Undesirable Practices

Jessica Cammaert is an instructor in African history at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction1. Die a Natural Death: Responses to the Questionnaire on “Customs Affecting the Status of Women in West Africa,” ca. 19302. R. S. Rattray, Anthropology, and the Making of Undesirable Practices in Northern Ghana3. Female Circumcision as Undesirable in the Northeast, ca. 1930–19334. Child Slavery, Pawning, and Trafficking in Late-Colonial Bawku, 1941–19485. Put Some Clothes On or Nkrumah Will Get You! Antinudity Campaigns in the Nkrumah Era, 1958–19666. Orphaned Children and Unruly Girls: Youth and Undesirability After Nkrumah, 1965–1972Conclusion: Undesirable Practices in Africa: Averting the Male GazeNotesBibliographyIndex

"Cammaert's book is well-written and, most importantly, sheds light on the so-called undesirable practices, revealing more than policy-oriented studies alone. . . . This book gives a voice to a localized group of Africans in Northeastern Ghana and focuses on specific issues the inhabitants had to deal with during the colonial and early post-colonial periods. This is an important contribution to the studies related to female genital mutilation, nudity, human trafficking, and prostitution."-Aliou Ly, African Studies Review “What a powerful project! . . . This volume reframes and complicates the arguments and practices in new and significant ways. . . . [This is] a unique and welcome contribution to the literature.”-Beth Blue Swadener, coeditor of Children’s Rights and Education: International Perspectives  “As a cultural anthropologist, I find [Cammaert’s] work especially useful for providing a deeper (in time) understanding of how African culture and gender socialization has been reshaped over the decades.”-Angela R. Bratton, associate professor of anthropology at Georgia Regents University and the author of An Anthropological Study of Factors Affecting the Construction of Sexuality in Ghana