Time and transcultural technologies of the self in the Ghanaian Pentecostal diaspora

The new forms of charismatic Pentecostalism that have swept over sub-Saharan Africa are very much the product of transnational and transcultural modernity; this particular form of Christianity demands a complete break with the past. Pentecostalism in modern African societies is both a debate within modernity as well as a discourse on modernity. It deals with the predicament of many living in the urban areas of a country like Ghana who experience on a daily basis modernity's imbalances and inequalities. It presents a corridor to the global world and has developed intimate relations with the 'new diaspora' of Ghanaian migrants to the West. As the new Pentecostalism appears to cut across national and cultural borders, it can best be studied within the context of an anthropology of transnationalism. This approach investigates how identities are formed in situations where, as a result of diasporic flows, communities arise that neither seem to have a firm 'geographical' anchor nor the means to create the individual as a local, cultural subject. This chapter first examines the urban forms of Pentecostalism in Ghana, then locates them within a diasporic, transnational context; and finally concludes by discussing the constitution of the subject within these various modes. Bibliogr., notes, ref