Black Board Struggles: Teacher Unionism Under the ‘Democratic’ Rawlings Regime 1992-2000
Introduction hana’s return to liberal democratic rule formed part of what has been generally accepted as the third wave of democratisation in Africa, when internal frustrations with growing corruption, repression and unemployment in most African countries, conjoined with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, triggered waves of democratic protests, which eventually led to the birth or rebirth of new democracies across Africa (see Bratton & Van de Walle 1997). In Ghana, by December 1991, when the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), the quasi-military regime that was formed after the 1981 coup, observed its tenth anniversary, the move towards constitutional rule had taken firm roots. Two significant developments in 1992 sealed the rebirth of a democratic Ghana. The first was a
When men do women's work: structural adjustment, unemployment and changing gender relations in the informal economy of Accra, Ghana
ABSTRACT Economic crisis and structural adjustment in Ghana have put large numbers of formal sector employees and civil servants out of work. This informalisation process has gendered consequences. Unemployed people, rural–urban migrants and school-leavers of both genders seek employment in the urban informal economy, and increasingly take up ‘female’ occupations – particularly in retail trade. Overcrowding in women's economic domains thus occurs. This study examines the livelihood strategies of informally employed men and women in Accra. It is argued that gender ideologies regarding appropriate occupations for women and men are continuously adapted in response to a changing political economy. Thus, even if female traders face competition, declining returns and a heavier dependency burden, frustration with government policies failing to create decent jobs (for men) is more prevalent than gender antagonism and ridicule of those who find gender-atypical ways of eking out a living.
Responsive Ethics and the War Against Terrorism: A Levinasian Perspective
Realist and liberal understandings of ethics as the dominant approaches to ethics in international relations are unable to respond efficiently to the call of the other in the age of war against terrorism as they revolve around the needs and the interests of the self. Such self-centred understandings of ethics cannot respond to the other ethically and respect the other in its otherness. Therefore, in this work I attempt to develop responsive ethics by drawing on Levinasian ethics which can create the possibilities of concrete non-violent responses to the other in the age of war against terrorism.