Roads and automobility on the African continent are commonly encountered with a rather ambivalent stance, both by Africans and Africanist scholars. This ambivalence emerges from what Adeline Masquelier describes as the ‘profoundly contradictory nature of roads as objects of both fascination and terror’ (2002: 381). In her widely received article on ‘road mythographies’ surrounding Niger's Route 1, Masquelier draws a vivid picture of the ‘contradictory aspects of the road as a space of both fear and desire’ (ibid.: 831). She highlights, in particular, how roadside residents perceive automotive travel as ‘a process fraught with risky and contradictory possibilities’ (ibid.: 832). A ‘pioneering study in the ethnography of roads’ (Campbell 2012: 498), Masquelier's account of people's profound ambivalence towards roads, mobility and transport in post-colonial Niger has been a source of inspiration for a range of scholars who have explored in a similar vein the intricate entanglement of people with (auto)mobility, space and modernity, both in Africa and elsewhere (see, for example, Khan 2006; Klaeger 2009; Dalakoglou 2010; Hart 2011). Five articles in this volume press ahead with the analytic theme of the ambivalence of roads. Through their historic analyses and ethnographic observations, the assembled case studies from Senegal, Ghana, Sudan, Kenya and Tanzania give a strong sense of how the perils and possibilities of roads, roadsides, traffic and transport have been and continue to be embraced in the everyday lives of colonial and post-colonial subjects.
The Accra–Kumasi road, one of Ghana's most important trunk roads, traverses numerous towns and settlements whose residents at times engage intimately with the road on their doorstep. In this article, I provide ethnographic insights into the ways in which roadside dwellers conceptualize – and spatialize – the road and its roadside through distinct repertoires of movement (performed and encountered), through localized storytelling and narratives, through self-reflection, and also through disruptive and vigilante actions. I describe the spatial practices that are at the core of the dwellers' ‘anthropological’ experience of the road and its roadside, a space that is continuously domesticated, appropriated and, thus, implicated in the mundane and everyday. The dwellers' everyday practices, as well as the exceptional performances oriented to the road, appear as closely intertwined both with the liveliness, socialities and opportunities the road affords, as well as with its dangers and potential for destruction and death. Thus the ‘ambivalent nature of road experiences’, in Masquelier's phrase – namely the experience of the road as a space of both perils and possibilities – is crucial to how roadside dwellers socially produce the Accra–Kumasi road.
The Accra–Kumasi road, one of Ghana's most important trunk roads, traverses numerous towns and settlements whose residents at times engage intimately with the road on their doorstep. In this article, I provide ethnographic insights into the ways in which roadside dwellers conceptualize – and spatialize – the road and its roadside through distinct repertoires of movement (performed and encountered), through localized storytelling and narratives, through self-reflection, and also through disruptive and vigilante actions. I describe the spatial practices that are at the core of the dwellers' ‘anthropological’ experience of the road and its roadside, a space that is continuously domesticated, appropriated and, thus, implicated in the mundane and everyday. The dwellers' everyday practices, as well as the exceptional performances oriented to the road, appear as closely intertwined both with the liveliness, socialities and opportunities the road affords, as well as with its dangers and potential for destruction and death. Thus the ‘ambivalent nature of road experiences’, in Masquelier's phrase – namely the experience of the road as a space of both perils and possibilities – is crucial to how roadside dwellers socially produce the Accra–Kumasi road.
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