Domestic rights & duties in Southern Ghan

Fletcher, Roland

English

IDS OpenDocs

305
CHAPTER 3 7 
HOUSE FORM AND FAMILY ARRANGEMENT 
ROLAND FLETCHER*
Introduction
The diagrams in this paper have been provided as 
illustrations of the house forms associated with 
some of the family arrangements discussed in the pa­
pers of this collection. The houses are described 
as particular examples, without generalisation to 
other houses of their community or to the overall 
situation in each society. However, each house can 
be regarded as an arrangement of structures and per­
sonnel acceptable to the attitudes of its community 
concerning house form and family organization. The 
members of all the households described were accep­
ted and recognised members of their community.
Location and Character of the Settlements
The term "house” is used to refer to a discrete 
structural unit or group of units rhere the indepen­
dence of the house is recognised on the basis that 
one person is primarily responsible for decisions 
about the upkeep of the unit or group of units. A 
house will tend to be structurally distinct from any 
adjacent house, the upkeep of which is another per­
sons responsibility.
The example of a Fante house (fig. 1) was coll­
ected in the village of Akotekyere near the Univer­
sity of Cape Coast. I obtained the plan of the 
Ashanti house (fig. 4) in Agogo to the east of Kuma- 
si. The two plans of the Ewe houses (figs 7 and 10) 
come from the village of Aduklu Kpatove, which lies 
to the south of Ho. Agogo is a community of approxi­
mately 40,000 people, while Aduklu Kpatove and Akote­
kyere conform to the conventional notion of a village, 
both in the number of houses and the density of hou­
sing. Of the two villages, Aduklu Kpatove is the lar­
ger, consisting of 60 to 70 houses.*
*Mr. Fletcher was formerly a member of the Department 
of Archaeology, Legon.

Housing density is high in all these communities 
but the route arrangements differ considerably. In 
Agogo the public routes pass around the houses, even if 
the house consists only of one building with an open 
court in front. The extreme segregation of public and 
private routes for an Ashanti house is seen in fig. 4 
where the courtyard is also visually exclusive. In 
Akotekyere most routes pasfe between the houses, but 
courts >,are more accessible both visually and as through 
routes. It is quite difficult to distinguish public 
and private routes in Aduklu since the open space used 
by a house is generally visible and main pathways fre­
quently pass through these areas (Rapoport, 1969:80).
Character of the House
Both sundried bricks and swish were used in the 
construction of the houses illustrated. Apart from the 
main structures of the Ewe house (fig. 10) and the sma­
ll post built huts of both Ewe houses, all the structu­
res illustrated have gabled, corrugated iron roofs.
The small huts in the Ewe house are built of a post 
framework. Screens made from the midrib of the oil palm 
fronds are used to block the spaces between the post 
upright . These huts and the roof of the large huts in 
the Ewe house (fig. 10) have thatched, gabled roofs.
The east wall of the rooms on the eastern side of 
the Ashanti house has collapsed. A temporary screening 
of corrugated iron sheets and timber has been built.
The posts marked on the plan, in those rooms,-were put 
in to hold up the roof. Such posts are not therefore a 
standard part of an Ashanti house.
It should be noted that the room to the west of • the 
kitchen in the Agogo house is an office and second bed­
room for the man, who also has the rooms at the south­
east corner of the court by the entrance. In the Akote 
kyere house the circular structure under the west vera­
ndah is an oven for drying fish. The owner of the Ewe 
house (fig. 10) has moved from a nearby village and is 
the owner of a lorry, which is parked at night in the 
northern portion of the court of his house. In choo­
sing houses to illustrate the context of various family 
arrangements there is always the limitation that most 
houses contain an idiosynchratic feature, even though 
the house may be conformable in all its other attributes.
308
Fig 2. Location of Kin. Fante House (see Fig 1) Akotekyere 
Schematic Block Diagram.
Fig 3 . Development ol Fante House. Akotekyere
Fig 4. Ashanti House Agogo. Ashanti Region
The use of space differs quite considerably be­
tween these houses. In the Agocjo house the storage of 
bulk equipment is segregated from the kitchen. The 
store and kitchen are next to each other in the Akote­
kyere house. One hut is used as both kitchen and sto­
re in the Ewe houses. Though the Agogo house is struc­
turally a self contaxned unit, its rubbish is removed 
to a communal dump. The Akotekyere house uses a ser­
ies of dumps on the periphery of the village area, 
while in Aduklu Kpatove dumps occur both by the houses 
and at the edge of the village. In the more open plan 
of the Fante and Ewe houses, the baths are either sep­
arate from the main buildings or added to the end of 
one of the buildings. The bath in the Ashanti house 
forms part of the structure of the building, though it 
is visually segregated from the rest of the house in 
the north-east corner. Each house achieves visual se­
gregation of the bath area, but seems to proceed from 
different basic notions about the arrangement of stru­
ctures .
Location of Personnel
In the Aduklu Kpatove, Agogo and Akotekyere hou­
ses strangers occupy or use some of the rooms within 
the structural limits of the house (figs. 11,5,2, res­
pectively). The strangers in Agogo are present for 
commercial reasons, while in the other houses the rooms 
are used by members of nearby academic institutions.
In Aduklu Kpatove and Agogo the houses define their own 
area within which the personnel may live and work. The 
Akotekyere house depends upon an adjacent but indepen­
dent house to define the south side of the inner court.
Change in location of personnel can occur for se­
veral reasons. In the next section I will describe 
changes due to increase in the number of people in the 
house. Other changes occur due to structural collapse, 
either obliging the occupant of the ruined room to move 
or, if that is not acceptable, requiring rapid repairs 
to the damaged room. In the Agogo house the mother of 
the owner of the house has moved from the northern 
ruined room on the east side of the house, to her pre­
sent room at the south end. (fig. 5). The man who was 
described as the owner of the house, uses the room just 
to the north-east of his mother.
312
Fig 5. Location of Kin. Ashanti House. Agogo. 
Schematic Block Diagram.
I
N
Fig 6. Ashanti House. Agogo.
L
313
Fig 7 . Ewe House. Aduklu Kpatove Volta Region
In general, each mature woman has her own firepla­
ce in these houses. In the Agogo house there are five 
fireplaces in the kitchen, which is at the north end of 
the house. The two fireplaces at the west end are used 
by the strangers who use the two large rooms in the 
west wing. The central fireplace is used by the school 
children of the House. The sister of the house owner 
bas the next fireplace, which is set farther out on the 
kitchen floor . At the east end of tne kitchen is the 
fireplace used by the owner’s sister’s daughter to pro­
duce food for herself and her grandmother.
There are two fireplaces in 1 h< Fante house, both 
used by the widow. The fireplace under the verandah 
can be used when lain prevents the use of the' one in 
the court. There does not seem to be any regular pla­
ce in the house? where the wives of the widow's sons 
can cook. They seem to use coal-pots on the verandah 
of the east block or in their rooms. In the Ewe house 
(fig. 10), the only mature woman is the owner's wife. 
Like the wife of the owner of the other Ewe house she 
has her own kitchen in a post-built hut. The wife of 
each house owner has her fireplace in the kitchen. In 
the house (fig. 7) the small stand between the big 
kitchen and the main house, could be used to cover an 
outside fireplace for the owner’s wife. Such an arran­
gement occurs in other houses in Aduklu Kpatove. In 
the house (figs 7, 8) the son’s wife need obtain food 
only for herself, as her husband is working away from 
Adklu Kpatove. The owner’s sister has her own kitchen 
to the south of the hut where she sleeps.
Man and wife may either occupy the same room in 
the Ewe and Fante houses or use separate rooms. From 
fig. 8, it can be seen that the oldest male in the 
house has a room separate from his wife, but the son, 
who lives in the north east room of the main building 
shares his room with his wife. In the Fante house the 
woman in the north wing is a widow, but had previously 
occupied the same room as her husband. The two men 
who use the large rooms in the eastern block of this 
house live With their wives. The Agogo house repre­
sents one of the types of household arrangement defi­
ned by Fortes (1948;4-6,149-79). The owner of the 
house lives separately from the other parent of his 
children. The same applies to the owner’s sister. In 
neither case does the other parent live within the
Fig 8. Location of Kin. Ewe House, (see Fig 7) Aduklu Kpatove 
Schematic Block Diagram •
1Fig 9 . Development of Ewe House
■ , METRES
20 25
%
see Fig 7) Aduklu Kpatove
Fig 10. Ewe House. Aduklu Kpatove. Volta Region
319
bouse.
Young children would sleep in their mother’s 
room in all four of the houses, though in the Fante 
house some of these children also sleep in the outer 
room of the north wing (fig. 2). The other multiple 
residence cases are the young unmarried boys, who 
occupy the room at the west end of the north wing of 
the house. Groups of young children in Aduklu Kpa­
tove may also occupy a room separate from their 
mother, but this situation does not arise in either 
of the houses I illustrate. A situation where two 
people of adjacent generations occupy a room occurs 
in the Agogo house witty the owner's mother and her 
niece (fig. 5). The three communities (however) seem 
prepared to tolerate three generations of occupants 
in a house, and may actually intend to achieve such a 
situation.
The Development of the House
The Agogo house was built as one unit and has 
only undergone minor repairs since its construction. 
Only the owner’s mother has changed residence loca­
tion .
Extension in the Fante house (fig. 3) has been 
carried out by the addition of groups of rooms. The 
separate house to the west, first defined the west 
edge of the original court of the house I am des­
cribing. The addition of the north wing was car­
ried out when the sons of the now-deceased man were 
mature and required their own rooms. The second L 
shaped structure was therefore built to house the 
owner, his wife and their young children.
Development of the Ewe house is based on the 
aggregation either of a large building containing sev 
eral rooms or the addition of a single hut, without 
there necessarily being any structural link between 
the buildings. The basic unit consists of a main 
building and a kitchen in both houses. In the house 
(figs 8, 9) development proceeded by the addition of 
a residence/kitchen group, when the owner’s sister 
joined his house. In the other Ewe house (figs, 11, 
12) the development involved the construction of a 
larger main building as the number of children
120
" 1
A 0
r
Fig 11. Location of Kin. Ewe House (see Fig 10) Aduklu Kpatcne 
Schematic Block Diagram.
Fig 12. Development of Ewe House- f see Fig 10) Aduiclu Kpatove to
increased along with the economic need for more sto­
rage space. The old main building was then given 
another use as the wife’s room.
Comment
The diagrams of the Fante, Ashanti and Ewe hou­
ses give an impression of the framework in which va­
rious typesof family arrangements occur. The frame 
is ptovided by the walls of the house but also by 
such factors as the location and frequency of occu­
rence of artefacts within the structure; the places 
where people prefer to sit and the relationship of 
public and private routes.
In the study of house form and its relationship 
to family structure one problem is to assess the 
relationship between all the attributes involved in 
an occupied house. One would expect these attributes 
to be functionally coherent with each other unless 
the social situation being considered has had insu­
fficient time to attain any coherence and ensure its 
continued existence. This issue in itself could be a 
source of varied interpretations. One then has to 
consider the degree to which the character of the va­
rious attributes is defined by the functional influe- 
ce of the other attributes, or whether the features 
such as artefact location and house form are indepen­
dently defined by the communitiesT notions about the 
arrangement of space. The latter would imply that 
the form of the house cannot simply be regarded as a 
product of the activities occuring within it, but is 
itself a factor to which those activities are adjus­
ted.
A senior person in a house may occupy a room 
that visually dominates the other rooms, so reinfor­
cing the person's status. The position of the 
owner’s rooms in the Ashanti house dominates the court 
by being raised up on a platform at one corner of the 
court and also forming one side of the only entrance 
to the house. House form might also define a person’s 
location preferences and proxemics behaviour (Hall, 
1966). Since in eArly childhood the house provides 
the frame within which the child learns how to locate 
itself and recognise the location of other entities.
32 3
The result of both these processes would be the 
replication of the house form by the succeeding 
generation, but also the replication of the social 
ranking and spacing pattern. The relationship bet­
ween different combinations of family type and 
house form might therefore be considered in terms 
of the reinforcement and replication mechanisms 
involved.
As well as possessing functional coherence the 
attributes of an occupied house can be regarded as 
arrangements of people, objects, and structures, 
conforming to classifications that might have a lo­
gical coherence, since they constitute the view of 
reality of one community. The diverse, possible 
arrangements of seating, object location and struc­
tures can be observed in figs. 1, 4, 7, 10. The 
relationship of family type and house form can then 
be considered in terms of the various conceptions 
of reality used by different societies. Studies of 
functional and concept coherence require the analy­
sis of a large number of houses from a community, 
if possible every available example, in order to 
identify the various patterns oc.cu„ing within the 
community. It will also be possible to assess the 
range of variability for each pattern, to obtain an 
index of the tolerance of variation of the community 
in the behaviour of its members. This provides a 
more detailed assessment of house and family arran­
gements than is given by the description of a 
"typical'* house.
Note
1. The indeterminacy is caused by the deserted 
houses that are no longer being maintained even 
though some are used for storage, and by the occu­
rence of widely separated house owned by one man .
References
Fortes M. 1948 Ashanti Survey 1945-6. An
Steel R.W. Experiment rin Social Research
and Addy P. Geographical Journal 110.
Hall E.T. 1966 The Hidden Dimension.
Rapoport A.1969 House Form and Culture.
324
mmjam
Fig 13. KEY
■  Block 
4 H K  Wall 
■MMJL Temporary Wall 
IJ// Broken WallI
I Door 
Blocked door 
Window 
Small Window 
Step 
Bench 
Platform 
Low Platform 
Depression 
Drains 
Post
Verandah
Timber Wall & Post 
Timber hutch 
Stand
Unfinished Stand 
/ V W \  Edge of stand cover 
a \ Garden Fence 
•— •—  Fence 
~“jr Screen©s Tree 
A A A A A  Gully 
♦V.V/ Path 
Dump
□ Bed
A '
i----1i____i
AA
0□
f  “
m
c .1J Bench 
0  Chair/stool
n u n
Box/table
Fireplace (Fante)
Fireplaces (Ashanti)
Fireplace (Ewe)
Pottery Vessel
Metal Vessel
Gourd
Basket
Grindstone
Mortar
Pestle
Timber
Stone
Figs. 3,4,9,12. 
Building
Position of Building
Wall
Verandah
Figs. 2,5,8,11.
Male
Male (Deceased) 
Female 
Children 
Marriage
Residence Location 
Occupied by Stranger 
Wall
Verandah
Platform
Slope
Fence
325
Acknowledgement s
I would like to acknowledge the tolerance and 
patience of the house owners who permitted me to 
make such detailed surveys of their homes, and the 
kind assistance of H.T. Wagenburr, M.A. who intro­
duced me to Akotekyere; Mr. G.W. Foottit and 
Miss K. Swallow who enabled me to survey the house 
in Agogo and Mr. K. Adde, who introduced me to 
Aduklu Kpatove.
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House form and family arrangement

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