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Abstract: Although important changes in the use of the concept of "culture" are typically associated with professional anthropology, this paper explores other contributions to ideas about the relationship between race and culture in West Africa. Its protagonists are the nineteenth-century proto-Afrocentric Edward W. Blyden, a Caribbean-born Liberian and Sierra Leonian, and the twentieth-century medical doctor REG Armattoe, a Gold Coaster, Togolander and Ewe. It argues that the mid-1800s elaboration of an imperial space that encompassed West Africa facilitated the emergence of a strain of culturalist thinking though which Africans were able to influence Western theorizing about religion, culture and race. The rise of nationalism, however, collapsed that imperial space and brought to dominance a new way of instrumentalizing culture, one linked to liberal ideas of self-determination and a globally asymmetrical sovereignty.

Bio: Sean Hanretta, Associate Professor, History, specializes in West African intellectual history, with a focus on Islam and African religions in Francophone West Africa and Ghana. His book Islam and Social Change in French West Africa: History of an Emancipatory Community (Cambridge University Press, 2009) investigates the history and religious community of Muslim Sufi mystics from socially marginal backgrounds in colonial French West Africa. He is also the co-editor of Ghana Studies.