This panel presents new research on Ghana’s colonial past by exploring various arenas of “the politics of control.” Particularly illuminative in the study of control within the colonial context are sites of encounter between Africans and Europeans, especially those related to administrative, sexual, legal, and political contact and contestation. Colonial authorities often responded to these interactions by imposing boundaries and reinforcing distinctions between the “African” and “European” (Ray), but these encounters also clearly resulted in cultural syncretism and transformed identities and policies in large part because Africans were equally invested in demarcating and/or obfuscating such boundaries.
