Festival infrastructure: The ritual dimension of community development in southwestern Ghana

Abstract

This article reconceptualizes festivals as infrastructures of governance, focusing on the Kundum and Mother River festivals in southwestern Ghana. Drawing on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork, it demonstrates how these festivals function as systems that coordinate collective action, sustain accountability, and enact development through ritual repetition. The analysis foregrounds “ritualized coordination,” showing how authority, participation, and critique are distributed across human, ancestral, and ecological actors. Rather than viewing governance as the domain of formal institutions alone, the article argues that community development is coproduced within the cyclical, adaptive rhythms of ritual life. By illustrating how festivals organize labor, mediate disputes, and foster environmental stewardship, the study advances debates in community development, ritual studies, and African political anthropology. Recognizing festivals as operative infrastructures – not cultural appendages – enables more sustainable and contextually resonant development. The article concludes by calling for greater engagement with ritual infrastructures as critical partners in governance and community development.