New Books in Sociology Alice Wiemers, "Village Work: Development and Rural Statecraft in Twentieth-Century Ghana" (Ohio UP, 2021)
Feb 28, 2026
Alice Wiemers, Associate Professor of History at Davidson College who studies African history and development. She recounts walking a northern Ghana village and reading its school, clinic, and road. She traces how chiefs, family networks, and communal labor shaped rural statecraft. She examines shifts from midcentury agricultural optimism to projectized, neoliberal forms of local governance.
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Village As Cheap Administrative Technology
- The "village" as a governmental unit emerged from cheap administrative practices (village lists) even before the ideology of community development.
- District commissioners used lists of villages to order space and requisition labor, creating a durable technique of statecraft across decades.
Progressive Chiefs As Development Brokers
- "Progressive chieftaincy" became a route for chiefs to harness development resources and link local projects to state actors.
- Wiemers profiles chiefs (e.g., Sandamnab Azantalo, Wulubunaba Sebyam) who used development to consolidate authority and attract projects.
Sebyam The Booster Who Built Pasenpe
- Wulubunaba Sebyam became chief in 1942 and relentlessly recruited teachers, migrants, and state attention to transform Pasenpe.
- He corralled communal labor despite memories of forced roadwork and drove a mid-century Labor 2.0 system of local project building.
