ABSTRACT
In Ghana, as elsewhere in Africa, disputes over the boundaries of chieftaincies and fields are not only widespread, but in constant flux.1 Berry for instance, notes in her study of southeastern Asante that conflicts over farmlands, which commonly lack precise boundaries, are continually “enacted, renewed, and redefined through numerous daily dramas of assertions, contestations, and debate,” (2001:157) in which the parties involved are forced to make representations of the past to legitimate claims in the present. Even among members of the same family disputing over succession to office or stool land boundaries, conflicting claims often have to be interpreted and constantly reaffirmed through narratives of the distant past or tradition. Lentz has recently made similar observations in the Black Volta region where alternative “first comer” and “late comer” narrative accounts are proffered by rival claimants to disputed land or earth shrine boundaries, providing discursive content for contestation and counter-contestation.2 It has long been recognized, however, by both historians and anthropologists of Africa, that the past or tradition upon which such narratives draw can be very recent and invented.3 However, the means by which self-professed outsiders, viz. recent migrants, fit into this terrain have not generally been a focus of investigation.
