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 Periodical article |
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| Title: | The Challenges of Presbyterian Masculinity in Colonial Ghana |
| Author: | Miescher, Stephan F. |
| Year: | 2005 |
| Periodical: | Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana (ISSN 0855-3246) |
| Issue: | 9 |
| Pages: | 75-101 |
| Language: | English |
| Notes: | biblio. refs. |
| Geographic terms: | Ghana West Africa |
| Subjects: | men gender roles Akan Presbyterian church colonial period colonialism History and Exploration Religion and Witchcraft Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History, Archaeology Protestants masculinity Christianity Missionaries Sex Roles |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/41406725 |
| Abstract: | Studies on gender need to explore men as gendered social actors. There may be different, at times competing notions of masculinity, without any of them becoming dominant or hegemonic. Focusing on discourse, practice, and formation of identities and subjectivities, the author foregrounds a discourse around a Presbyterian masculinity in colonial Ghana, first advocated by the Basel Mission since the later 19th century, then by its successor, the Presbyterian Church, since the 1920s. This discourse frequently conflicted with Akan ideas about masculinity, particularly as they intersected with understandings of age, seniority and wealth. Looking at practices of masculinity, the author shows how early Basel Mission converts debated the implications of missionary gender ideals and how, over the following decades, these practices appear to have altered gender ideals as well as the formation of identities and subjectivity. He documents a shift over three generations in struggles over gendered authority among men's practices and experiences by first exploring a late 19th-century encounter between missionaries and male converts, then the conflicts and career paths of officials within an increasingly self-governing church in the interwar period, and finally the tensions around senior masculinity and subjectivity of two church leaders, articulated in their autobiographical writing and oral recollections. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
