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Hit and Move: Boxing and Belonging in Accra, Ghana Leo Hopkinson S0825996 PhD Thesis Social Anthropology The University of Edinburgh 2018 Declaration Date: I declare that, except where otherwise indicated, this thesis is entirely my own work and that no part of it has been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. Signature: Leo Hopkinson i For my parents, Richard and Julia. In memory of Godwin Nii Dzani Kotey aka Allowey ii Abstract This thesis builds on 19 months of ethnographic fieldwork with the boxing community of Accra, Ghana. Having trained and competed alongside boxers in Ga Mashie, the area of central Accra strongly associated with the sport, I foreground an embodied understanding of the sport’s sociality and of boxers’ engagements with a global sporting industry. The thesis is split into two parts: Part one examines the process of subject making through the mundane and quotidian practices of the sport – in training, during a bout and in boxers lives outside the gym and the ring. I ask how boxers’ sensory experience is morally encoded, and consider what ethical life looks likes when violence is a necessary part of everyday life. Chapters one and two rethink care through pain; asking how painful interactions become moments of shared experience and affirmation, rather than moments of isolation and objectification. I argue that an ethic of care and an ethical orientation towards others emerge as primary concerns in boxers’ lives. I theorise violence as neither necessarily affirming subjectivity nor objectifying, but as socially constructed to either affirm or objectify. Violence is thus inherently ambivalent and social rather than normatively objectifying, and practices of care responds to this ambivalence. Part two concerns the boxing community’s engagements with macro-imaginaries including a global sporting industry, the Ghanaian state, and the nation. I explore how embodied forms of movement and gendered understandings of self address the pervasive power dynamics which shape the boxing community’s lives. Movement across the world to fight, alongside specific forms of movement through and around central Accra, articulate a sense of belonging between the boxing community and Ga Mashie which complicates contemporary understandings of ethnicity in Ghana. By understanding corporeal movement as creative and politically engaged I offer new perspectives on life in a world of myriad forms of connection, and concomitantly of emergent dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. iii iv Lay Summary This thesis is based on 19 months of ethnographic research with the boxing community of Accra, Ghana. During this time, I trained as a boxer in Accra, lived with boxers, attended events, fights and meetings outside the gym, and conducted interviews with members of the boxing community. Boxing in Accra is strongly associated with the area of Ga Mashie in the centre of the city and with the Ga ethnic group. Much of my research took place in Ga Mashie. Throughout the thesis I reflect on what it means to associate a sport with a particular ethnic group, and how boxers and coaches understand this ethnic-association to shape their lives and work. The thesis is split into two parts. Part one is based largely on data about training in the gym, preparing for fight nights and competing. In part one I explore how the boxing community understand their sport as both beneficial and harmful, often through an ambivalent relationship with violence. I suggest that not all violent interactions in the sport are about dominating or beating another person. Instead, the boxing community understand their work in the gym and the ring often through ideas of care and help. This emphasis on care leads me to ask what care is, and I come to an understanding of care and violence as related concepts which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In part one I also consider how the emphasis on violent and physical forms of care in the sport contradicts normal family relations, particularly those between brothers. I consider why it is a problem for brothers to box one another competitively and explore how the boxing community go about avoiding situations where brothers might possibly compete. I use this discussion to reflect on what separates family relations from other forms of social relationship, and ask what makes family special as a way of relating to others. Part two is of this thesis reflects on boxers lives in the global boxing industry: how they make decisions about travelling to work in the sport, and how they imagine a global sporting industry which is based in distant location such as the USA and the UK. I consider how widespread stereotypes about race and masculinity shape the opportunities for work abroad which are available to boxers, and explore how boxers reflect on taking up offers of employment based on negative and harmful stereotypes. In the final two chapters, I ask how particular forms of walking and running in Accra are a ways for the boxing community to reflect on the relationships of power which operate around them; in particular, the idea of a global industry dominated by financial powers in Europe and North America, and their v relationship with the Ghanaian state. I suggest that the physical process walking is a way of engaging with and reflecting on global and national relations of power, rather than simply a mode of transport from place to place. I conclude the thesis by thinking about how these two sections both speak to the experience of being connected to other places and people, and what it means to be excluded from, or included in, global flows and relationships of care. vi Acknowledgements I would not have had the opportunity to complete this project without the support of the Economic and Social Research Council, for which I am extremely grateful. I owe thanks to each and every member of the Accra boxing family, who were all endlessly patient with (among other things) my poor Ga and my lack of condition. Everything I have learnt during this project comes as a result of their generosity. The Attoh Quarshie boxing gym has been the hub of my life since 2014 and every member of the gym shaped this thesis. Thank you all for welcoming me and making me feel a part of something. Godwin Nii Dzani Kotey oversaw my inclusion in the gym and I am forever grateful for his trust and kindness. Vincent Nii Akaia Nettey is at the heart of this project. His insight, knowledge and generosity have shaped my work profoundly and I am proud to call him a friend and coach. My thanks also go to Osmanu Nii Ama Brew, John Nii Korley Clottey and Sowah Thompson for all their help and interest in my work. Among the many how helped me learn in the gym, the ring and beyond Emmanuel Martey, Obodai Sai, George Ashie, Joshua Clottey, Helen Joseph, Fatiou Fassinou, Michael Barnor, Chalres Adamu, Michael Ofei Dodoo, Issah Innussah, Sam Yaw Addo, Ramatu Quaye, Alex Major, Kofi Amatchako, Daniel Odorro and Enoch Sackey were particularly generous. Outside the Attoh Quarshie, I owe thanks to Habib Ahmed, Wahid Omar, Joshua Quartey and Abraham Tabul among many others. Theophilus Edwin Addo, Daniel Lartey Quaye, Saddam Ibrahim, Ofori Asare and Alex Ntiamoah-Boakye all gave much time, humour and many sorties which taught me a great deal and for which I am indebted. Esther Darku helped me to get to grips with learning Ga and being in Ghana. Without her conversation and advice, I would have struggled a great deal in the beginning. Finally, or perhaps “the main event” as one might say in boxing, I am hugely grateful for the friendship of Akimos Annan Ampiah with whom I share many fond memories. In Korle Gonno I was lucky to live with warm and caring people. In particular, thanks to all the Dodoo family for welcoming me into your house, to Bernice for your excellent vii conversation and to Mary Lamley for drinking coffee with me and looking out for me. Thanks also to Jake Dinsdale, Ann Christin-Berger and Jamie Macleod for your company, kindness and for looking after me during various illnesses. I am hugely indebted to Sam Lamptey, without whose friendship and generosity I would have struggled throughout my time in Accra. Sam is one of the most committed and knowledgeable people I know. His passion for his community is truly infectious. Friends and colleagues have made writing up in Edinburgh, Amsterdam and elsewhere infinitely more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise. Thanks to Luke Heslop for reading more drafts than he should have, for life advice and music recommendations. Rebekah Thompson, Lilian Kennedy, Olof Ohlson, Mark Hann and Zach Baynham-Herd have been ideal travelling companions for the last few years. I am endlessly grateful for all our conversations, trips, walks, runs, pints and the enormous amount you always give in time and thought.