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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Choosing the side of the Nvaviles: A family network in 20th century Nzema (Ghana-Ivory Coast)
| Panel |
29. Extended families in time. Creating alliances and power networks in Western Africa societies and history
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| Paper ID | 420 |
| Author(s) |
Valsecchi, Pierluigi
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | The paper deals – in historical and anthropological perspective – with the changing and multifaceted shape of a family network in the Nzema area. Nzema, which is a stretch of land covering south-west Ghana and south-east Ivory Coast, hosts a population that shares a language (Nzema), a common history and a political organization that predates partition by two different colonial powers (Britain and France).
After having assessed the extent to which extended family networks have provided and continue to provide significant loci in struggles for power and resources in given areas, the paper tries to substantiate the assumption that extended family networks were and still are very successful in perpetuating themselves in historical contexts that have undergone dramatic changes over the past two centuries, as a result of their ability to manipulate and adapt to changing realities. They show remarkable skills in mobilizing and coordinating forces and interests in very diverse historical moments by periodically re-shaping their very composition and membership, actively re-defining their targets and group strategies, integrating new political languages and providing venues for personal and group mobility and access to wealth to members and allies.
The claims to paramount power by the Nvavile lineage over the entire Nzema region were a constant feature in the political landscape of the region for the past 150 years and up to this day. Their issue provided an underlying frame for aggregating forces, interests, and parties along the deep dividing lines which cut right across Nzema society.
The Nvavile legitimist struggle is characterized by heavy investment of financial resources in court litigations, in both Chiefly and State courts and on the basis of a substantial corpus of historical narratives which were elaborated in the process and which are meant to validate the Nvavile claims by rooting them into wider layers of powers, connections and interests in different periods of local and Ghanaian 17th to 19th century history.
The supporters of the Nvavile claim have been able able to mobilize various alliances in each phase of this unending litigation, and this has meant that the composition of the Nvavile network has changed considerably throughout the 20th century.
Being a Nvavile in 20th century Nzema, or rather stressing one’s association with the Nvavile, was not purely a question of birth or alliance. In many cases it implied a personal decision to adhere to particular political strategies or parties within local society. This paper attempts to assess and analyze these features of the Nvavile experience. It also looks at the wider implications of Nvavile political discourse in the ongoing local debates on the administrative presence of the Ghanaian and Ivorian states in the area.
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