Our Own Way in This Part of the World

Biography of an African Community, Culture, and Nation

Kwasi Konadu

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781478004783
  9781478004165
• eBook ISBN:
  9781478005636
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Kofi D?nk? was a blacksmith and farmer, as well as an important healer, intellectual, spiritual leader, settler of disputes, and custodian of shared values for his Ghanaian community. In Our Own Way in This Part of the World Kwasi Konadu centers D?nk?'s life story and experiences in a communography of D?nk?'s community and nation from the late nineteenth century through the end of the twentieth, which were shaped by historical forces from colonial Ghana's cocoa boom to decolonization and political and religious parochialism. Although D?nk? touched the lives of thousands of citizens and patients, neither he nor they appear in national or international archives covering the region. Yet his memory persists in his intellectual and healing legacy, and the story of his community offers a non-national, decolonized example of social organization structured around spiritual forces that serves as a powerful reminder of the importance for scholars to take their cues from the lived experiences and ideas of the people they study.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Libation: “Matters Connected with Our Culture"
• Chapter 2. Homelands : “In Search of Past Events"
• Chapter 3. Tools of the Trade: “I was a Blacksmith . . . Before I Became [a Healer]"
• Chapter 4. Medicine, Marriage, and Politics: “Assist this State to have Progress”
• Chapter 5. Independences: “Never Mingled Himself in Local Politics"
• Chapter 6. Anthropologies of Medicine and Africa: “When the Whiteman First Came"
• Chapter 7. Uncertain Moments and Memory: “Our Ancestral Spirits, Come and Have Drink"
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index