15:30 - 17:00
Room: Arts – Main Lecture Theatre
Stream: Open Stream
Sanitising the Colony or Re-Ordering Public Spaces: A Colonial Approach to Sanitation and Public Hygiene in Ghana, 1878-1950
Akwasi Kwarteng Amoako-Gyampah
Department of Historical Studies, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg

This paper examines the regulation and the sanitary policing of town planning and the building of dwelling houses, the erection and control of market spaces and slaughterhouses, and the regulation and control of bakeries, and restaurants in colonial Ghana. These were presented by the colonial administration as sanitary and hygienic measures targeted at protecting the public health. Yet, I treat such spaces as the locus of social interaction and as an embodiment of power relations. And that the colonial administration’s regulation and sanitary policing of these spaces was as much a public health measure as it was about engineering some form of wider social control and an imposition of a Eurocentric vision of what constituted acceptable sanitary and hygienic manners and practices. I also argue that the colonial administration appropriated such spaces not only in the interest of the Public health, but also to achieve economic ends. Yet, such public health initiatives and space control was not always a smooth drive. It presented a conundrum to the colonial administration. This paper draws predominantly on data bearing on public health collected from the Ghana Public Records and Archives Administration Department and the British Online archive.


Reference:
Th-OS15 Ideas and materials in African global health-P-001
Presenter/s:
Akwasi Kwarteng Amoako-Gyampah
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Arts – Main Lecture Theatre
Date:
Thursday, 13 September
Time:
15:30 - 15:45
Session times:
15:30 - 17:00