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| Title: | Agency and analogy in African history: the contribution of extra-mural studies in Ghana |
| Author: | Skinner, Kate |
| Year: | 2007 |
| Periodical: | History in Africa |
| Volume: | 34 |
| Pages: | 273-296 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Ghana |
| Subjects: | adult education history education educational policy colonial period |
| External link: | http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/history_in_africa/v034/34.1skinner.pdf |
| Abstract: | This paper elaborates on the important but hitherto unexplored relationship between extramural studies (also known as university adult education) and the ways in which we now study Africa's modern history. The author explains how and why extramural studies were introduced to the Gold Coast (Ghana) immediately after World War II. Adult education occupied a central place in British working-class history, and some influential policymakers and academics believed that this type of education could be transferred to the African colonies. The author then discusses how the insistence on the comparability of 19th-century British working-class politics and 20th-century African nationalism influenced the particular model of teaching and research that was introduced to the Gold Coast. Extramural tutors used their exceptional familiarity with the peoples and environments of the Gold Coast as a starting point for academic research. Tutors' research thus anticipated debates about African agency which became much more explicit within university departments during the 1960s. Thirdly, the author points out that, although extramural tutors concentrated on political history, they also helped establish the methodological practices and evidential bases from which different types of history could be written. Finally, she calls for further research to investigate whether the extramural experiment in Africa also influenced historians of the British working class. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
