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Proto‐Metropolis Meets Post‐Metropolis in Kumasi, Ghana
Author(s) -
Clark Gracia
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
city and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1548-744X
pISSN - 0893-0465
DOI - 10.1525/city.2003.15.1.87
Subject(s) - metropolitan area , immigration , emigration , loyalty , investment (military) , sociology , globalization , economic geography , economic growth , political science , geography , economy , gender studies , economics , politics , archaeology , law
Globalization has transformed many of the transnational connections experienced by the diverse constellation of residents, emigrants and immigrants attached to Kumasi. Despite its modest size, these processes have not erased its material and symbolic primacy within its regional and Asante diasporic hinterland. The international flows of people and cultural and economic resources associated with metropolitan life have characterized Kumasi since its foundation and remain central to its meaning, so their intensification reinforces rather than threatens the continuity of its self‐imagination. Residents and other constituents, well aware of powerful external forces intervening in their everyday lives, show their loyalty by investing heavily in key hierarchies still managed in Kumasi. Asante openly innovate within these heal institutions of chieftaincy, house building, funerals, and public ceremonies, to take full advantage of greater mobility, new communication technologies and multiple cross‐cutting identities, [migration, investment, innovation, Asante, Africa]