SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis examines senior high school students’ career aspirations in the contexts of both free education and youth unemployment in Ghana. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a boy’s school, it examines what factors have influenced students’ aspirations, including being members of an elite school. The school also seeks to reform students into particular kinds of educated and moral persons. The thesis draws on Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural and social capital to analyse how these forms of capital are intrinsic to the reproduction of inequality and to the functioning of the elite school in which the research was conducted. It argues for the importance of considering the role of missionary history in shaping the education system in contemporary Ghana, particularly ideals in relation to masculinity and how these intersect with the influence of neoliberal values within the education system in Ghana. This thesis also explores the changing landscape of elite mission schools in Ghana including the impact of a specific educational reform. It considers how students are reforming themselves in order to work towards their aspirations and the strategies they employ to enhance their chances of future success. It employs the concept of hope to analyse the ways in which students seek to bring their aspirations into being. This research taps into debates surrounding the relationship between education and social reproduction, mission schools and masculinities in Ghana, as well as anthropological work on youth, aspiration, hope, and future-making.