Place and party organizations: party activism inside party-branded sheds at the grassroots in northern Ghana

摘要

Socio-environmental conditions influence party organizations and political behaviour in the different ecological zones of Africa. Party-branded sheds serve as a lens for understanding electoral politics in Ghana. Sheds are local spaces of political contestation and forums of political representation. They connect party and community symbolically by demonstrating the different ways the party will represent the people. The framework of the politics of place allows this paper to delineate the forms of informal political behaviour mediated by territoriality to explain party activism at the grassroots. It argues that political behaviour at the grassroots is affected by the character of the local environment as well as a number of sociocultural and economic factors. The paper draws on in-depth interviews with party activists and ethnographic observations to analyze political behaviour. It finds that locality affects party organizations; activism in the sheds is informal, transient and structured by personal ties; inter- and intra-party disputes are common among the sheds; and male-dominated shed culture is typical of the northern savannah belt and other migrant-dominated Muslim communities in southern Ghana.