Introduction Free
-
Published:January 2016
The introduction situates Ghana within a global context, emphasizing its regional and international place in world history and politics, in culture and sports, and in the ongoing process of national development and its meanings for the country’s citizens and foreigners. Today Ghana is the world’s second largest producer of cocoa and enjoys the status of a newly minted oil-producing nation that invokes promise and the potential loss of hope, especially for the rural poor. The introduction also provides contextual guideposts to the six chronologically arranged sections that emphasize perspectives from across Ghana’s socioeconomic and political spectrum, while explaining the historical and political processes through which the place called Ghana and its peoples came to be. Placing the geography and cultural and sociopolitical particularities of Ghana in perspective, the introduction also sets the stage for the multidisciplinary selections to appear in the six parts that follow.