LEGON JOURNAL OF THE HUMANITIES Volume 30.2 (2019) COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES UNIVERSITY OF GHANA ISSN: 0855-1502 E-ISSN: 2458-746X LEGON JOURNAL OF THE HUMANITIES VOLUME 30.2 (2019) Editor Gordon S.K. Adika Assistant Editor Gladys Nyarko Ansah COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES UNIVERSITY OF GHANA ISSN: 0855-1502 E-ISSN: 2458-746X CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE Attribution-Non commercial-No derivates 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) This issue was produced with financial support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York through the University of Ghana Building A New Generation of Academics in Africa (BANGA- Africa) Project. Legon Journal of the Humanities is indexed in the database of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). It is also accessible on the platform of African Journals Online (AJOL) Page ii Legon Journal of the Humanities Vol. 30.2 (2019) Legon Journal of the Humanities is published by the College of Humanities, University of Ghana EDITORIAL BOARD Nana Aba A. Amfo ………………………………………………..................………Chair Professor of Linguistics Department of Linguistics School of Languages, College of Humanities University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana [email protected] Gordon S. K. Adika ………………………………………………...............………Editor Associate Professor, Language Centre College of Humanities University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana [email protected] Gladys Nyarko Ansah …………………………………...................……Assistant Editor Senior Lecturer, Department of English School of Languages, College of Humanities University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana [email protected] Esi Sutherland-Addy ………………………………………………............……Member Associate Professor Institute of African Studies, College of Humanities University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana [email protected] Susanne Gehrmann ………………………………………………….............…...Member Professor of African Literatures and Cultures Department of Asian and African Studies Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany [email protected] Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni ……………………………………………................Member Professor, Department of Development Studies Professor and Head, Archie Mafeje Research Institute (AMRI) University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa [email protected] Legon Journal of the Humanities Vol. 30.2 (2019) Page iii Cas Wepener ………………………………………………………...............……Member Professor of Religions and Head Department of Practical Theology University of Pretoria, South Africa [email protected] Joshua Amuah ……………………………………………..............……………..Member Senior Lecturer and Head Department of Music School of Performing Arts, College of Humanities [email protected] EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Kofi Asante Twumasi PAST EDITORS : 1974-1977: Lawrence A. Boadi 1987-1994: John N.D. Dodoo 1994-1999: Alex K. Dzameshie 1999-2003 : E. Kweku Osam 2004-2009 : Gordon S. K. Adika 2009-2015 : Helen A. Yitah 2016-2018 : Augustine H. Asaah Page iv Legon Journal of the Humanities Vol. 30.2 (2019) ADVISORY BOARD Moradewun Adejunmobi, Professor, African American and African Studies, University of California, Davis, USA. Emmanuel K. Akyeampong, Professor of History; Professor of African and American Studies, Center for Government and International Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge-MA, USA. Li Anshan, Professor of International Relations; Director, Institute of Afro-Asian Studies and Center for African Studies, Peking University; Vice-President, Chinese African Studies, China. Hyun-Chin Lim, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Founding Director of Asia Center, Seoul National University; President, Korean Social Science Research Council, Korea. Dorothy Odartey-Wellington, Associate Professor of Spanish, School of Languages and Literatures, University of Guelph, Canada. David Owusu-Ansah, Professor of History; Executive Director, Faculty Access and Inclusion, James Madison University, Harrisonburg-VA, USA. Nicola Piper, Professor of International Migration, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Director of Human Rights and Democratization (Asia Pacific), The University of Sidney; Convener, Sidney Asia Pacific Migration Network (SAPMIN), Australia. Laud Ato Quayson, Professor and Director, Center for Transnational and Diaspora Studies, University of Toronto, Canada. João José Reis, Professor, Department of History, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil. Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm, Professor of General Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University, Sweden. Legon Journal of the Humanities Vol. 30.2 (2019) Page v Email: [email protected]; [email protected] For further details (e.g. guide for contributors, copyright, etc.) kindly go to the journal’s website: http://coh.ug.edu.gh/ljh Page vi Legon Journal of the Humanities Vol. 30.2 (2019) Table of Contents Religious pluralism and interfaith coexistence: Ecumenicalism in the context of traditional modes of tolerance................................................................................... 1 David Owusu-Ansah Emmanuel Akyeampong Ethno archaeological clues to stone exploitation in Ancient Dangme-land, Greater- Accra Region............................................................................................................... 19 Fritz Biveridge Compared to them, we are angels: Parliament, othering and the fight against corruption in Ghana 43 Kwabena Sarfo Sarfo-Kantankah Joseph Arko Pub interaction in South Western Nigeria 71 Ganiu Abisoye Bamgbose Temitope Michael Ajayi A reconsideration of grammatical categorization in English...................................... 87 John F. Wiredu The syntax of Dagbani personal pronouns: an analysis............................................. 109 Kwame Abukari Definiteness in the Zarma Determiner phrase............................................................. 141 Waheed Ayisa Jayeola Documenting Simpa: Advances in language documentation..................................... 167 Nana Ama Agyeman Q methodological study on stakeholder involvement processes that support process use of evaluation in the Upper Regions, Ghana............................................ 191 Bernard Afiik Akanpabadai Akanbang Gordon Dugle Millicent Awialie Akaateba Humanities and sciences as complementary aspects of an Afrikan=Black whole: Evidence from Archeoastronomy................................................................................ 215 Obádélé Bakari Kambon Yaw Mankatah Asare Book Review: Review of Philosophical Foundations of the African Humanities through Postcolonial Perspectives edited by Helen Yitah and Helen Lauer.............. 243 Dannabang Kuwabong Legon Journal of the Humanities Vol. 30.2 (2019) Page vii Owusu-Ansah, D. & Akyeampong, E./Legon Journal of the Humanities Vol. 30.2 (2019) DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ljh.v30i2.1 Religious Pluralism and Interfaith Coexistence: Ecumenicalism in the Context of Traditional Modes of Tolerance1 David Owusu-Ansah Professor of History & Associate Provost for Diversity James Madison University, United States of America E-mail: [email protected] Emmanuel Akyeampong Gurney Professor of History and African and African American Studies Oppenheimer Faculty Director Harvard University, United States of America Email: [email protected] Submitted: January 3, 2019/ Accepted: September 9, 2019/ Published: December 30, 2019 Abstract In many parts of the non-western world, religion is singled out as the cause for violent clashes. At the 2007 TrustAfrica workshop in Dakar, the conference of religious leaders, scholars, and experts from 12 African countries and the Diaspora explored this concern under the theme "Meeting the Challenges of Religion and Pluralism in Africa." It was observed that religiously justified conflicts were often the repackaging of community concerns regarding issues of social, economic, and political injustices, inequities and exclusions. Consequently, a project on “religious pluralism and interfaith coexistence in Ghana” was funded in 2008 as part of the efforts to examine the role of local traditions as a foundation to interfaith dialogue. Earlier in 2005, a similar project on the theme of Islam and tolerance, with funding from Harvard and Michigan State University, was conducted in Ghana.2 Several issues emerging from the field conversations are pertinent to topics of how history shaped Muslim relations with their non-Muslim hosts in West Africa. It is often argued in the literature that Islam’s inherently adoptive attitude toward African religious culture made it possible for Muslims and their non-Muslim hosts to co-exist. However, this research contends that, in the case of Ghana, it was the traditional local culture as defined by indigenous religious values that shaped and moderated the environment that sustained peaceful interreligious relations. The authors express concern that as the country experiences rapid urbanization, Westernization, proliferation of charismatic churches and aggressive Christian evangelization, the traditional values that underpinned pluralism and peace in historic times might be threatened (George Bob-Milliar and Karen Lauterback, 2018). Keywords: Traditional cosmology, spiritual knowledge, power, ecumenism, the common good, religious tolerance, pluralism, syncretism, peaceful national coexistence 1 David Owusu-Ansah presented a version of this paper at the 12 Annual-Lecture in Honor of Professor Nehemia Levtzion held at the Levtzion Center for Islamic Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, on 20 March 2017. 2 Interviews used as source material for this paper came from our fieldwork in Ghana in 2005 through 2008. Rebecca Tandoh and our colleague the late Dr. Mark Sey