Hegemony by Adaptation
Decolonizing Ghana's Construction Industry
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2109381 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Łukasz Stanek (0000-0001-7113-1030, A. Alfred Taubman Health Care Center, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 66 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 899-932 |
| Publication date | 2024-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0010417524000185 |
| OpenAlex | W4403254380 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 57 |
This paper discusses competing visions of the decolonization of Ghana's economy during the first decade of the country's independence from Britain (1957-1966), and the agency and horizon of choice available to the Ghanaian decision-makers in charge of implementing these visions. It focuses on Ghana's construction industry, both as an important part of the national economy and as a condition for Ghana's broader social and economic development in the context of colonial-era path-dependencies and Cold War competition. By taking the vantage point of mid-level administrators and professionals, the paper shows how they negotiated British and Soviet technological offers of construction materials, machinery, and design. In response to Soviet claims about the adaptability of their construction resources to Ghana's local conditions, the practice of adaptation became for Ghanaian architects and administrators an opportunity to reflect on the needs, means, and objectives of Ghana's construction industry, and on broader visions of Ghana's economic and social development. Beyond the specific focus on the construction industry, this paper conceptualizes the centrality of adaptation in enforcing technological hegemony during the period of decolonization, and discusses African agency beyond the registers of extraction and resistance that have dominated scholarship on the global Cold War
Agency (philosophy · Capitalism · Colonialism · Context (archaeology · Decolonization · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Geography · Hegemony · Independence (probability theory · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Vision · African history and culture studies
From Stalin to Mao
Beyond Empire
A Calendar of Soviet Treaties 1958-1973
Between Reason and Experience
Red Globalization
Entangled Geographies
Cold War at 30,000 Feet
American and Soviet Aid
Integrate, Adapt, Collaborate
Global Assemblages
Voices from the Soviet Edge
The History of Ghana
George Padmore and Decolonization from Below
A Dam for Africa
Ghana on the Go
Alternative Globalizations
Socialist Internationalism in the Cold War
Laboratory of Socialist Development
Atomic Junction
Cold War Economics
Urbanization and Settlement in Soviet Scholarship
Socialist worldmaking
British Business and Ghanaian Independence
Africanization in British Multinationals in Ghana and Nigeria, 1945–1970
Modern Architecture and the End of Empire
The Business of Decolonization
Orientalist modes of modernism in architecture
Soviet Urban Geography—an Appraisal of Postwar Research 1
Living with Nkrumahism
Village Housing in the Tropics
George Padmore and the Soviet Model of the British Commonwealth
The Price of Aid
The Soviet Africa Institute and the Development of African Studies
The Africanization Controversy in the Gold Coast, 1926-1946
Technological Zones
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |