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Ann Cassiman (born 1970 in Stanford, UK) is a Belgian anthropologist interested in the cultural and spatial practices of rural communities, in specific the Kassena communities in Northern Ghana and Southern Burkina Fasso. Cassiman received a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium in 2001. Currently Dr. Cassiman is a full-time professor at the Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. She is also the coordinator of the Masters Programme in Cultures and Development Studies (CADES). Her research which has resulted into various publications, books and museum exhibitions in both the Netherlands and Belgium, has surely contributed to a broader understanding of life in West Africa.

Career
Cassiman's research amongst the Kasena started in 1996. Under the supervision of Prof Renaat Devish, she did a close ethnographic study of daily life practices amongst the Kasena in rural Northern Ghana. This resulted into her doctoral dissertation entitled: "Stirring Life: An Anthropological Study of Women's Paths and Places among the Kasena of Northern Ghana", which was published in 2006. The main premise of this study was to explore Kasena village life, in particular cultural practices and traditions from a female perspective. This fieldwork set the foundation for further inquiries into issues pertaining to migration and globalization and its effect on the contemporary Kassena village. More recent work pays attention to how, amidst global influences, Kasena traditions are maintained and continued in both rural and urban contexts. This juxtaposition between rural and urban life became the basis for Cassiman’s exhibition ‘Home Call’ at the Museum Aan de Stroom (MAS) in Antwerp, Belgium.

Kassena village life
In “Stirring Life: Women's Paths and Places Among the Kasena of Northern Ghana” published in 2006, Cassiman gives a “masterful overview of daily life as well as ritual practices and meanings in Kasena”. Cassiman's ethnographic account of the Kasena includes an detailed description of daily rituals, Kasena cosmology, the importance of built dwellings, and Kasena marriage and paternal relations.

Cassiman describes rural Kasena life as it unfolds in and around the house, or Songo. This includes the pathways leading to the house, the process of building and expanding a house and how women personify parts of these houses to make it their own. This is the case with the woman’s twin rooms, which is the most intimate place in the house. This entails a portal room, where its owner sleeps and keeps her personal belongings and a second head room, which serves as an indoor cooking space. Cassiman sees the twin room as the metaphorical “belly of the house”; it represents both a digesting belly as well as a procreating womb.

As far as the Kasena’s cosmology is concerned, Cassiman reveals their metaphoric use of the calabash to explain the world. The upper half of the calabash comprises an invisible world of origin where as the bottom part represents the visible world of the living. The two worlds are separated by We (sky); which is the originator of life. The Kassena's ordering of life also involves ancestors. Respect towards cosmological order and an east-west orientation “ensures fertility, prosperity, and subsequently life”.

Cassiman's interest in dwelling and material culture led to a second publication in 2011 entitled “Architectures of Belonging: Inhabiting Worlds in Rural West Africa”. Here Cassiman explores how local and global worlds can become intertwined through material culture. By investigating the vernacular architectural traditions found in West Africa, this book reflects on what housing means to these societies. By including various authors from different backgrounds in this publication, Cassiman accentuates how the rich meanings embedded in processes of dwelling amongst West Africans differ from that found in the West. .

Migration and the Kassena
Cassiman’s interest in the Kasena includes issues pertaining to migration. This includes the movement of the Kasena between their rural village and Ghana’s urban areas, as well as movement beyond the country’s borders. Cassiman argues that current migratory patterns are mere extensions of traditional trajectories. Such would include the movement between houses and lineages as a result of marriage. The difference would be in that until recently it was predominantly the Kasena men that would be involved in the migration process.

Traditionally the young Kasena men would migrate to the South of Ghana in search of work. This would be due to the seasonal nature of farm work in the north. Their work in the south would be only temporary as they usually returned to their villages upon the return of the rainy season. In recent decades, urban areas have become more appealing for the Kasena men have encouraged them to migrate permanently. This can be linked to generating greater capital and gaining fame and fortune by leaving home. This migration often extent further to include wives, families and relatives. Kasena women have also started to migrate in an independent capacity, either in search of work or freedom from social and family responsibilities in the rural village. Cassiman states that many Kasena keep their tie with their rural home. Regardless of where the migrants might find themselves, they consider their rural home as “home”. Cassiman argues that it is ultimately death that forces migrants to return home, because “a burial in one’s place of origin guarantees one’s rebirth as an ancestor”.

"Home Call"
Cassiman’s in-depth study of the Kassena which includes a multitude of photographs and video material, led to an exhibition entitled “Songo. Ritmes van wonen” in 2010. This was housed by the Africa museum in Berg en Dal, Nijmegen, The Netherlands and developed into a second exhibition called “Home Call” at the Museum aan de Stroom (MAS) in Antwerp, Belgium. Embedded in the discourse of visual anthropology, Cassiman used photographs, films and scenography to depict Kassena village life and also the Kassena life cycle. When somebody passes away, the Kassena would say that this person has 'gone home', to the world of their ancestors. The individual has therefore been called back home. It is on the fine methapor of 'home call' that Cassiman constructed this exhibition.

List of Publications
2000 A woman is someone’s child: women movement and the shaping of social and domestic space. In: Tengan A., Hagberg S. (Eds.), Terres et pouvoirs contestés: bonds and boundaries in S. Burkina Faso and N. Ghana.. Uppsala: Acta Universalis Upsaliensis, 105-131.

2000 When the child wants a name. The primary emergence of belonging among the Kasena: an anthropological analysis. Medische antropologie, (1), 23-45.

2006 Stirring life: women's paths and places among the Kasena of Northern Ghana. Uppsala studies in cultural anthropology, 39. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press.

2008 Home and away: mental geographies of young migrant workers and their beloning to the family house in northern Ghana. Housing, Theory and Society, 25(1), 14-30.

2010 Home Call: Absence, Presence and Migration in Rural Northern Ghana. African Identities, 8(1), 19-38.

2011 Introduction: Culture and Dwelling. In: Cassiman A. (Eds.), Architectures of Belonging: Inhabiting Worlds in Rural West Africa. Antwerp: BAI publishers, 19-37.

2011 Bodies of Belonging: An Ethnography of the Kasena House. In: Cassiman A. (Eds.), Architectures of Belonging: Inhabiting Worlds in Rural West Africa, Chapt. 2. Antwerp: BAI publishers, 39-72.

2011 The Commodification and Touristification of Architectural Pride: A Case from Northern Ghana. In: Cassiman A. (Eds.), Architectures of Belonging: Inhabiting Worlds in Rural West Africa, Chapt. 9. Antwerp: BAI publishers, 189-211.

2012 Le regard et la Tour: reprendre une modernité entre Paris et le Ghana. In: de Lame D., Laurent P. (Eds.), Development, liberalism and modernity: trajectories for an anthropology of social change.

2012 Display and mobility: the dynamics of revaling and concealing in the domestic space. In: Graw K., Schielke S. (Eds.), The Global Horizon: Migratory Expectations in Africa and the Middle East. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

2012 The Global Horizon. (Graw, K., Ed., Schielke, S., Ed.). Leuven: Leuven University Press.

2012 The Eiffel Tower and the Eye: Actualising Modernity between Paris and Ghana. African Diaspora.