Political identity in a postcolony: Citizenship, belonging, and nation-building in Ghana

This chapter examines contemporary constructions of citizenship identities in Ghana. Citizenship in former colonies could be conceptualised as structurally and substantively different from Western forms due to the articulation of pre-existing and European modes of political organisations and belongings. National citizenship was supposed to redirect all subnational allegiances to the state, but scholars argue that this does not always happen. In former colonies such as Ghana, the tension between ethnic and national identities are believed to be especially intense. In this chapter, the author argues that the popular dichotomy between ethnic and national identities is an elusive one. It fails to capture the ways in which citizens actually think of themselves as members of various political communities. This failure stems from the practice of unproblematically applying an ideal-typical conceptual dichotomy to the messiness realities of the social world.