In Oxford Street, Accra, Ato Quayson analyzes the dynamics of Ghana's capital city through a focus on Oxford Street, part of Accra's most vibrant and globalized commercial district. He traces the city's evolution from its settlement in the mid-seventeenth century to the present day. He combines his impressions of the sights, sounds, interactions, and distribution of space with broader dynamics, including the histories of colonial and postcolonial town planning and the marks of transnationalism evident in Accra's salsa scene, gym culture, and commercial billboards. Quayson finds that the various planning systems that have shaped the city—and had their stratifying effects intensified by the IMF-mandated structural adjustment programs of the late 1980s—prepared the way for the early-1990s transformation of a largely residential neighborhood into a kinetic shopping district. With an intense commercialism overlying, or coexisting with, stark economic inequalities, Oxford Street is a microcosm of historical and urban processes that have made Accra the variegated and contradictory metropolis that it is today.
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction. Urban Theory and Performative Streetscapes
- Part I. Horizontal Archaeologies
- 1. Ga Akutso Formation and the Question of Hybridity: The Afro-Brazilians (Tabon) of Accra
- 2. The Spatial Fix: Colonial Administration, Disaster Management, and Land-Use Distribution in Early Twentieth-Century Accra
- 3. Osu borla no, sardine chensii soo: Danes, Euro-Africans, and the Transculturation of Osu
- Part II. Morphologies of Everyday Life
- 4. “The Beautyful Ones”: Tro-tro Slogans, Cell Phone Advertising, and the Hallelujah Chorus
- 5. “Este loco, loco”: Transnationalism and the Shaping of Accra’s Salsa Scene
- 6. Pumping Irony: Gymming, the Kòbòlò, and the Cultural Economy of Free Time
- 7. The Lettered City: Literary Representations of Accra
- Conclusion. On Urban Free Time: Vladimir, Estragon, and Rem Koolhaas
- Appendix. Tro-tro Inscriptions
- Notes
- References
- Index
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