseilles, and Nicaragua, respectively. There were six accompa-nying pictures to the write- up on the charms o the city, two o which weretaken on Ox ord Street. Though brie , the write- up done by Karen Leigh wasquite suggestive:

Accra, the capital o Ghana, has welcomed business travelers or years.Now tourists are streaming in, a by- product o the act that the countryhas A ricas astest-growing economy and is also one o its sa est destina-tions. The Mvenpick Ambassador Hotel (with poolside bar and waiterson roller skates) opened in 2011, and the Marriott Accra the chains rstsub-Saharan offering will eature a casino and upscale shopping whenit opens in the spring. On Accras packed beaches, youll see everything

rom snake handlers to plantain peddlers. Head to the upscale neighbor-hood o Osu and hit the treehouse- inspired terrace at Buka or ne WestA rican ood. The best Ghanaian adventures start with a giant plate otomato- smothered tilapia and banku a ermented yeast paste thatstastier than it sounds washed down with local Star beer.

What this con rms is something long known to casual observers: Accrahas been a avored destination or students or well over two decades now.And over the past ten years almost every major American university has sent

its students on various programs to Ghana; these include Harvard, Michi-gan, Rutgers, and Colorado, to name just a ew. The nine- campus University

INTRODUCTIONUrban Theory and Per ormative Streetscapes


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N

N a h

a d z o r

N O R T H K A N E S H I E

KANESHIE

TUDU

Korle-Dudor

WestRidge

Ministries

E a s t R

i d g e

South La

La

AccraCentral

T r a d e F a i r

TeshieCamp

CANTONMENTS

AIRPORTRESEARCH

AREA

JAMESTOWN

A D B R A K A

BURMA CAMP

G u l f o f G u i n e a

Abeka

Apenkwa N o r t h D z o

r w u l u

Ablenkpe

Alajo

South Tesano

Dzorwulu

Kotobabi

RomanRidge

Nima

Mammobi

Accra New Town

Kokomlemle

AsylumDown

Kpehe

KANDA

OSU

Te Study Area

Study Areas

Other Areas

Map I.1. Map o Accra with shaded parts indicating main areas o research. CourtesySamuel Obodai, Department o Geography, University o Ghana


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N

Te Study Area

A. Egyptian Embassy B. Black Caesar/Matumba Night ClubC. Goethe InstituteD. Pearl of the East Hotel_____________________

1. Koala Shopping Center2. Fidelity Bank 3. Old Office4. Total5. Penta Hotel6. Qwick Pick 7. Amal Nack 8. Barclays Bank / Afridom Supermarket9.

10. Woodin11. 12. Osu Food Court13. Ecobank 14. Top in Town15. Internal Revenue Service16. Frankies17. Tigo18. Cyber Internet Cafe

19. Standard Chartered Bank 20. Steers Crive21. Papaye22. Ghana Groceries23. Mark Co e/Glo

Road

DanquahCircle

Antrak House

Rabito

RingwayEstates

Dynasty

1 4 t h L a n e

1 5 t h L a n e

1 6 t h L a n e

1 7 t h L a n e

1 8 t h L a n e

4 t h L a n e

3 r d L a n e

2 n d L a n e

5 t h L a n e

M i s s i o n S t r e e t

6 t h

S t r e e t

6 t h S t r e e t

C a n t o n m e n t s

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1B

C2

5

A

67

34

89

10

11 D

1715

16

1918

20

22

23

21

E

1213

14

Map I.2. Cantonments Road/Ox ord Street, with legend. Courtesy Samuel Obodai,Department o Geography, University o Ghana


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4 Introduction

o Cali ornia system has been running year-abroad programs in the countrysince the early 1990s while has gone beyond all others to buy a largeproperty that plays host to regular cohorts o students and pro essors romtheir campus in New York. That Accra has now been declared a avored tour-ist destination by the New York Times may be read in a variety o ways, not allo them necessarily positive. For the Accra o tourist consumption is onethat may only succeed on satis action o the immediate demands o leisure(classy hotels, casinos, ne shopping, and the neighborhood o Osu beingproffered as exemplary in this regard). Since the story o its evolution roma small shing village through a colonial port town and into the large andbustling city we nd today is very rarely told either in tourist guides or inthe various government promotional documents, this means that Accra is

packaged through the scaled- down impressionisms o cosmopolitan con-sumption. The citys history is told piecemeal, and in such a way as to makeit amenable to incorporation into a series o discourses: developmentalist,Pan-A ricanist, popular cultural, and now as a avored tourist destination.The retelling o Accras story rom a more expansive urban historical per-spective is the object o Oxford Street .

Space provides the overall or ganizing principle or this book. I shall retellthe urban social history o Accra rom the vantage point o the singular Ox-

ord Street, part o the citys most vibrant and globalized commercial dis-trict. I hope to trace the history o this lively commercial district and to linkit to different spatial ecologies that were generated by colonial and postin-depen dence town and urban planning or the city, alongside the trans or-mations that have been wrought by the pro cesses o transnationalism andglobalization. The varying planning systems that have shaped the city andbeen amply augmented by the effects o the structural adjustment programs

o the 1980s mandated by the International Monetary Fund prepared the way or the conversion o what was until the early 1990s largely a residen-tial neighborhood into the high- intensity commercial district that we ndin Ox ord Street today. The high street shopping experience replicated elsewhere in the world is in this instance coupled to economic inequalities thatare encoded within the very spatial arrangements o the streetscape itsel .Ox ord Streets variation on the high street thematic will be central to ourconcerns, as will the ways in which this emblematic street reveals a micro-

cosm o larger historical and urban pro cesses that have trans ormed Accrasurbanscape into the variegated and contradictory metropolis we nd today.


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Introduction 5

African Urban Theory and the Question of Space

Space, it might be said with no sense o irony, is a problem o no mean pro-portions. For it seems to have a brute obviousness and yet once examinedde eats all efforts at simple conceptualization. And once we re ect on urbanspace, or any social space or that matter, we nd that although space givesthe impression o being a mere container, its dimensions are in act pro-duced by what it contains, while it also (re)con gures and (re)arrangesthe contained elements. Thus the built environment o roads, railways, andbuildings as well as the bureaucratic apparatus that brings all these elementstogether instigates social relationships that are in turn progressively rede-

ned as people interact with their built environment. None o these observa-

tions are new or indeed original. For Phil Cohen, the quarrel over cities hasbeen between those who see the city primarily as a material in rastructure

or accommodating a diversity o social unctions, and those or whom it isessentially a space o represen tation or imagining and regulating the bodypolitic. And, as Doreen Massey and other Marxian theorists o space havetaught us, the two dimensions noted by Cohen are mutually rein orcing asnodal points or understanding the manner in which space becomes both symptom and producer o social relations.

When it comes to urban A rica the dual quality o urban space instigatesa number o urther layers o signi cance because o the general urgency with which questions pertaining to cities are ramed. I we take A rican urbanslums as a test case o such debates, we nd that the space- as-material-in rastructure orientation undergirds an array o policy interventions launchedby government agencies, urban planners, and multinational organizations. This orientation is particularly evident in the array o resettlement schemes,programs or slum upgrades, or clearance or in rastructural repair that reg-ularly get rolled out. The relationship between slums and other neighbor-

hoods or districts in the city is couched predominantly in the discourses opublic health, labor economics, and law and order. These interventions areby no means devoid o interest in the people living in the slums themselvesquite the opposite. For by targeting various dimensions o the urban spatialcontainer, these interventions are also keen on recon guring the charactero social relations that lie within the slum and that exist between the slumand the city in general. Such programmatic interventions de ne two appar-ently opposed attitudes, one that conceives o the A rican city as the case

study o unmitigated crises and the other that sees it as the arena o dormantpotentialities. Yet, as Ananya Roy notes in her trenchant critique o both


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6 Introduction

types o policy responses, the inherent contradiction lies in seeing slums asessentially located at a spatial remove rom what is assumed to be norma-tive urban relations, rather than seeing slum inhabitation as a orm o urbanin ormality and directly constitutive o urbanism as such. Garth Myers, Ab-douMaliq Simone, Achille Mbembe, Sarah Nuttall, Filip De Boeck, MargaretPlissart, and Roy hersel represent a new breed o A ricanist urban scholar-ship that has not only adopted a bottom- up approach to discussions oThird World cities but adroitly combines this with creative interdisciplinaryperspectives.

Notwithstanding the innovative insights evident in the new urban schol-arship on A rica, the bottom- up approach is itsel not devoid o problems.The problems involve, rst, the discursive creation o a top consisting o

planners, governmental agencies, and international organizations that isthen set against a bottom o ordinary people. The binary opposition be-tween bottom and top suggests an understandable and in act necessarycritical discourse, but it also generates the necessity o keeping this templateintact, which in turn leads to a number o distortions and skewed conceptu-alizations. The second problem, which ollows directly rom the rst, comes

rom the procedures by which urban theorists extract observations rom thematerials at their disposal. O the theorists just mentioned, Simone seemsto me to be at once the most suggestive and yet, by the same token, also themost elusive. He has the telling advantage o not only having worked andlived in many o the cities he writes about (Jakarta, Dakar, Douala, Johan-nesburg, New York, etc.) but also o being a magni cent storyteller and thusable to extract great nuance and signi cance rom ordinary incidents andencounters. First in For the City Yet to Come (2004) and more recently in CityLife from Jakarta to Dakar (2009), he lays out a highly stimulating mode or in-terpreting cities in the developing world. In City Life he proffers the concepto cityness to account or the various ways in which cities are inhabited by

different people and, perhaps more important, the ways in which cities provide opportunities or experiencing relationships o all kinds, many o whichare not anticipated either by city dwellers themselves or by the regulatorymechanisms o urbanplanning institutions. This concept echoes somewhatDoreen Masseys idea that chance encounters are intrinsic to spatiality. Asshe puts it, it is in happenstance juxtaposition, in the un oreseen tearingapart, in the internal irruption, in the impossibility o closure, in the ndingo yoursel next door to alterity, in precisely that possibility o being sur-

prised . . . that the chance o space is to be ound (2005, 8, 116).


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Introduction 7

Additionally or Simone, the creative surprise o urban inhabitation de-rives rst and oremost rom the peripheries, both in terms o urban spatialperipheries (such as slums) but also in terms o the elusive subalternity in-herent to spaces that intermesh modes o ormality and in ormality, some-times at different times o day (such as in the magni cent example he giveso the activities o trade, organization, and even prayer in Lagoss Oju- Elegbaneighborhood in the nighttime). In his account peripheralness is celebratedat various levels as the de ning characteristic o cityness. However, to con-ceptually ground this assertion Simone is obliged to typi y the managerialclass o town planners as somehow either utterly counter to subaltern sen-sibility or perhaps even actively working toward placing constraints upon it.Thus he is able to assert:

Cityness re ers to the city as a thing in the making. No matter how hardanalysts and policymakers try, practices o inhabiting the city are sodiverse and change so quickly that they cannot easily be channeled intoclearly de ned uses o space and resources or patterns o social inter-change. (2009, 3)

. . . . We can then pay attention to how best to calibrate relations among

people, places, institutions, responsibilities, economic activities, and social

unctions through more pro cient orms and practices o urban gover-nance. These calibrations are structured according to law, policy, andspeci c ideas about norms, effi ciency, and justice. But they are also subject to relations o power. Here, speci c individuals and institutions usethe uncertainties incumbent in urban li e and the need o most residentsto have a sense o order as occasions to accumulate the material and sym-bolic resources that are used to exercise authority over how relations aremade. (2009, 6)

The rst quotation implies that the diversity and rapid change o urbaninhabitation are such as to continually de eat the objectives o urban plan-ners to regulate or direct them, while the second calls both or proli c ormso urban governance yet suggests that urban governance harbors a dirty se-cret o power and hegemony, but here denominated in their avatars o mate-rial distribution o resources and social management. Simone inadvertentlyconveys the sense o a historical hypostasis, setting up an opposition be-tween the people and those that seem to want to have the better o them.

Since he does not historicize the emergence o cityness and its variant


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8 Introduction

trans ormations, it seems that or Simone the periphery is both elevated beyond temporality and yet also rmly entrenched within it, or otherwise how would we be able to imagine a different uture or the urban dispossessed?

One central weakness o Simones mode o argumentation in general isthat while his anecdotes are rich in insights, he does not provide enough ex-amples to ground the highly suggestive theorizations. The lack o speci cityand the ne distinctions that one hopes to have been established in the com-parative raming o A rican and Southeast Asian cities means we sometimesstrive in vain to align his conceptualizations to par ticular con gurations inthe two regions. Thus, while his general propositions might, or example,be alluring to anyone who has worked on A rican cities and been rustratedat the gross insensitivities and rank crassness behind many urbanplanning

policies, his overall pro cess o argumentation obscures the relations o com-plicity and overlap between top and bottom that have constituted the A ri-can city. This contradiction becomes especially evident when we extend our view o the A rican city to include the colonial period. As we shall see withrespect to Accra, while it is an incontrovertible act that the British colonialauthorities established spatial patterns or the city that were predominantlyto serve their own interests, the intra- and interethnic relations among Gaindigenes o the city and their out- o -town counterparts rom other parts othe country meant that contests over who owned the city were regularly de-

ned along lines o autochthony, primogeniture, and rst arrival, thus pro-ducing various hierarchical relations that were in turn exploited by the colo-nial administration. For Accra top and bottom, core and periphery occupiedelusive locations when it came to struggles over urban space. Pointing outthe complex nature o local hierarchies does not obviate the criticisms wemight make o colonialism; but it also suggests that the problems inherentto A rican cities come rom much more complex historical sources.

A particular diffi culty that I elt while researching this book was the lack

o good quality in ormation on Accra; this diffi culty seems to apply in thecase o most cities in sub-Saharan A rica, excluding perhaps South A rica.A passage rom Amma Darkos Faceless (which I will discuss extensively inchapter 7) provides an unerring picture o what it takes to research the city:

A lady journalist riend o mine was looking or in ormation about theevolution o an Accra area to its present state. She thought it should beavailable at the Greater Accra Regional offi ce. It wasnt. She was re erredto the National Archives. There, she was given a little insight and was sent

off to the Accra Metropolitan Assembly. They in turn re erred her to their


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Introduction 9

Sub Metro offi ce. She was told there that in act that in ormation was notproperly documented. However, one o their employees was very knowl-edgeable about it and could provide it orally. Un ortunately though, he was indisposed. Could she come back when the employee was well? No,she told them. She needed the in ormation right away. So she was ad- vised to try the Department o Town and Country Planning. She did. And was told she could get that in ormation only at either the Accra Metro-politan Assembly or the Regional offi ce. She saved the energy she wouldhave used to explain to them that she had already been to those two o -

ces. Instead she wailed or help into the passing winds. Someone outthere heard her cry and sent her packing to an in ormal but very reliablesource; two old ladies living at British Accra. They proved to be a ne pair

o human libraries. (Darko 2003, 104105)

Whereas Darkos journalist arrives at the crucial in ormal oral sourcesor the history o the city only at the very end o her labyrinthine quest, this

is in act a research resource that urban scholars o A rica are obliged to ac-knowledge and incorporate rom the beginning. And the path o rustrationofen rewards a painstaking ethnographic sensibility, which also means thatserendipity is as integral to research on the A rican city as lengthy hours inthe archives. I began research or Oxford Street in 2003. Over the past de cade

this has involved administering over 250 questionnaires; conducting dozenso interviews with city planners, shop own ers, wayside hawkers, memberso neighborhood exercise gyms and keep- t clubs, salseros and salseras,artists, photographers, and radio presenters; as well as interrogating

riends, amily, and even startled pedestrians about their impressions o thecity. The research has also involved poring through thousands o pages oarchival documents rom the Public Rec ords Offi ce and the British Libraryin London and rom Ghanas National Archives holdings in Accra, Kumasi,Cape Coast, and Tamale. Over our thousand photographs o the city takeneach summer since 2003, two short lms o Ox ord Street that I commis-sioned in 2006 and 2010, and the rushes or two ull seasons o the soapOxford Street that ran on and in 2010 and 2011 have provided a wealtho still and moving images o the changing landscapes o the city. And yet,even afer all these efforts and resources there are still many questions thatremain unanswered or me as a scholar o the city. Hence even though manyo my observations come rom years o both oral and archival research, thereare still large segments that have had to be lled in through creative specu-

lation. This means that Oxford Street is proffered as a ertile, i somewhat


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10 Introduction

provisional starting point or urther work on the city, rather than as a com-prehensive statement about its past, present, and possible utures.

Improvisational Characteristics of an Urban Fragment We are now obliged to walk the walk, in a manner o speaking, and take astroll down Ox ord Street. The name Ox ord Street is partly an improvisa-tion and chimerical projection o pop ular desire, or it is not the real name othe street that will be o concern to us in this study. It does not appear on anyoffi cial maps o Accra. The source o the moniker is somewhat obscure, butseems to have been pop ularized afer the return to the country o exiled Gha-naians rom various parts o the world, but especially rom London ollow-

ing the end o military rule and the restoration o multiparty democracy in1992. As we shall see at various points in Oxford Street , the interest o return-ing po litical exiles turns out to have been symptomatic o the larger interestso global capital as well, since this strip o the much longer CantonmentsRoad had all the situational advantages that made o it a highly sought- afercommercial corridor. Ox ord Street is the roughly mile and a hal o Canton-ments Road that stretches between Mark Co e to the south to Danquah Cir-cle to the north. Cantonments Road itsel extends rom the Osu area and,merging with 2nd Circular Road, joins Airport Road to orm a crucial south-north axis connecting , Labone, and Cantonments, all o which are amongthe most prized areas in the city that since the colonial period have been the

avored residential neighborhoods o the ruling elites and their satellites. Aew miles to the east and west o Cantonments Road are other prestigious

neighborhoods such as Ringway Estates, Ridge, and Kanda and NyanibaEstates, all o which provide a steady stream o well-heeled shoppers to thestreet. Signi cant also in the evolution and continuing vitality o its com-mercial character is its relative proximity to government buildings such as

the State House, the Kwame Nkrumah Con erence Centre, the Accra SportsStadium, and the Ministries, all roughly within two miles o Ox ord Street.Completed in 1924, the area popularly known as the Ministries contains theheadquarters o all government departments. Combined with the upwardlymobile neighborhoods, the street is thus ed day and night by governmentaland residential tributaries rom every direction. This is what lends Ox ordStreet the buzz o a twenty- our-hour hub o commercial and leisure activitydespite the act that it is not actually the most densely populated commercial

part o town. As we shall come to see later, this distinction is still reservedor Makola Market and the Central Business District, some three miles to the


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Introduction 11

west o Ox ord Street. The arther south one goes along Cantonments Roadand its connecting streets, the closer one gets to the sea and, more impor-

tant, to Christiansborg Castle, the seat o government since 1877.On entering Ox ord Street rom the north end (that is, rom Danquah Cir-

cle; see map I.1 and map I.2), one is struck by how crowded it looks, with both vehicles and people, many large commercial buildings, and a proli erationo large-size billboards advertising everything rom cell phone companyproducts ( : Everywhere You Go; : Express Yoursel ) to theser vices o the United Emirates Airlines; rom Nesca to sanitary pads; and

rom the Nigerian Ovation magazine to DStv with the ace o Jenni er Lopez

staring coyly rom the billboard. To enter the street is also to be con rontedby a range o eatures that are recognizable rom high streets elsewhere in

I.1. Street sign with image o Jenni er Lopez. Photo by author.


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12 Introduction

the world and yet are marked here by a mix o decidedly local characteris-tics. Your regular banks sit cheek by jowl alongside vendors o soccer para-phernalia, which proli erate exponentially during the years in which Ghanaparticipates in international soccer tournaments such as the World Cup orthe A rican Cup o Nations competition. Papaye, the local ast- ood giant,has to contend with the vendor promising the exact same chicken- and-

ried-rice- with-Coke combo right across the street rom it, with the addedenticement o a ghetto blaster with ull- on Bob Marley music to accompany your ood, while Woodin (retailer o beauti ul print cloths) contends withalready-made (i.e., pre- sewn) variants o dresses and shirts made romthe same print cloths but available or much cheaper off the street vendors.Electronic- goods stores abound, as do jewelry shops, along with the offi ces

o all the major cell phone companies such as Airtel, , Glo, and Tigo.Koala, a grocery store to rival Trader Joes, Sainsburys, or Loblaws, is alsoon Ox ord Street, while the huge edi ce to American ast- ood retailing thatis opened in September 2011 to add a urther transnational dimensionto the ood offerings on the street. Several large Chinese and other high-end restaurants, Internet ca s, hotels, bed- and-break asts, orex bureaus,and a large and luscious Italian- themed ice cream parlor make o this com-mercial stretch a visitors dream and the local dispossesseds mouthwateringnightmare. On adjoining streets and byways off Ox ord Street and within aroughly ve-hundred- meter radius are various embassies and high commis-sions, the Goethe Cultural Institute, and Ryans, reputed to be the best Irishpub outside Dublin, along with several other such watering holes and dance venues. And since at least the summer o 2006 a mega- size tele vision screenhas been permanently mounted in ront o the Osu Food Court, stream-ing live advertisements and reality shows such as Big Brother Africa on atwenty- our-hour continuous loop.

Any temptation to see Ox ord Street as a postmodern transnational com-

mercial boulevard is, however, quickly to be tempered by the many signs ocultural phenomena that reach back several generations and some o whichmay be seen replicated in varying orms here as well as in different partso the city and indeed in other urban areas across the country at large: the young man selling resh coconuts whose skill or discerning the tendernessor hardness o the inside o the ruit be ore defly splitting off the crown with his cutlass seems purely esoteric; the woman who sells ripe plantainsroasted over a slow charcoal re under a tree on the lively curbside corner

( or good strategic reasons trees and curbside corners eature prominentlyin the li e cycle o roasted plantains); the emale hawkers nonchalantly walk-


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I.2. Ryans, Osu. Photo by author.I.3. Coconut seller on Ox ord Street. Photo by author.


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14 Introduction

ing along with their wares balanced on their heads but without the prop ohands and selling things as varied as ice- cold water, or oranges, or roastedpeanuts, or even charcoal, smoked sh, onions, chilies, and cassava andplantain or the evenings u u. One or two o these women may even havea young child strapped to their back. These variant eatures bring the mix obusinesses and vendors on the street much closer to commercial districts inother parts o the city such as Makola, Kaneshie Market, Dansoman HighStreet, or Spintex Road, all o which are veritable beehives o commercialactivity with their own distinctive characteristics.

Apart rom its name and the many businesses to be ound along thestreet, however, the most visible yet unassuming dimension o the pecu-liar character o Ox ord Street is actually to be experienced beneath ones

eet, that is, upon the sidewalk itsel . On December 18, 1926, Walter Ben- jamin writes in his Moscow Diary: It has been observed that pedestrians [inMoscow] walk in zigzags. This is simply on account o the overcrowdingo the narrow sidewalks; nowhere else except here and there in Naples do you nd sidewalks this narrow. This gives Moscow a provincial air, or ratherthe character o an improvised metropolis that has allen into place over-night (Benjamin [1986] 2002, 31). Even though Ox ord Street cannot be saidto have materialized overnight rom the sky, it is true that here, too, one is

orced to walk in zigzags. But this is not merely due to the narrowness othe sidewalk. For the Ox ord Street sidewalk is marked rst and oremostby its almost determined evanescence as a sidewalk (i.e., it looks anythingbut a sidewalk), and the act that the distinction between it and the tarmacroadway itsel is practically obliterated. One reason why the sidewalk doesnot look or eel like one is that as Ox ord Street evolved into the high- energycommercial street that it is today, the sidewalk progressively became not thebroad strip speci cally designed or pedestrians to traverse but merely thestripped- down extension o the interior o the many commercial enterprises

along the street.Thus the sidewalk in ront o various businesses on Ox ord Street is taken

over by them, either or customer parking extending rom demarcated park-ing areas (in ront o Frankies or Ecobank, or example), or simply or thesprawl onto the sidewalk o manu actured goods, such as in the case o themany electronic, hardware, and bicycle stores along both sides o the street.The colonization o the sidewalk by commerce rom shops and stores isaugmented by the presence o vendors o various kinds, both itinerant and

stationary.


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I.4. , Ox ord Street. Photo by author.I.5. Parking in ront o Barclays Bank, Ox ord Street. Photo by author.


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16 Introduction

The items that vendors peddle vary: secondhand clothes, bags and shoes(popularly known as obroni wa wu, or the white man is dead); ruits o all vintage, but with resh mango, papaya, and pineapple to be peeled, sliced,or diced up on the spot; Coca- Cola, Sprite, and Fanta in blue ice buckets; redsnapper caught resh rom the sea that is sold by women at the seashore butalong Ox ord Street is mongered by young men with connections to shingcommunities. Pushcarts with various goods abound, and there are also ven-dors o newly manu actured products covering everything rom dog chainsand ashlights to soccer balls, shoe polish, toothpicks, vibrators, and Time magazine.

Cars and pedestrians mix reely on the roadway itsel . Even though thesidewalk is demarcated rom the tarred roadway by the notorious and practi-

cally ubiquitous open- sewage gutter, the sidewalk and the road remain at anuneven height (i.e., while the sidewalk is supposed to be raised some ouror ve inches above the roadway it is actually or long stretches at par withit on both sides o the street). To walk along Ox ord Street is also to be con-stantly invited to pause and look at things: not in the manner by which shop windows in commercial boulevards elsewhere pose various enticements

or the pedestrian to stop, take a quick cosmetic look at their re ection inthe glass, and perhaps enter the store (the window displays per orming the

unction o whetting your desire and inducing a crossing o the boundarybetween inside and outside), but rather by the constant barrage o vendorso all manner o goods vying to make a sale. The invitations to treat, to use a well-known phrase in commercial law, are only an irritation i one is actuallyin a hurry to get to a xed destination. I not, the invitations to treat pro -

ered by vendors on Ox ord Street may open up into varied kinds o culturallysaturated modes o haggling and bargaining, with jokes, teasing, and overallgood humor thrown in or good mea sure. There is a distinctly carnivalesquequality to this aspect o the street. But this also means that the character o

walking on Ox ord Street and the human interactions one has on it are verydifferent rom that o commercial streets elsewhere, in London, or Singa-pore, or Johannesburg, to cite but three contrasting examples.

Since, as we have seen, much o the length o the sidewalks on both sideso the street has been taken over by businesses and vendors, and cars have nomonopoly over the roadway, the experience o walking along Ox ord Streetinvolves a lot o zigzagging, moving off and onto the sidewalk or roadway with the negotiation o ones peregrinations amid various kinds o vehicles,

vendors, goods, and pedestrians as con venience and inclination dictate. The walk on Ox ord Street, as in many parts o Accra, is thus an object o impro-


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Introduction 17

visation. (I have also spent many ne hours watching how people walk onthe street: the gentle swagger led by the lef shoulder slightly tilting the bodyto one side, the constant exing with cell phones, and the bemusementand otherwise irritated hurrying- to-get-somewhere- yet-being- constantly-interrupted quality o walking. With the proli eration o 3 players, iPods,and their attendant earplugs, there is also a dimension o distractedness thatis introduced into peoples gait. Yet oddly enough, listening to somethingelse while walking on the street is not very common; the street demandsattention in a way that does not allow zoning out o its ambient sounds. Ox-

ord Street proffers a orm o sensorial totality that is only unpleasant i yougo against the ow o its multimodal sensory offerings.) I there is a per or-mative dimension to the street it is not to be mistaken or the per ormativity

o occasional theatrical and po litical events, such as the annual Decembercarnival, or the spontaneous outpourings o jubilation whenever Ghanamakes strides in the international soccer tournaments it has had the unal-loyed ecstasy to participate in. Rather, the character o walking on the streetthat has just been described exposes itsel to the possibility o spontaneousevents that themselves ollow sets o per ormative scripts and reveal what we shall come to see as certain important spatial logics.

The messy interaction o pedestrians with other pedestrians, with push-carts, with itinerant hawkers on the sidewalks, and with vehicles on the roadway means that misunderstandings regularly break out as to the propercourtesies o street use. These are not reducible to the ordinary road rage variety o misunderstandings. Insults may be quickly traded between pedes-trian and pedestrian, pedestrian and hawker, pedestrian and motorist, orbetween one motorist and another. However, the traded insults turn out tobe an important aspect o the intersection o spatiality and spectatorialityendemic to Accras street li e, such that the ultimate act o seeing and beingseen translates everything in the heated altercation into the display o the

mastery o unstated yet critical cultural codes o rhetoric and delivery. Re -erence to various parts o the human anatomy and its effusions proli eratein such exchanges, but the hyperin ation o the body is not the real pointo the scatological insults. What is crucial is to produce a memorable twiston a known theme or themes both to show superiority over your opponentand to raise a laugh rom casual observers who will quickly have gathered toenjoy a spot o spontaneous street theatre. Rhetorical mastery may involvethe clever deployment o local language proverbs, but not exclusively.

My avorite o the many I have witnessed? A taxi driver is speeding towarda zebra crossing and has to apply his brakes reluctantly, with tires screeching


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18 Introduction

to let a bunch o pedestrians go across. They turn around and rain all mannero insults on him as they do so, to which he lustily retorts in Twi: Hwe nyenho tan tan bi, a se ngyamoa at gya mu (Look at all you nasty people, like abunch o cats that have allen into a re!). To which there is general laughter,

ollowed by more insults hurled at the ast- receding exhaust umes o thecab. And yet the effectiveness o the drivers insult and its memorable qual-ity derive not so much rom the mention o cats as to the domestic settingsignaled by the re erence to re, something that would immediately invokea traditional kitchen very well known to most denizens o Accra. Cats in atraditional kitchen evoke all kinds o chaotic scenarios, including the poten-tial or loud din and total con usion in the tipping over o pots and pans, andperhaps o even the meal being cooked on the charcoal re. The entire insult

there ore combines implicit re erences to dishevelment, to chaos, and toimproper and unpredictable behavior within a domestic setting, which thenacts as a correlative o the con usion o the pedestrians who, in the driversopinion, do not even know how to negotiate the citys streets. And this de-spite the act that it is he who is patently in the wrong or rushing to whizpast the zebra crossing be ore the pedestrians could success ully navigate it.The implication rom the drivers insult then is that despite all appearancesto the contrary, the zebra crossing does not in and o itsel encompass the

ull protocols o how to cross a busy Accra street.A similar observation can be made or motor vehicles negotiating Accras

increasingly dense and rustrating traffi c. For example, here the rules orcutting in ront o another driver are highly complicated, but generally theobject o tacit agreement by most drivers. The rst principle when doingsomething you shouldnt do is to absolutely avoid eye contact, and the sec-ond is to demonstrate determined intent, that is to say, to move your vehicleas i not a raid o hitting the other vehicle or being hit by it. Waving a quickthank- you afer the maneuver must be rigorously observed, otherwise insults

or road rage may quickly ensue. Taxi and tro- tro drivers are experts at this,and one is quickly enjoined to learn rom them i one wants to survive thehectic density o Accras traffi c.

I the anecdote o the taxi drivers insult gives the impression that thosebehind the wheels o motor vehicles are somehow at an advantage when itcomes to such con rontations, this is quickly dispelled by other stories in which it is the pedestrian that has the last word. In one such instance, a lum-bering and clearly much- exhausted market woman makes her way slowly

down rom the back o a wooden tro-tro (a pop ular passenger lorry, and thesubject o chapter 4). The tro- tro driver honks his horn impatiently and be-


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Introduction 19

gins to rain insults on her. Her response, in hoarse yet pinpoint Ga: Oky s me, Adwoa Atta (Your athers vagina, Adwoa Atta!), to which the dumb-struck driver mumbles some incoherencies and promptly takes off. Loudlaughter and wagging ngers ollow him in his embarrassed exit rom thescene, gearbox cranking and a splutter o protest emanating rom the lor-rys startled engine. Your mothers vagina! with the upraised right thumbpointing toward the object o your derision and deliberately wiggled up anddown against the clenched ngers is one o the most common and ready in-sults in Accra. The insult may be translated into something like your moth-ers vagina birthed you or nothing, you useless person. It is not uncommonto hear even a mother hurling this insult loudly at her own children, in whichcase the implication is that she has wasted her time giving birth to them.

The twist in the womans hurled insult at the tro- tro driver turns rst on sug-gesting that his ather was not a proper man (he had a vagina instead o apenis) and second, that the driver should be embarrassed to have been bornas only hal a woman. Adwoa is the name or a girl born on Monday, whileAtta re ers to a twin, thus the re erence to Adwoa Atta comically insinuatesthat the driver is somehow incomplete. The gender twists to the insult werenot lost upon the listeners, because it also carried the suggestion that thedriver was ultimately an anomaly, having been birthed by a man who was re-ally a woman, and he himsel appearing as nothing but hal o a real woman.These compounded signi cations are then to be taken into account or thetro- tro drivers monstrously rude behavior toward her, a proper, ull- bodied,and uncompromising market woman.

In the de nition o spatial practice that Henri Le ebvre proffers in The Produc-tion of Space (1992), the concept is both empirically observable and coincident with space as structured and regimented. For Le ebvre, the reproduction o

social relations is central to spatial practice. As he notes: The spatial prac-tice o a society secretes that societys space; it propounds and presupposes itin a dialectical interaction; it produces it slowly as surely as it masters andappropriates it, i.e., through the network o roads, motorways and the politicso air transport (1992, 38; italics added). The various verbs used in this or-mulation attribute to spatial practice a orm o active agency, and Le ebvreadds that the form o space approximates to the moment o communication,and thus to the realm o the perceived. A number o implications may be ex-

trapolated rom Le ebvres comments: the rst is that space as a concept actsupon space as it is experienced in the orm o social relations. The dialectic


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20 Introduction

o concept and social relations aligns Le ebvres notion o space to that oother Marxists such as Doreen Massey and David Harvey, but with the dis-tinction that Le ebvre goes on to set up a triangular relationship betweenspatial practice, repre sen tational space, and represented space, such thateach concept is automatically entailed in the others in complex and ofenelusive ways. An added implication o Le ebvres de nition o spatial prac-tice is that individual spaces are the localized instantiations o a larger spa-tial logic inherent to a given society. We must gloss this to mean that thedialectical interaction between concept and articulation must also have aspeci c cultural and historical character to it, thus enabling us to perceivesubtle or epochal shifs in spatial practice as being correlated to an entirerange o changes within a given society. Additionally, it may be interpreted

to mean that even i the concept o space in a given society is historical italso veers toward hegemony, that is, that it procures acquiescence in socialarrangements that are not always necessarily in the interests o those whoordinarily traverse space, but rather o those who want to naturalize a par ticu-lar hierarchy o social relationships in each given epoch. Hegel is suggestedin the link Le ebvre makes between a hegemonic spatial logic and speci cspaces as instantiations o that logic. But, as in the case o Simone that wesaw earlier, Le ebvre does not ll out in detail what he means by the hege-mony o spatial practice, leaving us to take it in different directions. Theimplication o social struggle built into his idea is only sporadically workedout by Le ebvre, but must be borne in mind in any deployment o the concepto spatial practice. Following on the implications o the historicity o spatialpractice we noted earlier, we nd concomitantly that space itsel does not re-main static but that it is also progressively trans ormed, rst by the commu-nicative character o the local instantiations o spatial practice, and secondby the alterations in the overall technology o human interactions enabledby changes in the network o roads, motorways, and other means or the tra-

versal o geographic space. We will have to add to Le ebvres technologies ointeraction the social media that have also come to impact upon how peopleinterpret themselves and their relations to others in an era o social network-ing. As Jenna Burrell (2012) has shown, in Ghana the inherently interpreta-tive exibility o the Internet has allowed it to materialize a space or selmaking that involves both licit and illicit uses as well as an investment o thesymbolic register o enchantment commonly associated with Christianity.

However, it is what Le ebvre writes about spatial practice as an approxi-

mation o the moment o communication that strikes a special chord withrespect to the per ormative and highly event ul character o Ox ord Street.


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Introduction 21

The question to ask is, how do we de ne the moment o communicationout o which we might extrapolate the spatial practice(s) o a place like Ox-

ord Street? Such a moment o communication is to be taken in the orm oa multilayered expressive ragment that is to be assumed to encapsulate alarger social totality. But our interpretation o the expressive ragment mustbe conducted care ully. The act that unlike other streets in Accra, Ox ordStreet is lined on both sides by a phalanx o billboard advertisements largeand small means that it can be creatively seen as at once a demarcated spatialtheatre yet one that is also extraordinarily permeable in terms o the intersec-tions o variant dramaturgies. At the highest register o articulation, then,all o Ox ord Street may be taken as a geograph ically demarcated expres-sive ragment constituted by a number o common and distinct spatial and

discursive eatures, some o which are nodal expressive ragments in and othemselves. To look at the evanescent sidewalk is to see a different vector ointerpretative possibilities rom what is implied in looking at the shoppingto be had on the street, or instance. The two are not mutually exclusive, yeteach starting point produces different emphases, the rst a signal o urbanplanning crisis and the second a signi er o local entrepreneurial drive. Withthe proli eration o languages (Ga, Twi, pidgin, En glish, etc.) and discourses(those o billboard advertising, tro- tro inscriptions, etc.), our interpretationo such an expressive ragment may be made exclusively on the basis o so-ciolinguistic and discursive considerations, something that we shall indeedattempt in chapter 4. However, the expressivity o the ragment must notbe limited solely to language and discourse but ultimately charged to thenature and variety o interpersonal interactions on the street. The interper-sonal interactions mani est different dimensions o economy, culture, andsociety and their trans ormations through time. Language is thus only theentry point into a broader structure o multilayered levels and relations. Itis out o the interactive multidimensionality o all such levels that we gain

a sense o the spatial practice(s) to be seen on Ox ord Street. The two an-ecdotes encountered earlier, ar rom connoting a breakdown o communi-cation, rather divulge the character o spatial practice precisely mani estedas a ashpoint o rhetorical intensity. In other words, such rhetorical ash-points, coded at the simplest level as debates about the civilities o road use,are actually the points at which spatial practices reveal themselves.

Thus i we return to our two anecdotes, we nd that the altercations werealso simultaneously the attribution o social consensus upon the human

interaction on the street. The idea o social consensus does not imply anydirect notion o agreement but rather the recognizability o the interaction


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22 Introduction

as being part o a normative social domain, that is to say, o the terms by which a moment on the street might be recognized as the product o speci csociocultural norms. But the sociocultural norms in this instance also in-stantiate a peculiarly spatial dimension, since it is the quarrel over the use ospace (road use) that triggers the angry rhetorical exchanges in the primaryinstance. The normative social domain in the taxi- driver anecdote is gener-ated speci cally rom the tacit understanding o the rules that govern thenegotiation o zebra crossings and their distortion in the domain o usage,either by pedestrians or drivers. The taxi driver challenges the hegemony othe spatial practice signaled by the zebra crossing in his rude attempt to pre- vent the pedestrians rom crossing sa ely and in the insult he delivers. For heis effectively suggesting that the ormal protocols o a zebra crossing (what

come together to constitute its langue, to take a lea rom structuralism) arenot limited to or in this instance even coincident with the individual instan-tiations o such usage (the pedestrians or taxi drivers parole), both o whicho course are governed by the orce o law and can trigger certain sanctions icontravened. Rather, we are encouraged to conclude rom the rhetorical im-plications o the insult he delivers that the hegemonic and law- bound spatialpractice in this instance also intersects with speci cally cultural rules thatinclude the terms o urban per ormativity, the main characteristic o whichis the act o seeing and being seen by a potential audience on the street. Inother words, in this instance the discursive register o the ormal rules ozebra crossings is intersected by a different kind o register, whose protocolsare those o a local urban per ormativity. Despite the appearance o being adhoc, however, the protocols o urban per ormativity that irrupt in the quar-rel between the taxi driver and the pedestrians are also the articulation o aspatial practice yet whose terms seem more uid and negotiable because otheir invocation o traditional rhetorical codes.

Thus we see two distinct orms o spatial practice intersecting in the taxi-

driver anecdote: rst is the universal rule- bound nature o how to negotiatea zebra crossing and second are the rules o participation in a color ul andculturally saturated altercation on the streets o Accra. Both categories ospatial practice interact regularly with each other on the streets but with thesecond actively and regularly distorting the protocols o the rst at event ulconjunctures. Far rom signaling the collapse o communication, the alter-cations signi y the precise moments at which contradictory spatial practicesare given articulation, and hence affi rmed as both pertinent to the negotia-

tion o space in Accra. (As an aside, the rhetorical devices that challenge thestandard understandings o road usage are not limited to ashpoints o al-


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Introduction 23

tercation; they are also commonly ound in light banter between drivers, oreven in tro- tro slogans. Thus Zebra Crossing may be ound as a slogan on atro- tro to remind road users o its potential assimilation into the expressivediscourses and compositions o tro- tro sloganeering). With the anecdote othe lady and the tro- tro driver, on the other hand, a different set o spatialpractices come into con rontation. At issue in that instance are not the pro-tocols o road use, but rather those o the chivalrous relation between maleand emale, but here obscured in its articulation as the hierarchical relationbetween a tro- tro driver (exclusively male) and his emale passenger. Thedrivers rudeness may have been due to the authority assumed by controlingthe steering wheel o an automobile, an instrument o evident social powerin the A rican urban domain. As we shall see in chapter 4, a passenger lorry

that erries customers between various destinations has been an instrumento great cultural prestige since at least the end o World War II, when theBritish administration introduced Bed ord vehicles into the colony or theconveyance o both passengers and reight. What the woman does, then, isto completely invert all the available hierarchies that might be presumed togovern the relationship between driver and passenger and that have cometo obscure the more oundational one between male and emale. For theultimate point o her insult is that the driver is ignorant o how to treat a woman on the streets o Accra. And i he thought that the mere act o beinga man gave him some sort o authority over her, she also whisks that awayby letting him know that his ather was not a proper man, and that he him-sel cannot even aspire to be a ull woman. While what I have just describedmight be taken to con rm spatial practice in Le ebvres sense o the term, we can at the same time assert that his concept does not quite exhaust thecommunicative complexity o human interactions to be perceived on a placelike Ox ord Street, or indeed on similar streets in many parts o A rica. And yet what we have just discussed must not be seen as somehow providing

the template o a demotic critique o hegemonic spatial practice, since therhetorical irruptions are hardly i ever rationalized by anyone as direct chal-lenges to such a hegemony. Rather it is precisely in the untheorized prac-tices o everyday li e (to recall de Certeau) that the challenge inheres. For nolaw or set o rules laid down by urban planners can legislate away the pos-sibility o altercations on Accras streets. And once such altercations breakout they automatically trigger a par ticular per ormative logic that at onceacknowledges the assumed acceptable protocols o road use while also un-

dermining them through their incorporation into culturally coded rhetoricalcontests about what constitutes urban knowledge. I do not intend here to


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24 Introduction

glori y haphazard and improper road use or to praise the culture o impunityand rudeness that may ofen be seen on display on the streets o the city, butrather, through the analysis o the apparently banal orm o urban alterca-tion, to clari y the signi cance o attending to such banalities as a meanso understanding the status o spatial practice(s) in the context o Ox ordStreet and o Accra in general.

The Impact of Commercial Morphology onthe Interactions on Oxford Street

The ocal point o ormal commercial activity on Ox ord Street derives romthe discursive authority attributed to the price tag. This is relevant to under-

standing what happens inside o the commercial enterprises on the streetand helps to distinguish explicit norms o shopping behavior. As a generalrule, the price tag per orms the unction o oreclosing the types o interac-tions between vendor and client to be seen outside on the street itsel . I theshopping behavior outside is governed by modes o haggling and improvisa-tion, what occurs inside the ormal context o banks, restaurants, jewelrystores, and cell phone companies on Ox ord Street is marked by what wemay consign to ormalized economic predication. Predication here bearsthe echo o one o its grammatical unctions, namely, the quality o assert-ing or basing a statement upon a categorical oundation. The conditiono ormalized economic predication is grounded undamentally on a tacitunderstanding o a par ticular logic that banishes chance, improvisation, orsurprise rom the shopping experience. This is because in ormal commer-cial contexts the terms o the transaction are preset by the price tag. On Ox-

ord Street the price tag signi es an implicit separation o economic practicerom the kind o cultural logics that apply, say, in the anecdote o the taxi

driver. Thus, whereas the purchase o resh sh, or a soccer shirt, or a bunch

o bananas off the street may be subject to orms o haggling that invokesophisticated cultural repertoires, the transactions inside o a bank, jewelrystore, or grocery shop, where everything bears a price tag (or in a restaurant, where the menu per orms the same unction), tend to produce an absolutepredictability o roles that is diametrically opposed to what we nd outside.This does not necessarily mean that economic transactions on the street donot ollow a rational economic logic, but that that logic is so saturated bycultural orms o interaction that the cultural logic takes the place o the

economic logic and converts all orms o economic decision making intoa dimension o cultural competence. A good illustration o the culture- as-


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Introduction 25

economy nexus is to be discerned in the arrangements or procuring creditrom ood and alcohol vendors on Ox ord Street and in the city in general.

These have been practiced or generations.Studies show that an average o 32 percent o an Accra urban house holds

bud get is spent on prepared ood bought rom vendors on Accras streets, with the gure rising to 40 percent or poorer amilies. Much o the moneyspent is a mixture o direct payments and purchases on credit, with creditpurchases being the pre erred method in many instances. Food vendors andtheir clients ofen strike up varying relationships o trust grounded in anunderstanding o speci cally cultural codes o conduct. The codes stipulatethat the customer is not solely an object o economic negotiation but rathera total complex o cultural dispositions, some o which are directly perti-

nent to their being economic subjects in the rst place (i.e., customers andclients). The arrangement or getting credit rom ood vendors turns on themanagement o intricate cultural codes or engendering and maintainingtrust between vendor and buyer. Thus, or example, a roadside kenkey sellermay have a long list o clients who buy her ood on credit, and she will haveto balance the purchases on credit rom those based on cash in order to seeher business succeed. The management o the kenkey turns out to be crucial

or maintaining business longevity. Since there is no direct collateral to beplaced by the buyer or the continuing extension o credit by the ood ven-dor, what is given in exchange are stories o personal exigencies o variouslevels o intractability. These stories, ofen not devoid o sel - deprecatinghumor and even sarcasm, then become a reservoir o disciplinary instru-ments in the hands o the ood vendor. A. B. Crentsils amous hit rom 1985, Akpeteshie Seller Give Me Quarter, captures this arrangement per ectly. Thecentral premise o the song is the credit arrangement that pertains betweenthe akpeteshie seller and a hapless alcoholic who comes to her with sad sto-ries about his salary not carry ing him till the end o the month and the un-

told diffi culties he encounters in paying his childrens school ees. Thesestories are lodged with her as a means o extracting more drink on credit.The songs re rain Akpeteshie seller give me quarter [o a beer- size bottle],I go pay you tomorrow aaa- yaystill remains commonplace in Ghanaianpop ular culture to this day. The stories that a hapless husband or wi e lodges with the ood seller may in given circumstances be readily put about by the

ood seller to create general humiliation or the debtor and as a dire warningto others that might be contemplating similar de ault. Even though it is not

unknown or this to happen, the social embarrassment is so great that it isextremely rare that a buyer will ully ails to meet his or her debt obligations


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26 Introduction

to a ood or alcohol vendor. They would rather do a vanishing act until suchtime as they are able to clear their debts. And it is not unknown or road-side ood vendors to suddenly recall an incident o ailed payments afer along hiatus on seeing a client that owes them money. The extent and reacho such vendors memories and the range o in ormation they are able tomaster without apparent recourse to any documentation is truly phenom-enal. The relationship between ood vendors and clients described here isnot exclusive to Ox ord Street; everywhere in Ghanas towns and cities thisrelationship is completely commonplace. But the most noteworthy aspect othese interactions is that here predicative economic logic has been displacedor at least converted into an essential dimension o cultural logic. The nor-mative rules that govern such interactions and credit arrangements are not

reducible to pure economic categories but have to be understood as part olarge and complex orms or establishing trusting relations that may origi-nally have been instigated by cold predicative economic transactions. Thisis so because to build trust the customer has to be sure to make cash pay-ments or several purchases be ore the credit arrangements are permitted.In other words the predicative economic logic is necessary or rst intro-ducing customer to vendor as viable economic subjects. It is only once thatis established that the new cultural register o borrowing is allowed to kick in.And even when the customers ortunes change and they revert back to thepredicative economic logic, the banter and camaraderie that are necessaryingredients o the cultural register may still be maintained. As noted earlierthe predicative economic logic o the price tag or menu clearly obliteratessuch culturally nuanced possibilities inside the shops, restaurants, and otherenterprises on Ox ord Street in which they eature.

In each instance o ormality or in ormality, distinct spatial practicescome to bear upon the social relation implied in the commercial transac-tion. This seems so obvious to most people as to pass without notice. The

differences between inside and outside, ormal and in ormal, are tacitlyunderstood to the point where ew make the mistake o trans erring the mo-dalities o one domain into that o the other. Since Ox ord Street is shaped bya heavy concentration o out ts governed by orms o economic predicationexisting side by side with the plethora o opportunities or improvisation,the dialectical interaction between ormalism and improvisation comes toexpress a par ticular spatial con guration that serves to distinguish this par-ticular street rom other commercial districts in Accra. Purely on the basis o

a crude count o enterprises on this street we are able to assert that the mixbetween the ormal and in ormal leans in avor o the ormal, giving Ox ord


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Introduction 27

Street the semblance o a largely Westernized high street. This is despite theact that it is mainly associated with ast ood and leisure activities in the

pop ular imagination, rather than the clothes and shoe stores that are de ni-tive o high streets in the West. Only oreigners or wealthy out- o -towners would shop or clothes or shoes rom Ox ord Street. Most ordinary people would likely go to Makola Market to satis y such shopping needs.

Makola is also a high- intensity commercial district that shares many othe eatures o Ox ord Street we have encountered, including the charactero improvisation and o per ormative irruptions, except that at Makola pricetags do not appear in any o the many manu actured- goods stores that popu-late the market at every turn. Furthermore, as a market Makola requires oneto traverse the maze o alleyways that de ne it, an experience quite different

rom that o walking on Ox ord Street. At Makola one is allowed to haggledown the price o any o the goods on display, whether inside the small storesthat populate the market and its local environment or at the multitude o vendors that peddle similar goods to those in the stores. (In act at Makola itis common practice or store own ers to give some o their goods to itinerant vendors to sell outside on the streets. This hardly ever happens on Ox ordStreet, partly because o the different and more expensive character o goodssold in the shops there, and partly because price tags command no status onthe outside). The lack o price tags at Makola comes rom its peculiar andcolor ul history. The market was rst ounded by the colonial governmenton the site o an open- air cattle grazing eld in what was then the outskirtso Ga Mashie. Upon being built up rom 1924 as the largest walled resh oodmarket in the growing town, shops and stalls erupted around it to make itthe commercial nerve center o the Central Business District. By the time othe decolonization struggles o the 1940s and 1950s, Makola was consideredthe seat o womens po litical organization, with Kwame Nkrumah drawingstrong and effective support rom the market women. Given that the origi-

nal cattle herders ormed a tightly knit community in what became a denselypopulated and culturally hybrid environment made up o varying waves onorthern migrants and Yoruba traders rom Nigeria, and waves o Hausaspeakers rom the Northern Territories, many o whom did not have thebene ts o the colonial education system, the character o Makola was neverallowed to be completely divested o its strong in ormality. This persistedeven afer its destruction in 1979 by the Rawlings regime, when the resh-

ood market was evacuated, bombed, and later turned into a car park. Its

immediate environment was surrendered exclusively to commercial en-terprises and shops. Fresh ood had been concentrated in Makola No. 2,


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28 Introduction

built in the 1950s to absorb the spillover rom the original Makola and thatby the 1970s had also become a bustling ood market in its own right. No.2 was not touched by Rawlings, and by the late 1980s the lively commercialactivities that remained in that commercial district got centered at No. 2 andgradually helped to reenliven the entire Makola area and the Central Busi-ness District in general.

At Makola the distinction between in ormal commercial transactions onthe street and the ormalized routines that occur inside the shops and storesis completely blurred, whereas on Ox ord Street the ormal and in ormal re-main sharply distinct. In the manu actured- goods shops on Ox ord Street allo the merchandise carries a price tag; this is de nitely not the case with theshops at Makola, where the prices o goods on display have to be ascertained

orally rom whoever (ofen women) keeps the shop. This provides ample op-portunity or haggling, with all the consequent cultural rhetorical uenciesthat are called into play. On the other hand, and in contrast to both Ox ordStreet and Makola, at the Accra Mall all shops and enterprises are governedby the exclusive principle o ormalized economic predication (i.e., thereis no room whatsoever or carnivalesque improvisation in the commercialtransaction). Everything in every store, bookshop, or even ood joint carriesa price tag, with restaurants guaranteeing that there will be no improvisa-tion by recourse to the expedient device o the printed menu, sometimesboldly displayed on the wall. This is no doubt a unction o the act that themall is a completely sel -enclosed shopping arcade, with the roo obliterat-ing even the view o the sky above it. Modest in size though it is, the AccraMall is a direct mimesis o the shopping experience o such malls elsewherein the world, where the price per orms the same unction o obliterating im-provisation and the carnivalesque.

On Rhythmanalysis: Time, Space,and the Thematics of an Urban Key

Taking his cue rom music, Henri Le ebvre suggests in Rhythmanalysis (2004)that space and time share some undamental rhythmic eatures in com-mon. This goes beyond the standard idea o space being shaped rom dis-tinct temporalities in the way it is traversed. As he notes, music is produced

rom a con guration o reiterations (i.e., beats o different timbres, stresses,and durations), sequences (long- short ollowed by short-long or any combi-

nation o the previous two), and the spaces and pauses between them, againo different lengths. Spacing opens music up to mea sure(ment) and it is


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Introduction 29

the nely tuned mea sures o music that allow us to differentiate that romsimple noise. Once we grant that musicality derives rom mea sures, and thatmusical mea sures depend upon both cyclicality and linearity, the analogy with space as read through the common ground o musical analogy becomescomplete. As he notes: Time and space, the cyclical and the linear, exert areciprocal action: they mea sure themselves against one another; each onemakes itsel and is made a measuring- measure; everything is cyclical repeti-tion through linear repetitions. A dialectical relation (unity in opposition)thus acquires meaning and import, which is to say, generality. One reaches,by this road as by others, the depth o the dialectic (9).

Le ebvres conceptualization o space/time does not answer all the ques-tions that might be posed to it. For example, how is space cyclical in the way

we experience it i we traverse it in predictably straight lines, as in the dailyrepeated commute between home and work? And how do the reiterations okey eatures o geographic space such as trees, electric pylons, or even thehorizon seen rom different directions interpose themselves on our experi-ence o the measurability o space thus differentiating such mea sures romthose o music?

As is quickly evident the Le ebvre o Rhythmanalysis is quite different romthe one o The Production of Space. Even though rhythmanalysis is ultimatelyalso about understanding space as a product o social relations, as a methodit suggests applications beyond the social. When Le ebvre lays out the outlineo spatialized temporalities on the analogy with music, he is also admittinginto view the question o perception and its modulation. For the musicalanalogy may also be taken as a statement on the structure o human percep-tion in which the hearing o music is produced out o not just the reception oordered sounds, but the commingling o those sounds into a matrix in used bymemory, anticipation, and emotion. In other words, the mea sure o music isalso a metronome o our emotional responses to it, and that is what allows it

to be pleasant or unpleasant to the listener. Space, on the other hand, is pop-ulated both by objects, whether these objects be trees, pylons, and so orth,and the more labile and ephemeral human social interactions that also cometo undamentally de ne our experience o it. Thus there is a physical- cum-social interactional materiality to space that distinguishes it rom the sonic(materialities?) o music. This requires that the rhythmanalytical logic andhistory o space be established differently rom those o music. What I take

rom Le ebvre or the story o Accra I hope to provide inOxford Street is that

my account is as much subjective, personal, modular, and rhythmic as it isgrounded in detailed observations o history and social relations. But the


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30 Introduction

act that it is subjective does not mean that it is private; quite the opposite. What I have sought to show in this introductory chapter and will hope toreiterate incrementally in subsequent ones, is that urban space has an in-herently rhythmic quality that can only be ascertained rom modulating ourperspectives along diverse vectors o interpretation, sometimes sequen-tially, but ofen also regulated by different orms o simultaneity.

Several spatial precepts thus in orm Oxford Street part I, under the generalrubric o Horizontal Archaeologies, takes or inspiration a central premiseo the discipline o archaeology regarding the relations between parts and wholes unearthed by excavation and that have to be painstakingly pieced to-gether by the archaeological interpreter o the past. This takes Le ebvresrhythmanalysis in the direction o understanding the relationship between

spatial dimensions (both material and so ciological) and the totality o whichthey are a part not by establishing modes o mea surement be orehand butby systematically oscillating between such vectors. When the archaeologistpicks up a shard rom what might be a vase or other object, the principalapproach to the shard is that it must somehow connect to something elselarger than itsel . The pressure o its pastness, long or short, is a primaryportal o signi cation. This is so even i the larger vase o which it is a parthas not been ully assembled (or may never be, or that matter). Further-more, the relationship is between not just shard and vase, but the shard andthe larger cultural system o which it is assumed to be an aspect. Thus thereis a multilayered conceptual operation taking place in the mind o the ar-chaeologist that proceeds by taking the shard as the nodal point not only o amaterial culture but also o a semiotic system that has to be aggregated romdifferent elements. I the initial trigger or my exploration o Ox ord Street was the impulse to read the street in the guise o a Benjaminian neur as well as through the deployment o a Le ebvrian rhythmanalysis, these werequickly subsumed under the more urgent charge o grasping the details o

the street as a means o understanding the totality o Accras urban orm ingeneral. The details that one sees on Ox ord Street all help us to understandthe larger ramework that is Accras urbanscape, yet each detail provides adifferent aspect or route to that ramework. In the context o Oxford Street , Icouple the notion o horizontality to that o archaeology to highlight the actthat every phenomenon to be perceived in Accra today, whether economic,cultural, or so ciological, is (a) connected to other phenomena that may notappear in the rst instance to be immediately related to it, and (b) has to

be historicized both with respect to the speci c phenomenon in questionand in terms o the socicultural relations o which it is an expressive rag-


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Introduction 31

ment. Thus, my mode o contextualization is to situate apparently isolatedphenomena within a larger relational ramework, the ultimate objective o which is to draw out the mediated relations between different aspects o apotential totality. To establish the relations among what are apparently dis-crete elements on the street, each element will be seen in terms o multi-spatial and multi- scalar modes o articulation. While the principle o a hor-izontal archaeology will be illustrated in a variety o ways in part I, the mostsustained attempt to engage with this principle will be speci cally providedin chapter 4 The Beauty ul Ones: Tro-tro Slogans, Cell Phone Advertising,and the Hallelujah Chorus, where I ocus on the veritable zodiac o tro- troslogans and inscriptions that proli erate on Accras streets. A connection willbe made, on the one hand, between these slogans and the scripts o large-

scale billboard advertising on Ox ord Street and, on the other, to the pop ularsongs, tele vision programs, and other media that help to sustain this kindo urban street wisdom as part o the discursive ensemble o relays betweentradition and modernity, and locality and transnationalism. The locationo chapter 4 in part II, Morphologies o Everyday Li e, is meant to act asa conceptual bridge between the strictly geo graph ical concerns o the rstpart o Oxford Street and the more ethnographic emphases o the second.

Hence the chapters in part I will ocus primarily on urban spatial evolu-tion, with the accretions o districts and neighborhoods rom the historicGa Mashie area rom the middle to the late nineteenth century onward beingat the core o our considerations throughout. However, an additional andquite crucial spatial precept that will also cumulatively in orm the chaptersin part I takes all neighborhoods and districts as the spatial aggregations osocial orces. It is these aggregations that have come to determine the dimen-sions o cityness in Accra today. To think o spatial aggregations o social

orces requires us to interpret the dynamics o urban settlement rom a di -erent perspective than that o demography. For social orces are not ame-

nable to brute enumeration; they must be understood as pro cesses o bothaggregation and ssure. While it is sel - evident that Ga Mashie is largely aGa ethnic enclave, that is not as signi cant an observation as the act thatthere has been a steady differentiation between this enclave and the othergroups that have progressively accrued to Old Accra and the Central Busi-ness District. To indicate the complex and differential character o aggrega-tions and their connection to ethnicity and hybrid identities, I shall contrastGa Mashie and Osu in chapters 1 and 3, respectively. The contrast is by way o

exploring the status o two transnational and hybrid groups that have beencentral to overall Ga identity ormation. These are the Tabon o Ga Mashie,


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32 I

oxford street, accra by ato quayson

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