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

本次级项目审查非殖民化期间妇女的政治活动。它探讨了妇女参与政治的自愿性的多层维度，并探讨了一个经常被忽视的后殖民统治的政治原则。该子项目研究了在殖民后期“间接统治”和后殖民时期，自愿行动是如何以及以何种形式共同构成政治和社会秩序的。它还调查了自愿的呼吁和归属如何与公民身份和性别理解的转变联系在一起。以英国黄金海岸/加纳为例，子项目分析了自愿行动，考察了相应的一套复杂条件，以探索自愿行动作为一种资源和规范的不断变化的意义。在这种脉络下，它也处理了伦理维度，询问是否以及在多大程度上将“自愿性”的话语归因到一个给定的行为，标志着它是好的和正确的。子项目探讨了在（后）殖民社会中，自愿性作为一种政治和社会行动模式的历史意义。它探讨了呼吁自愿行动如何针对妇女和女孩，因为她们也在过渡时期谈判公民身份和归属感。政治活动家是这项研究的中心。他们对政治参与和公民、政治和社会权利的要求将通过集中研究1948年至1966年之间的一系列运动来研究。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），以及为各种问题特别是与“社会福利和社区发展”有关的问题动员起来。这些自愿参与的动员为建立后殖民地政治和社会秩序的愿景提供了信息，但同时也挑战了这种尝试，与此同时，旨在创造一种不同于西方模式、忠于自己（后）殖民经历的“非洲现代性”。子项目探索本地、跨区域和全球关系。从与英国殖民“祖国”的持续关系，到冷战中不断变化的联盟，以及新国际组织的各种星座，从加纳与美国黑人侨民的联系，到泛非洲网络。探索自愿性如何在从殖民到后殖民统治的过渡中发挥作用，该子项目将为加纳的历史提供新的亮点，同时也呼吁通过后殖民经验重新编写当代历史。关于研究小组，这个子项目将通过探索远远超出自由、西方社会的自愿性的轮廓，有助于在全球范围内更细致入微地理解自愿性。

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.