As early as the 1910s, African drivers in colonial Ghana understood the possibilities that using imported motor transport could further the social and economic agendas of a diverse array of local agents, including chiefs, farmers, traders, fishermen, and urban workers. Jennifer Hart's powerful narrative of auto-mobility shows how drivers built on old trade routes to increase the speed and scale of motorized travel. Hart reveals that new forms of labor migration, economic enterprise, cultural production, and social practice were defined by autonomy and mobility and thus shaped the practices and values that formed the foundations of Ghanaian society today. Focusing on the everyday lives of individuals who participated in this century of social, cultural, and technological change, Hart comes to a more sensitive understanding of the ways in which these individuals made new technology meaningful to their local communities and associated it with their future aspirations.
By:
Jennifer Hart
Imprint: Indiana University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 16mm
Weight: 513g
ISBN: 9780253022776
ISBN 10: 0253022770
Pages: 264
Publication Date: 03 October 2016
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
"Acknowledgments Introduction: Auto/Mobile Lives 1. ""All Shall Pass"": Indigenous Entrepreneurs, Colonial Technopolitics, and the Roots of African Automobility, 1901-1939 2. ""Honest Labor"": Public Safety, Private Profit, and the Professionalization of Drivers, 1930-1945 3. ""Modern Men"": Motor Transportation and the Politics of Respectability, 1930s-1960s 4. ""One Man, No Chop"": Licit Wealth, Good Citizens, and the Criminalization of Drivers in Postcolonial Ghana 5. ""Sweet Not Always"": Automobility, State Power, and the Politics of Development, 1980s-1990s Epilogue. ""No Rest for the Trotro Driver"": Ambivalence and Automobility in 21st Century Ghana Notes Bibliography Index"
Jennifer Hart is an Assistant Professor of African History at Wayne State University.
Reviews for Ghana on the Go: African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation
Jennifer Hart's text sweeps triumphantly across a century of authomobility in colonial and post-colonial Ghana. . . sophisticated, clear and inspiring account. . . * Journal of Transport History *
