Description
This study explores ideas of citizenship, power and state ideology though a study of state secondary school buildings in Ghana and Senegal. States often use physical structures to project power and ideology within and beyond the nation – and where these structures manifest in the form of architecture, an additional element comes to play. The structures no longer function mainly as symbols, but also as sites for control, regulation, ceremony and more.
Schools in particular present unique opportunities as sites of control, and for the transmission and projection of state power and ideology. This is why colonial and post-colonial state authorities in Africa alike used state schools for the making (and unmaking of citizens) according to the aspirations of the ruling classes, their visions of society and their notions of their "place-in-the-world”. Yet, while state authorities attempted to use schools for these purposes, students, staff and others associated with schools did not always receive the lessons as planned. They reacted to these attempts at transmitted ideology and norms in different ways, actively participating in processes of inclusion and exclusion, appropriation and rejection, co-option and coercion. This paper brings aspects of these processes to the fore.
