ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on performances and dramas, ritual ceremonies and celebrations as well as dramatic episodes in the lives of Fulani in Greater Accra. These cultural performances and social dramas are in a sense a methodological metaphor for the exploration of issues of conflict and contradiction among and between actors and audiences in Greater Accra. The chapter explores "rhetoric and reality," the ways in which people speak of Fulani unity—and the rhetoric they employ—in contrast to the "contestible" realities of their situation. Vignettes and stories are used to illustrate the ways in which ideas of Fulani "sameness and difference" are discussed and portrayed. The stories and vignettes represent some of the myriad ways in which aspects of Fulani ethnic, social and individual identities are constructed and contested, maintained and manipulated. The dichotomous relationship between town and bush, urban and rural, Hausa and Fulfulde, speaks to another set of identity-related issues.
