Voluntariness, Decolonization and Gender: The Women’s Movement and Citizenship in (Post)Colonial Ghana

这一分项目审查了非殖民化期间妇女的政治活动。它探讨了自愿性的多层面，这为妇女的政治参与提供了信息，并探索了后殖民治理中经常被忽视的政治原则。该分项目调查自愿行动如何以及以何种形式共同构成了殖民地晚期“间接统治”和后殖民统治下的政治和社会秩序。它还调查了呼吁和对自愿的归属如何与改变对公民身份和性别的理解联系在一起。以英国黄金海岸/加纳为例，该分项目分析了志愿行动，考察了相应的一系列复杂条件，以探索志愿行动作为一种资源和一种规范的变化意义。在这方面，它还涉及伦理层面，询问是否以及在多大程度上将“自愿”的论述归因于一项特定的行动，表明该行动是好的和正确的。该分项目调查自愿作为一种政治和社会行动模式在(后)殖民社会中的历史意义。它探讨了呼吁采取自愿行动如何解决妇女和女孩的问题，因为她们也通过过渡时刻谈判公民身份和归属感。政治活动家是这项研究的中心。他们对政治参与以及公民、政治和社会权利的要求将集中在1948至1966年间的一系列运动中进行研究。在此期间，积极分子为竞选活动和大型会议动员起来，例如非洲妇女和非洲人后裔会议(1960年)，以及特别与“社会福利和社区发展”有关的各种问题。这些对自愿参与的动员为在后殖民地创造政治和社会秩序的愿景提供了信息，但也提出了挑战，同时旨在创造一种有别于西方模式并忠于自己(后殖民)经历的“非洲现代性”。该分项目探讨了当地以及跨区域和全球关系。这些问题包括与英国殖民“祖国”的持续关系，冷战时期不断变化的联盟，以及新的国际组织的各种组合，从加纳与散居海外的美国黑人的联系，到泛非网络。该分项目探讨了自愿如何在从殖民统治过渡到后殖民统治的过程中发挥作用，它将为加纳的历史提供新的线索，同时也呼吁以新的方式书写受后殖民经验启发的当代历史。关于研究小组，该分项目将通过探索其轮廓远远超出自由的西方社会，促进对自愿的更全球细微差别的理解。

This subproject examines the political activism of women during decolonization. It explores the multi-layered dimensions of voluntariness that informed women’s political engagement and probes an often-overlooked political principle of postcolonial governance. The subproject investigates how, and in what form, voluntary action co-constituted the political and social order under late colonial “indirect rule” and in the postcolony. It also investigates how appeals and ascriptions of voluntariness were linked to shifting understandings of citizenship and gender. Taking the case of the British Gold Coast/Ghana, the subproject analyzes voluntary action examining the corresponding set of complex conditions to explore the changing meanings of voluntary action as a resource and a norm. In this vein, it also tackles ethical dimensions, asking whether and to what extent the discursive attribution of “voluntariness” to a given action marked it out as good and correct. The subproject investigates the historical significance of voluntariness as a mode of political and social action in the case of a (post)colonial society. It explores how appeals to voluntary action addressed women and girls as they, too, negotiated citizenship and belonging through a moment of transition. Political activists are at the center of this study. Their demands for political participation and for civic, political, and social rights will be studied by focusing on a series of campaigns between 1948 and 1966. During that time, activists mobilized for election campaigns and large conferences, such as the Conference of Women of Africa and African Descent (1960), as well as for a variety of issues especially related to “social welfare and community development”. These mobilizations for voluntary participation informed, but also challenged, attempts to create a vision of political and social order in the postcolony while, at the same time, aimed at creating an “African modernity,” distinct from Western models and true to its own (post-)colonial experiences. The subproject explores local as well as trans-regional and global relationships. These span from the continued relations to the colonial “motherland” in Great Britain, to the changing alliances of the Cold War and to the varied constellations of new international organizations, from Ghanaian connections with the Black American diaspora, to pan-African networks. Exploring, how voluntariness functioned in the transition from colonial to postcolonial rule, the subproject will shed new light on the history of Ghana while it also takes up the call for renewed ways of writing contemporary history informed by the postcolonial experience. Regarding the research group, the subproject will contribute to a more globally nuanced understanding of voluntariness by exploring its contours well beyond liberal, Western societies.