Cover -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Dedication -- Preface -- Overview -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on Contributors to Volume One -- Section One -- Chapter One - SOCIAL SCIENCE AS IMPERIALISM -- General Problems of Methodological and Ideological Bias in Western Social Science -- Equation of ideal to reality -- The capitalist bias -- Social science as imperialism -- The technical sense of imperialism -- Political science -- Economics -- Sociology -- Nineteenth century origins of developmental categories -- Individualism and capitalist values -- Chapter Two - NATIONALISING AFRICA, CULTURALISING THE WEST, AND REFORMULATING THE HUMANITIES IN AFRICA -- Humanities and social consent -- The search for Africana -- Anthropologising the West -- The perils of modernity -- Action time -- Re-inhabiting the universities -- Chapter Three - GLOBALISATION AND THE AFRICAN SCHOLAR -- Power base -- The politics of mainstream -- Languages -- Editorial segregation -- Culture and scholarship -- Imitative agenda -- Access and local knowledge -- Indigenous consciousness -- How intellectual? -- A politician's vision -- Laments of tradition bearers -- Alienation as tragedy -- Orality and writing -- A new order -- Proviso -- Chapter Four - KNOWLEDGE AS A PUBLIC GOOD IN THE ERA OF GLOBALISATION -- Globalisation -- Public good -- Limiting knowledge access -- Trips -- Antics of the AIDS drug industry -- Conclusion -- Chapter Five - TOWARD AN AFRICAN CRITIQUE OF AFRICAN ETHNOGRAPHY: THE USEFULNESS OF THE USELESS -- Functions of language in ethnography: Mead versus Lowie -- Data quality control and native language familiarity -- The ethnographer's magic: the discovery of 'structures' -- The problem of 'paraliterate feedback' -- Native scholars and ethnography -- Fortes, Evans-Pritchard & Co. and data quality control -- Evans-Pritchard and the Nuer.

Frenetic search for meaning: Dunn and Robertson -- The new ethnography of Africa -- Appendix I -- Appendix II -- Chapter Six - SILENCING POWER: MAPPING THE SOCIAL TERRAIN IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA -- Development as discourse -- The space of the NGO -- The virtuous community -- NGOs in South Africa: from struggle to development -- Working with the 'community' -- Community as historical precipitate and community as interest group -- Conclusions -- Chapter Seven - FOUNDATIONS OF AFRICAN SOCIAL THOUGHT: REVAMPING THE SCOPE OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE -- The field of social thought -- Social thought, social theory and social myth -- Context of refl ection on social arrangements -- Agents and referents of social thought -- Primary resistance in social thought -- African response to Islamic, Christian, and colonial intrusion -- The nature of primary resistance -- Protest letter I -- Protest Letter II -- Some referents of social protest and intellectual refl ection -- The idioms and facilities for protest -- The role of external factors in facilitating protests -- The development of elites and patterns of intellectual ideas -- Towards a disciplined, systematic African social thought -- Chapter Eight - THE PROTECTION OF AFRICAN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND PLANT BIO-DIVERSITY -- Introduction -- Socioeconomic considerations -- Ethical questions: intellectual property rights of indigenous peoples -- Legal questions: patent laws and intellectual property rights -- What is being done about biodiversity and intellectual property? -- Initiatives of various organizations -- US National Cancer Institute/ Missouri Botanical Gardens / University of Ghana -- WIPO Model Provisions for Folklore -- Chapter Nine - VIRUSES OF THE MIND -- Introduction -- Antiquity and distance -- Credulity -- Error -- Verifi cation.

Claims once thought to be beyond the reach of experience can now be routinely verified -- Precision and novelty -- Conclusion -- Section Two -- Chapter Ten - MAKING SENSE OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN POSTCOLONIAL AFRICA -- Thinking through the Holocaust: the violence of the settler -- Legal and political identities -- Rwanda: a metaphor for political violence -- The history of violence between Hutu and Tutsi -- Political identities and the nationalist revolution -- The civil war and the genocide -- Political power and political identity -- Chapter Eleven - COLONIALISM AND THE TWO PUBLICS IN AFRICA: A THEORETICAL STATEMENT WITH AN AFTERWORD -- The private realm, the public realm and societal morality -- Ideologies of legitimation and the emergence of the two publics -- Colonial ideologies of legitimation -- African bourgeois ideologies of legitimation -- The structure of the two publics -- The dialectics of the two publics -- Conclusion -- Afterword -- Chapter Twelve - COLONIALISM AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN AFRICA: THE PERSPECTIVE OF EKEH'S TWO PUBLICS -- Introduction -- Getting behind the theory: Ekeh's building blocks and assumptions -- The theory of the two publics -- The two publics and civil society -- Conclusion -- Chapter Thirteen - CORRUPTION AND THE NEED FOR CONCEPTUAL CLARITY -- The findings of Transparency International -- The need for conceptual clarity -- Terms for concepts -- Public gift-giving contrasted with bribery -- Patronage protocol -- Corporate corruption -- Cultural specifi city -- The challenge to fi nd adequate anti- corruption controls -- Chapter Fourteen - INFORMALISATION AND GHANAIAN POLITICS -- Effects of colonial policy -- Structural features -- Globalisation and informalisation -- Informalisation: empowerment or disempowerment? -- Informalisation of politics -- The democratic agenda.

Chapter Fifteen - CUSTOM, COLONIAL IDEOLOGY AND PRIVILEGE: THE LAND QUESTION IN AFRICA -- Problematising customary land relations -- The origins of customary land administration -- Conflicting tenure norms -- Regressive customary tenure -- Redefining customary land and export oriented growth -- Conclusion -- Chapter Sixteen - CORPORATE PSYCHOPATHY: A PSYCHIATRIC ANALOGY -- The diagnostic criteria of antisocial personality disorder -- The legislative branch -- Chapter Seventeen - THE DISCOURSES OF CURSE: GENDER, POWER, ANDRITUAL IN GHANA -- Sister Ama's story -- Conclusion -- Chapter Eighteen - AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY: CONTINUITIES AND DISCONTINUITIES -- Earliest encounters -- Traditional religion in the colonial and missionary era -- The Enlightenment evolutionist's philosophy -- Cultural imperialism -- The African response -- Christianity, traditional religion and culture today -- The phenomenological perspective -- The theological perspective -- Chapter Nineteen - THE INTERPLAY OF TRADITIONAL AND MODERN CONCEPTS OF HEALTH -- Introduction -- A broad and interpersonal understanding of health -- Reproductive health -- Pre- and post-natal care -- Maternal and child health -- Family planning -- Concluding concerns -- Section Three -- Chapter Twenty - WORLD POVERTY, PAUPERIZATION & CAPITAL ACCUMULATION -- Capitalism and the new agrarian question -- The new labour question -- Appendix -- Chapter Twenty-one - INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES -- Thinking critically about 'development' -- Development in history -- Different developments? -- Demarcating a new terrain for academic inquiry -- Institutions' agendas -- The transmission and circulation of development knowledge -- The reception and appropriation of development knowledge -- Development as discourse and practice.

Chapter Twenty-two - THE DEVELOPMENT CONCEPT OF BRITISH AND FRENCH BUREAUCRATS -- French and British imperialist notions of development -- The sociology of postwar development -- The developers' disillusionment and the emergence of modernisation theory -- Conclusion -- Chapter Twenty-three - HOW ADEQUATE ARE THE MDGs FOR THE ACHIEVEMENT OF POVERTY REDUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT IN GHANA? -- Genesis -- The Millennium Development Goals -- The Adequacy and suffi ciency of the MDGs -- The second MD Goal: attainment of universal primary education -- The third MD Goal: promote gender equity and empower women -- Other concerns about the MDGs -- The MDGs and Ghana's development strategies -- Conclusion -- Chapter Twenty-four - ON GHANAIAN DEVELOPMENT: TECHNICAL VERSUS STREET EVIDENCE -- Introduction -- Swimming the high tides of Bretton Woods -- Technical evidence of backstroking the high tides of Bretton Woods -- Street evidence of backstroking the high tides of Bretton Woods -- Bridging disjuncture between the two types of evidence -- Chapter Twenty-five - ON WHOSE TERMS? NEGOTIATING PARTICIPATORY DEVELOPMENT IN A FLUID POLICY LANDSCAPE -- The paradox of the Afram Plains -- The Afram Plains as a metaphor for Ghana's development -- Why 'fl uid' participation makes sense -- Conclusion -- Chapter Twenty-six - ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND POPULATION GROWTH IN NORTHERN GHANA: CORRECTING THE RECEIVED ACCOUNT -- The complex relationship between population growth and environmental degradation -- Commoditisation, rural-urban terms of trade and the role of the state in ecological degradation -- Technology of production and the ecological crisis -- Reproductive squeeze, poverty and environmental degradation -- Rising urban demand for biomass fuels -- Processes of agro-ecological change under demographic pressure in Northern Ghana.

Existing agro-ecological regimes in Northern Ghana.