Abstract: "In Oxford Street, Accra, Ato Quayson analyzes the dynamics of Ghana's capital city through a focus on Oxford Street, part of Accra's most vibrant and globalized commercial district. He traces the city's evolution from its settlement in the mid-seventeenth century to the present day. He combines his impressions of the sights, sounds, interactions, and distribution of space with broader dynamics, including the histories of colonial and postcolonial town planning and the marks of transnationalism evident in Accra's salsa scene, gym culture, and commercial billboards. Quayson finds that the various planning systems that have shaped the city—and had their stratifying effects intensified by the IMF-mandated structural adjustment programs of the late 1980s—prepared the way for the early-1990s transformation of a largely residential neighborhood into a kinetic shopping district. With an intense commercialism overlying, or coexisting with, stark economic inequalities, Oxford Street is a microcosm of historical and urban processes that have made Accra the variegated and contradictory metropolis that it is today."
Ato Quayson, "Quayson, Ato. 2014. Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press.", contributed by Angela Okune, STS Infrastructures, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 7 August 2018, accessed 22 November 2024. https://stsinfrastructures.org/content/quayson-ato-2014-oxford-street-accra-city-life-and-itineraries-transnationalism-durham-duke
Critical Commentary
AO: This 2014 book by Ato Quayson, a Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto, provides a historical portrait of the commercial district in Accra, Ghana and contributes to the growing body of literature on African urbanism.