This research project aims at understanding the expectations and motivations of young women in Ghana's Upper East region with regard to starting their own business. Supporting the owners of small... Show more This research project aims at understanding the expectations and motivations of young women in Ghana's Upper East region with regard to starting their own business. Supporting the owners of small-scale businesses in the informal economy has become a central objective of the global development agenda. Using an anthropological approach, this research contributes to and criticizes the dominant discourse on the need to advance entrepreneurship. It argues that the theoretical discourse underlying efforts to advance entrepreneurship among the poor are fundamentally flawed. Four cross-cutting issues should be taken into account: the weak conceptualization of entrepreneurship in development discourse; the neglect of the socio-economic context in which "entrepreneurial" activities take place; the importance of cultural and psychological factors; and the ongoing attractiveness that entrepreneurship carries for development policymakers. These issues are relevant to the situation of seamstresses in Bolgatanga, but also apply to a wider field. Based on the stories of seamstresses in Bolgatanga, this thesis is an appeal to rethink policies designed to promote (female) entrepreneurship among the poor. It calls into question the portrayal of self-employment as "entrepreneurship" and the depiction of poverty as an individual problem.This book is based on Merel van ‘t Wouts’ Master's thesis ‘Entrepreneurs by the grace of God : life and work of seamstresses in Bolgatanga, Ghana’, winner of the African Studies Centre, Leiden's 2015 Africa Thesis Award. This annual award for Master's students encourages student research and writing on Africa and promotes the study of African cultures and societies. Show less
This book is based on Leonor Faber-Jonker’s Research Master's thesis 'More than just an object: A material analysis of the return and retention of Namibian skulls from Germany', runner-up in the... Show moreThis book is based on Leonor Faber-Jonker’s Research Master's thesis 'More than just an object: A material analysis of the return and retention of Namibian skulls from Germany', runner-up in the African Studies Centre, Leiden's 2016 Africa Thesis Award. This annual award for Master's students encourages student research and writing on Africa and promotes the study of African cultures and societies. In September 2011 twenty Namibian skulls were repatriated from the collection of the Charité university hospital in Berlin. The remains had been in Germany for more than a hundred years: they belonged to victims of the 'German-Herero war' (1904-1908) in German South-West Africa, a genocide that cost the lives of eighty per cent of the Herero and half the Nama population. The majority of the skulls had arrived in Berlin as preserved heads, and all had been used for scientific race research in the first decades of the twentieth century. Despite the triumphant return of the skulls, not everything went smoothly. The Charité was criticized for failing to answer questions about the identity of the remains, and the Namibian government and Nama and Herero representatives failed to agree on their final resting place. This had everything to do with the complicated nature of the skulls involved. Faber-Jonker analyses how these human remains – remains of individuals – became war trophies, anthropological specimens, and, finally, evidence, symbols, and relics, by examining how, by whom, why, and in what context the skulls were physically handled in the practices of collecting (1904-1910), studying (1910-1924),- and repatriating (2011). Show less
