Oxford Street, Accra
Subtitle: Street Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism
Publisher: Duke University Press; Duke University Press Books
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 312
ISBN-13: 9780822357476
Subjects: Ghana, history
Description: In Oxford Street, Accra, Ato Quayson analyzes the dynamics of Ghana's capital city through a focus on Oxford Street, part of Accra's most vibrant and globalized commercial district. He traces the city's evolution from its settlement in the mid-seventeenth century to the present day. He combines his impressions of the sights, sounds, interactions, and distribution of space with broader dynamics, including the histories of colonial and postcolonial town planning and the marks of transnationalism evident in Accra's salsa scene, gym culture, and commercial billboards. Quayson finds that the various planning systems that have shaped the city--and had their stratifying effects intensified by the IMF-mandated structural adjustment programs of the late 1980s--prepared the way for the early-1990s transformation of a largely residential neighborhood into a kinetic shopping district. With an intense commercialism overlying, or coexisting with, stark economic inequalities, Oxford Street is a microcosm of historical and urban processes that have made Accra the variegated and contradictory metropolis that it is today.