In my advanced undergraduate course on colonial Ghana, I set students the following essay question: "Did cash-cropping and colonialism conspire to reduce the autonomy and status of Akan women?" In order to answer this question, students must develop a working understanding of: 1. the spread of cash-cropping in the Gold Coast and Asante, and the particular inputs of land and labor that are required for the production of cocoa; 2. Akan social and political organisation, including the concepts of matrilinearity and rights-in-persons, and the role of stools and lineages in determining access to usufruct on different types of land; and 3. the nature of indirect rule and the potential for male chiefs and elders to increase the control of senior men over women and junior men. Those students who can see the connections between this essay and other segments of the course (particularly those which address missionary Christianity and formal schooling), tend to produce more sophisticated answers. Across the range of marks, however, students almost invariably conclude that the answer to the question is "yes," and this is consistent with the position of most of the authors who feature on my reading list (e.g.

Lung Ultrasound (LUS) is regarded to be potentially useful to diagnose lung injury in older adults living in nursing homes with suspected COVID-19 pneumonia. We aimed at evaluating presence lung injury among senior nursing home residents by LUS performed with portable wireless scanner echography. The study population consisted of 150 residents with a mean age of 88 years (85% female) residing in 12 nursing homes in Northern Italy. Subjects had to have a history of recent onset of symptoms compatible with COVID-19 pneumonia or have been exposed to the contagion of patients carrying the disease. COVID-19 testing was performed with SARS-CoV-2 nasal-pharyngeal (NP) swabs. Positive subjects to LUS scanning were considered those with non-coascelent B-lines in >3 zones, coalescent B-lines in >3 zones and with iperdensed patchy non-consolidated lungs. Sixty-three percent had positive NP testing and 65% had LUS signs of pulmonary injury. LUS had a sensitivity of 79% in predicting positive NP testing. Sixteen percent of residents tested negative for SARSCoV-2 carried the signs of COVID-19 lung injury at LUS. There were 92 patients (61%) with current or recent symptoms.Positivity to LUS scanning was reported in 73% of residents with symptoms, while it was 53% in those without (P=0.016). A positive NP testing was observed in 66% of residents with symptoms and in 57% of those without (P=0.27). We conclude that assessment of LUS by portable wireless scanner echography can be profitability utilized to diagnose lung injury among senior nursing home residents with or without symptoms compatible with COVID-19 pneumonia.

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This article compares indigenous conceptualizations, as expressed in ledgers recording the collection of funeral offerings, with academic knowledge on kinship and value negotiation in the Akan area of West Africa. Donors are inserted in social circuits defining their residential belonging (in villages and households), parental affiliation (with specific offerings for matrilineal kin, patrilateral kin and in-laws), as well as gender and seniority. Funeral offerings, moreover, vary proportionally to value: the amount provided by the donor expresses his/her value and the total cost of the funeral indicates the value of the deceased and of her/his family. The intricacies of mortuary offerings — expressed through elaborate calculations — reveal shared and structured taxonomies that enable affirming and negotiating the value of the deceased and that of the donor as well as the relation between donor and deceased. Anthropological theories and definitions are confronted with these locally elaborated representations.

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This article examines political oral traditions in the Sefwi (Akan) area of Ghana. Two types of narrative are studied: negotiations over the political status of stools within the kingdom and the claims to succession of matrilineal branches within stools. Narratives are analysed in relation to their claims to historicity, to the political conflicts in which they are generated and to their correspondence to legal criteria of attribution of ‘traditional’ political offices. It shows that pre‐colonial dynamic norms concerning stool status and succession turned into a fixed legal corpus in the twentieth century. Contenders’ histories have been used as evidence to judge ‘traditional’ stool disputes. Narrators have thus constructed narratives presenting ideal pasts considered worthy of legal attribution of ‘traditional’ political office. Narratives have consequently legalised narrators’ claims with reference to ancient history. The study of the context of the emergence of oral traditions—hostility between particular stool holders, national politics’ influence or conflicts over the sharing of stool revenue—shows that narratives and political conflicts have a history of their own which is carefully omitted from the narration.