Thesis (PhD) - Indiana University, Anthropology, 2006This dissertation examines the competing goals of Ghanaian tourism stakeholders, diaspora African visitors, and Cape Coast residents regarding pilgrimage tourism in Ghana's Central Region. Based on over one year of fieldwork in Cape Coast, my research incorporates interviews and surveys with tourism policy makers, tour guides, visitors, and local Ghanaians and African Americans, as well as participant-observation of guided tours at Cape Coast and Elmina castles and PANAFEST (Pan-African Historical Theatre Festival) and Emancipation Day, and analysis of the castles' guest books.
Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle are potent sites of memory for the trans-Atlantic slave trade and serve as icons of a naturalized gateway to Africa for diaspora Africans. These castles are the backdrop for PANAFEST and Emancipation Day, two Pan-African oriented festivals observed in Ghana since the 1990s which attract large numbers of diaspora Africans. African Americans have been selected by Ghana's Ministry of Tourism as the target market for pilgrimage tourism, but many African Americans are offended by being labeled as tourists because they consider going to Ghana as a sacred act of coming "home." The boundaries between tourist and pilgrim become blurred through the manifestations of social memory evident in castle tours and Pan-African festivals.
This research looks at how social memories dwell in different sites and practices: in the rhetoric of public speeches, in the content of guided tours, in the bodies of visitors, in the performances of reenactment, in the ceremonies of communitas, and in the physical structures of the castles. The construction and deployment of social memories rooted in a shared experience of oppression evidenced in the historical examples of the slave trade and colonialism furthers the project of uniting diaspora Africans and Ghanaians as collective Africans. However, Ghanaians and African Americans have different frames of reference from which they perceive the history and memory of the slave trade that reveal cultural disjunctures in how they relate to the notion of a shared African identity. While Ghanaian stakeholders privilege generating foreign exchange through the promotion of tourism, diaspora African visitors seek a meaningful homecoming and acceptance as members of the "African family.
