Public Lecture: Changing Mortuary and Funeral Economy and the Politics of Prestige in Northwest Ghana, Speaker: Prof. Isidore Lobnibe (Western Oregon University)

Abstract

n Africa more generally, funerals have been shown to bring together members of the extended family to renew and reaffirm their individual membership within the larger family and to also compete for social prestige. In Northern Ghana, the past few decades have witnessed dramatic changes in funerary and mortuary institutions because of changing political economy and other social forces. In what ways, for example, has the growing group of upwardly mobile men and women who live in the cities turned funeral celebrations into arenas for expressing and producing new social statuses?  How and for what reasons do these middle-class men and women go about testifying their new personal roles and achievements as well as their middle-class lifestyle and cultural values during funerals of family members and close relatives? Drawing on many years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Upper-West Region of Ghana about death and the organization of funerals by the relatives of the deceased, this lecture will examine the transformation and changing practices of these ritual occasions as  they respond to  and are shaped by more recent expanded access to new economic opportunities, improved infrastructure, and technology. 

Isidore Lobnibe is a Professor of Anthropology at Western Oregon University, Monmouth, USA.