COE, Cati (Pennsylvania) DIFFERENT UNDERSTANDINGS OF CULTURE IN GHANAIAN SCHOOLS  

"Culture" has assumed different meanings and new lives in local communities around the world. I examine this process through an educational initiative in Ghana to promote "Ghanaian culture." Since independence, schools in Ghana have been involved in the teaching of traditional culture in an attempt to change the western orientation of the schools inherited from missionaries and colonial authorities.  Because the schools are historically associated with Christianity and many Christians view "culture" as "pagan," this project has been fraught with tensions.  Responding to Christian criticisms, government and university attempts to make "culture" acceptable have both secularized and nationalized it. I will analyze a secondary_school cultural competition in which the use of "culture" for the "development of the nation" articulated with and became a response to Christian concerns about immorality and traditional religious practices. This paper will show how anthropological conceptions of "culture," whether new or old, are transformed when they enter the traditions and discourses of schooling; they enter a contested domain, in which understandings of culture are political.

ccoe@sas.upenn.edu