The distinguished scholar Steven Feld shaped the field of the anthropology of sound and music. In this new work, he looks at the vernacular cosmopolitanism of a group of jazz players in Ghana, including some who have traveled widely, played with American jazz greats, and blended Coltrane with local instruments and philosophy. He describes their cosmopolitan outlook as an accoustemology, a way of knowing the world through sound. Feld combines memoir, biography, ethnography, and history, telling a story of diasporic intimacy and dialogue that contests both American nationalist and Afrocentric narrations of jazz history.

As urbanization of the world’s population grows at an ever-increasing pace, the need to understand the effects of globalization on cities is at the forefront of urban studies. Traditional scholarship largely employs a framework of analysis based on the globalizing experience of Western cities. In Globalizing City, Richard Grant draws on ten years of empirical research in Accra, Ghana’s capital city, to show how this African metropolis is as deeply transformed by globalization as the cities of other world regions. Grant reveals the ways in which international, transnational, and local forces are operating on the urban landscape of Accra, from elite gated communities to the poorest slums. Through interviews and extensive fieldwork, he examines how foreign companies, returned expatriates, and native Ghanaians foster globalization on multiple levels. Globalizing City offers an excellent case study of the complex social and economic dynamics that have transformed Accra, providing an essential guide for studying globalizing cities in general.

Accra joins Lagos, Nairobi, Marrakech, and Addis Ababa in representing the African continent in the Noir Series arena. “Superb . . . Each story reaffirms how fundamental ‘place’ is to the noir genre and how the locale shapes the story as much as the characters themselves . . . Strongly recommended.” —Library Journal “There’s good writing as well as a strong sense of place and culture, and the reader will absorb a side of Accra that doesn’t make it into the tourist brochures.” —New York Journal of Books Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Brand-new stories by: Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, Kwame Dawes, Adjoa Twum, Kofi Blankson Ocansey, Billie McTernan, Ernest Kwame Nkrumah Addo, Patrick Smith, Anne Sackey, Gbontwi Anyetei, Nana-Ama Danquah, Ayesha Harruna Attah, Eibhlín Ní Chléirigh, and Anna Bossman.

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.

Ghana has witnessed a 'revolution through the ballot box', since its return to constitutional rule in 1993. Yet this period of sustained democratic government in an era of globalization and liberal triumphalism has brought with it new demands. How has Ghana faced up to the problems of institution-building, state-market relations and democratic leadership? Can it deal with the challenges posed by security, human rights and foreign policy in the twenty-first century? This unique collection interrogates all these issues and assesses the future of the democratic experiment in one of sub-Saharan Africa's rare 'islands of peace'. In doing so, it provides an invaluable guide to Ghana's political past, present and future.

As early as the 1910s, African drivers in colonial Ghana understood the possibilities that using imported motor transport could further the social and economic agendas of a diverse array of local agents, including chiefs, farmers, traders, fishermen, and urban workers. Jennifer Hart's powerful narrative of auto-mobility shows how drivers built on old trade routes to increase the speed and scale of motorized travel. Hart reveals that new forms of labor migration, economic enterprise, cultural production, and social practice were defined by autonomy and mobility and thus shaped the practices and values that formed the foundations of Ghanaian society today. Focusing on the everyday lives of individuals who participated in this century of social, cultural, and technological change, Hart comes to a more sensitive understanding of the ways in which these individuals made new technology meaningful to their local communities and associated it with their future aspirations.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes the significant impact of transport systems on health and provides normative guidance and technical support to Member States to promote healthy transport. As a contribution to this response, The WHO Urban Health Initiative has rolled out activities in Accra, Ghana to support urban leaders to make best use of health evidence and competencies to assess the environmental, health and economic benefits of actions to improve urban environments, with a focus on air pollution. The report “Health and economic impacts of transport interventions in Accra, Ghana”, aimed at professionals and practitioners interested on transport and health, comprehensively assesses transport scenarios for the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA), informed by the local policy landscape. Mitigation scenarios comparing the effects of different interventions on land use, transport mode, energy efficiency and demand showed that investing in walking, cycling and clean public transport can substantially improve urban air quality and climate emissions as well as promote physical activity, contributing to significant health and economic gains, reducing the mortality risk across the population of GAMA. Developed with the active contribution of many sectors and stakeholders, this report is also a milestone for the Urban Health Initiative, showcasing what can be achieved through multisectoral collaboration to improve the knowledge base and create the demand for action towards healthier sustainable transport.

Beyond simplistic binaries of "the dark continent" or "Africa Rising," Africans at home and abroad articulate their identities through their quotidian practices and cultural politics. Amongst the privileged classes, these articulations can be characterized as Afropolitan projects--cultural, political, and aesthetic expressions of global belonging rooted in African ideals. This ethnographic study examines the Afropolitan projects of Ghanaians living in two cosmopolitan cities: Houston, Texas, and Accra, Ghana. Anima Adjepong's focus shifts between the cities, exploring contests around national and pan-African cultural politics, race, class, sexuality, and religion. Focusing particularly on queer sexuality, Adjepong offers unique insight into the contemporary sexual politics of the Afropolitan class. The book expands and complicates existing research by providing an in-depth transnational case study that not only addresses questions of cosmopolitanism, class, and racial identity but also considers how gender and sexuality inform the racialized identities of Africans in the United States and in Ghana. Bringing an understudied cohort of class-privileged Africans to the forefront, Adjepong offers a more fully realized understanding of the diversity of African lives.