Masks, Elephants, and Djembe Drums: Craft as Historical Experience in Ghana

This article analyzes craft in a national culture and tourist art center in Ghana. Honing in on three distinct, coexisting craft worlds—a handicraft market, commercial woodcarving, and the production of djembe drums—it examines craft's mediating role between political economic regimes and generational subjectivities. I argue that craft forms, the rules that define them, and the identities they produce emerge in particular historical formations, and I explore conflicts over artistry as generational differences of experience between cohorts of Ghanaian men negotiating their place in national and global systems. In this context, I focus on the djembe drum as a contentious artifact that objectifies predicaments of Ghanaian men in the current neoliberal moment.