Movements in Time and Space: Using Multiple Methods in Research with Young People in Accra,Ghana

The contribution discusses methodological issues involved in researching youth in an African context. Based on the experiences gathered during field research in Ghana, it is argued that research with young people in Africa requires careful reflexive practice. The rationale behind, and experience of, methods such as group discussions, oral life stories, lifelines, written diaries, photo-diaries and participant observation is critically discussed. It is argued that by combining these methods it is possible to capture the diversity and complexity of youth experiences in the present as well as longitudinal processes of transition. Moreover, combining different methods provides young people with the space and time they require to communicate the complexities of their lives.     

I Like You,I Like Your Pottery: An Ethnoarchaeological Approach to Ceramic Distribution and Acquisition in Northeastern Ghana

This article deals with the myriad determinants involved in pottery distribution in northeast Ghana, considered from a theoretical perspective that integrates the materiality of vessels and the social, political and historical context where both communities and pottery operate in their daily practice. Hence, we develop a comprehensive research strategy that combines emic and etic views covering the multiple dimensions of pottery life history. In this sense, production units, technical traditions and the characteristics of the redistributive centres, as well as the strategies for pottery acquisition, are studied. Special attention is paid to quite varied aspects such as the physical properties of vessels and their performance characteristics, the reputation of both vessels and potters according to the consumers and the mobility and connectivity patterns found in the study area. On the other hand, interpretations regarding the historical and sociopolitical context of the region are emphasised, as well as the interethnic relationships amongst groups inhabiting the area.     

Re-Ghettoization: Armenian Christian Neighborhoods in Multicultural Tehran

This paper incorporates a study of “re-ghettoization” among the Armenian Christians of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It focuses on how legal marginalization has led to the emergence of an entirely separate existence from the Muslim majority in Tehran among Armenians born after the revolution. By focusing on the spatial and social divisions of the hayashatner (Armenian neighborhoods) and the “social” ghetto of the Ararat Compound, this article addresses the question: what are the social implications for religious discrimination in the Muslim Middle East? This paper is based on three extensive blocks of fieldwork carried out in Iran from 2010 to 2015.     

Landscape Archaeology,Heritage and the Community in Devon: An Oral History Approach

In the context of recent media, governmental, academic and popular attention and enthusiasm for debates surrounding the construction and meaning of the British countryside, this paper outlines the potential for oral history to make a contribution. Working in Devon, the authors outline how an oral history methodology can engage with the fields of landscape archaeology and heritage studies. As well as augmenting and supporting more traditional approaches to landscape, oral history techniques can be used to challenge and destabilise existing knowledge, thereby moving the process of ‘democratisation’ in knowledge construction of the rural landscape from practices of scientific ‘complicity’ towards one of critical engagement.     

Communitarian Neighborhoods and Religious Minorities in Iran: A Comparative Analysis

This paper analyzes the urban insertion of some Iranian religious minorities, focusing on three communities, all of which lived in separated neighborhoods: Armenians of Isfahan, Jews of Shiraz, and Zoroastrians of Yazd. After a discussion on the link between non-Muslims' spatial and social isolation and Iranian culture and Shiism, the paper goes on to describe the organization of these neighborhoods during the recent centuries and the recent—and contrastive—evolutions of two of them: while Zoroastrians view their quarter like a humiliating ghetto, of which they wish to go out, Armenians are proud of it, and try up till now to jealously preserve their isolation.     

Shortest-Path Distances: An Axiomatic Approach

An axiomatic approach to distance is developed which focuses on those concepts of distance related to movement in space. The most fundamental types of such distances generally involve some notion of shortest paths between points, where the relevant concept of path length can be any additive attribute of paths (such as physical miles, hours spent in traveling, or gallons of fuel consumed). In particular, the shortest-path distance between any two points in space is here taken to be the greatest lower bound on all path lengths between these points. This notion of shortest-path distance is shown to be formally equivalent to a quasimetric, i.e., a distance which satisfies only the classical triangularity axiom for metrics. The main analysis of the paper focuses on the question of whether or not such shortest-path distances can actually be realized, i.e., on whether there exist shortest paths in space. The central result is to establish a general set of conditions under which such shortest paths always exist. In addition, a condition for the uniqueness of these paths is also established.     

Innovation,diffusion, and culture contact: The holocene archaeology of Ghana

Stressing recent research, this review of Ghana archaeology highlights what we know of the advent of sedentism, agriculture, iron technology, and urbanism in Ghana and examines how certain patterns in Ghanaian prehistory depart from the expectations of the progressive evolutionary model that has framed our understanding of world prehistory. It is also argued that the archaeology of Ghana has much to contribute to current debates on the relationship between material culture and identity, and the impact of the Atlantic economy on non-European peoples, and to our understanding of cultural diversity in the past.     

Welfare Caseload Change: An Alternative Approach

In the last decade, caseloads in AFDC/TANF have shifted dramatically up, then down. Of existing studies based on time series or state panel data, some tend to underplay the role of welfare reform. All say little about what policies drove the decline or about the role of governmental quality. An approach using cross-sectional models explains interstate differences in caseload change rather than the national trend but allows more discussion about the role of policy and government. Results suggest that grant levels, work and child support requirements, and sanctions are important explainers of change, along with some demographic terms and unemployment. These policies in turn are tied to states' political opinion, political culture, and institutional capacity. Moralistic states seem the most capable of transforming welfare in the manner the public wants.     

Economic models and having children: some evidence from Kwahu,Ghana

This discussion outlines briefly some of the main features of economic models of rational decision making with regard to fertility which focus on the perceived costs and benefits of parenthood, noting the findings of several Ghanaian studies which have tried to link changing patterns of costs and benefits involved in kin and conjugal family ties with changes in fertility and parental role expectations. Procreation and its context in a rural Kwahu town of southern Ghana in the early 1970s is then described and illustration is included of how a "cost benefit" analysis of pregnancy termination and child bearing in this society illuminates why, although induced abortion rates appeared high, there was little noticeable shift to much lower fertility values or achievements than those traditionally admired. The data on the families of Ghanaian salary earners indicated the usefulness of an economic approach, with attention given to the allocation of scarce resources through the essentially rational choices of individual parents, continually trying to avoid or alleviate the effects of role strain and conflict. They also illustrate the need for household economists' models to take more sophisticated account of variables such as the openness or closure of the conjugal family in various areas of its operation and the need to treat the degrees of jointness of the conjugal role relationship in different areas as crucial variables. The town of the research is a typical "home town," which means that it constitutes the base from which people depart, either to an urban center where they take up trading or look for other employment, or to a farming settlement where they may spend from a few months to several years clearing new land or harvesting crops. The data from Kwahu reveal that the people are struggling to improve their lot in an uncertain and changing context in which lineage support is not guaranteed, marriage is unstable and children often leave their parents at an early age, and in which educational qualifications and the ability to be mobile are critical in the search for incomes and better jobs. Early childbearing is a hindrance and is avoided where possible though it is not an impassable barrier to townward migration and upward mobility. The costs of later childbearing are frequently shelved and passed on to others, especially the child's mothers. Consequently, considerable inertia associated with poverty and insecurity remains with regard to decisions to regulate fertility. Knowledge and availability of contraceptives are restricted.     

Risky Business: Economic Uncertainty,Market Reforms and Female Livelihoods in Northeast Ghana

This article examines the implications of economic uncertainty for rural markets and the livelihoods of female traders. It does so through a case study of a community in northern Ghana caught in the throes of a structural adjustment‐driven privatization initiative. In order to fully comprehend the nature of the economic uncertainties in which rural economic actors are enmeshed and the manner in which they resist, engage or engender these conditions, two theoretical lenses are interposed. One, focusing on structural dissolution and an overall process of rural, and especially female, disempowerment, is drawn from recent approaches to African political economy. The other, gleaned from the field of economic anthropology, attends to the agency and knowledge of rural entrepreneurs in the face of unstable and imperfect market conditions. By bringing together these different analytic traditions, the critical significance of uncertainty within the complex process of rural economic transformation and reproduction becomes evident. Rather than functioning as a diagnostic of economic crisis and insecurity, uncertainty can be a strategic resource integral to the constitution of markets, livelihoods and economic coalitions. Such a perspective, privileging the institutional potentials of local social practice, makes apparent the forceful role played by female traders in the structuring of rural marketing systems even in the face of externally‐induced and sometimes dramatic shifts in material conditions.     

Youth,gender and livelihoods in West Africa: Perspectives from Ghana and the Gambia

In this paper we report on preliminary fieldwork conducted in Ghana and The Gambia on the interrelationships among youth, gender and livelihoods. We examine how policy in developing countries, typically characterised as related to child labour or education, needs to emphasise the linkage across processes that affect young people. We argue that policy will be improved if young people are given voice to express how work, education, social networks, and culturally-bound notions of responsibility are linked and how they perceive the opportunities and constraints on their ‘life chances’.     

Maritime Cultural Resource Investigation, Management, and Mitigation in Coastal Ghana

Four field seasons of maritime archaeological research in coastal Ghana offer insights into submerged cultural heritage, but also highlight serious concerns for its preservation and protection. A discussion of cultural heritage legislation and its ineffective implementation, as well as imminent and potential threats to submerged cultural heritage frames the argument for the mitigation and protection of submerged sites in coastal Ghana. Work on the Benya Lagoon vessel and the Elmina Wreck site is presented here as both documentation and mitigation in terms of the context of threats to submerged heritage in coastal Ghana, and preventative mitigation is proposed for its protection.