Social protest and the middle class in Ghana: a social movement approach of three cases

ABSTRACT

This article examines the connection between middle class and social protest by three Ghanaian cases: A protest in the 1890s organised by members of the middle class laid the foundation for political action, which finally led to Ghana’s independence. In 1978, members of the middle class protested a model called Union Government by which the then military head of state Acheampong sought to perpetuate the military into government. In 2014, activists protested frequent power cuts, rising fuel prices and an economic crisis. Following this demonstration, several new middle-class groups evolved, among them ‘Occupy Ghana’. This article looks at the protests and its leadership: How does the activists’ class status relate to forms and practices of protest and resistance? By answering this question, the paper will discuss the specific interests and mobilisations for protest of middle-class activists in Ghana.

KEYWORDS:

• Ghana
• social movements
• middle class
• occupy
• protest

Acknowledgements

We thank the editors of the special issue as well as the anonymous reviewer for helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In a similar way, many studies from the 1960s and 1970s on African elites (e.g., Lloyd 1970) would today rather run under the label middle class (see also Oppong 1974, 1981). With Lentz (2016, 40) we understand elite as ‘individuals in leading positions in the political sphere or other societal fields with regular influence on decision-making that affects larger groups.’ We agree with Lentz (2016, 40) that the concept elite is less helpful to analyse processes of social stratification.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrea Noll

Andrea Noll studied social anthropology at the University of Mainz and obtained her PhD at the University of Hildesheim. Since 2006, she has worked in Ghana. Her main fields of interest are family and kinship, middle class and elites, education, transnationalism and social movements.

Jan Budniok

Jan Budniok obtained his PhD in social anthropology at the University of Mainz and has worked as a lecturer at the University of Hamburg since 2014. He previously worked in Ghana from 2006. His fields of interest are anthropology of law, social mobility and class formation, biographical research and social movements.