Citation:
Abstract:
This thesis explores the Ghanaian government's recent application of copyright law to the domain of national folklore, looking both at larger, international standard-setting for folklore management and the particular interface of politics and traditional culture in Ghana. I show how, beginning with international policy recommendations in the 1970s and 1980s, the Ghanaian government developed a legal and bureaucratic apparatus to consolidate and define folklore in order both to “protect” it from degradation and misuse and to “promote” it as a symbol of national unity and a tangible asset. By looking at the historical trajectories of cultural policy, and copyright law specifically, from Ghanaian independence in 1957 to the present day, I hope to illustrate the ways in which understandings of folklore are constructed and deployed by the state, as well as the ways in which these understandings come into conflict with one another.
Ultimately, this study seeks to articulate and respond to several questions: What does it mean to define folklore as a category subject to copyright law and legal regulation? What are the potential uses, implications, and implementations of such definitional projects? What are the limitations? Looking at these questions in the context of Ghanaian nation building and cultural policy writing illuminates the multivalent and evolving contradictions at their core.