Popular Culture In Africa

Author : Stephanie Newell,Onookome Okome
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2013-11-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781135068936

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Popular Culture in Africa by Stephanie Newell,Onookome Okome Pdf

This volume marks the 25th anniversary of Karin Barber’s ground-breaking article, "Popular Arts in Africa", which stimulated new debates about African popular culture and its defining categories. Focusing on performances, audiences, social contexts and texts, contributors ask how African popular cultures contribute to the formation of an episteme. With chapters on theater, Nollywood films, blogging, and music and sports discourses, as well as on popular art forms, urban and youth cultures, and gender and sexuality, the book highlights the dynamism and complexity of contemporary popular cultures in sub-Saharan Africa. Focusing on the streets of Africa, especially city streets where different cultures and cultural personalities meet, the book asks how the category of "the people" is identified and interpreted by African culture-producers, politicians, religious leaders, and by "the people" themselves. The book offers a nuanced, strongly historicized perspective in which African popular cultures are regarded as vehicles through which we can document ordinary people’s vitality and responsiveness to political and social transformations.

Author : Toyin Falola,Augustine Agwuele
Publisher : University Rochester Press
Page : 350 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781580463317

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Africans and the Politics of Popular Culture by Toyin Falola,Augustine Agwuele Pdf

Explores the instrumentalization of various aspects of popular culture in Africa.

Author : Karin Barber
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2018-01-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9781107016897

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A History of African Popular Culture by Karin Barber Pdf

A journey through the history of African popular culture from the seventeenth century to the present day.

Author : Stephanie Newell,Onookome Okome
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2013-11-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781135068943

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Popular Culture in Africa by Stephanie Newell,Onookome Okome Pdf

This volume marks the 25th anniversary of Karin Barber’s ground-breaking article, "Popular Arts in Africa", which stimulated new debates about African popular culture and its defining categories. Focusing on performances, audiences, social contexts and texts, contributors ask how African popular cultures contribute to the formation of an episteme. With chapters on theater, Nollywood films, blogging, and music and sports discourses, as well as on popular art forms, urban and youth cultures, and gender and sexuality, the book highlights the dynamism and complexity of contemporary popular cultures in sub-Saharan Africa. Focusing on the streets of Africa, especially city streets where different cultures and cultural personalities meet, the book asks how the category of "the people" is identified and interpreted by African culture-producers, politicians, religious leaders, and by "the people" themselves. The book offers a nuanced, strongly historicized perspective in which African popular cultures are regarded as vehicles through which we can document ordinary people’s vitality and responsiveness to political and social transformations.

Author : Paul Ugor
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 419 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2021
Category : History
ISBN : 9781648250248

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Youth and Popular Culture in Africa by Paul Ugor Pdf

"The edited collection focuses on the links between young people and African popular culture. It explores popular culture produced and consumed by young people in contemporary Africa. And by "culture," we mean all kinds of texts or representations-visual, oral, written, performative, fictional, social, and virtual-created by African youth, mostly about their lives and their immediate societies, and for themselves, but also consumed by the larger public, and shared locally and globally. We proceed from the premise that cultural texts not only function as "social facts" as Karin Barber argues, but that they double as "commentaries upon, and interpretations of, social facts. They are part of social reality, but they also take up an attitude to social reality" (2007, 04). So, the work focuses specifically on what African youth produce as popular culture, under what conditions or contexts they produce such work, how they produce those texts, why they produce them, the aesthetic dimensions of these texts as cultural artifacts, and why these textual practices matter as social facts, as interpretive acts, and as cultural symbols of the general cultural activism of young people in a rapidly changing world, a world where the global cultural economy is the prime terrain for the relentless struggles over the meanings that come to shape political-economic and social systems"--

Author : Walid El Hamamsy,Mounira Soliman
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780415509725

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Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa by Walid El Hamamsy,Mounira Soliman Pdf

This book explores the current historical moment through works of popular culture produced in, and on, the Middle East and North Africa region, Turkey, and Iran. Essays consider gender, racial, political, and other issues in film, cartoons, talk shows, music, dance, blogs, graphic novels, fiction, fashion, and advertisements.

Author : Grace A Musila
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 606 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2022-05-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781000588347

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Routledge Handbook of African Popular Culture by Grace A Musila Pdf

This handbook brings together an international team of scholars from different disciplines to reflect on African popular cultural imaginaries. These imaginaries – in the sense of cultural productions, contexts, consumers, producers, platforms, and the material, affective and discursive resources they circulate – are influential in shaping African realities. Collectively, the chapters assembled in this handbook index the genres, methods, mediums, questions and encounters that preoccupy producers, consumers and scholars of African popular cultural forms across a range of geohistorical and temporal contexts. Drawing on forms such as newspaper columns, televised English Premier League football, speculative arts, romance fiction, comedy, cinema, music and digital genres, the contributors explore the possibilities and ambiguities unleashed by the production, circulation, consumption, remediation and critique of these forms. Among the questions explored across these essays are the freedoms and constraints of popular genres; the forms of self-making, pleasure and harm that these imaginaries enable; the negotiations of multiple moral regimes in everyday life; and, inevitably, the fecund terrain of contradictions definitive of many popular forms, which variously enable and undermine world-making. An authoritative scholarly resource on popular culture in Africa, this handbook is an essential read for students and scholars of African culture, society and media.

Author : Karin Barber
Publisher : James Currey
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 1997
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : UVA:X004139405

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Readings in African Popular Culture by Karin Barber Pdf

'Despite the overwhelming reality of economic decline; despite unimaginable poverty; despite wars, malnutrition, disease and political instability, African cultural productivity grows apace: popular literatures, oral narrative and poetry, dance, drama, music and visual art all thrive.' - Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father's House This collection of essays examines the way in which African popular culture has moved centre stage since the early 1980s. The emphasis is on the verbal rather than the visual, and topics covered include the oral tradition, and women in popular culture. KARIN BARBER is Professor of African Cultural Anthropology at the University of Birmingham Published in association with the International African Institute North America: Indiana University Press

Author : Carol Magee
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2012-04-26
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781617031533

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Africa in the American Imagination by Carol Magee Pdf

In the American world, the presence of African culture is sometimes fully embodied and sometimes leaves only a trace. Africa in the American Imagination: Popular Culture, Racialized Identities, and African Visual Culture explores this presence, examining Mattel’s world of Barbie, the 1996 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and Disney World, each of which repackages African visual culture for consumers. Because these cultural icons permeate American life, they represent the broader U.S. culture and its relationship to African culture. This study integrates approaches from art history and visual culture studies with those from culture, race, and popular culture studies to analyze this interchange. Two major threads weave throughout. One analyzes how the presentation of African visual culture in these popular culture forms conceptualizes Africa for the American public. The other investigates the way the uses of African visual culture focuses America’s own self-awareness, particularly around black and white racialized identities. In exploring the multiple meanings that “Africa” has in American popular culture, Africa in the American Imagination argues that these cultural products embody multiple perspectives and speak to various sociopolitical contexts: the Cold War, Civil Rights, and contemporary eras of the United States; the apartheid and postapartheid eras of South Africa; the colonial and postcolonial eras of Ghana; and the European era of African colonization.

Author : Vivian Yenika-Agbaw,Lindah Mhando
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2014-01-21
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781134623938

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African Youth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture by Vivian Yenika-Agbaw,Lindah Mhando Pdf

This book explores how African youth are depicted in contemporary literature and popular culture, and discusses the different ways by which they attempt to construct personal and cultural identities through popular culture and social media outlets. The contributors approach the subject from an interdisciplinary perspective, looking at images in children’s and adolescent literature from Africa, and the African diaspora, from Nollywood and Hollywood movies, from popular magazines, and from youth cultures encountered directly through field experiences. The findings reveal that there are many stereotypes about Africa, African youth and black cultures, and that African youth are aware of these. Since they juggle multiple identities shaped by their ethnicities, race and religion, it is often a challenge for them to define themselves. As they also share a global youth culture that transcends these cultural markers, some take advantage of media outlets to voice their concerns and participate in political struggles. Others simply use these to promote their personal interests. Contributors ponder the challenges involved in constructing unique identities, offering ideas on how African youth are doing so successfully or not in different parts of the continent and the African diaspora, and thus offer new possibilities for youth studies.

Author : Jan Nederveen Pieterse
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 1992-01-01
Category : Art
ISBN : 0300063113

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White on Black by Jan Nederveen Pieterse Pdf

White on Black is a compelling visual history of the development of European and American stereotypes of black people over the last two hundred years. Its purpose is to show the pervasiveness of prejudice against blacks throughout the western world as expressed in stock-in-trade racist imagery and caricature. Reproducing a wide range of illustrations--from engravings and lithographs to advertisements, candy wrappings, biscuit tins, dolls, posters, and comic strips--the book challenges the hidden assumptions of even those who view themselves as unprejudiced. Jan Nederveen Pieterse sets Western images of Africa and blacks in a chronological framework, including representations from medieval times, from the colonial period with its explorers, settlers, and missionaries, from the era of slavery and abolition, and from the multicultural societies of the present day. Pieterse shows that blacks have been routinely depicted throughout the West as servants, entertainers, and athletes, and that particular countries have developed their own comforting black stereotypes about blacks: Sambo and Uncle Tom in the United States, Golliwog in Britain, Bamboula in France, and Black Peter in the Netherlands. Looking at conventional portrayals of blacks in the nursery, in sexual arenas, and in commerce and advertising, Pieterse analyzes the conceptual roots of the stereotypes about them. The images that he presents have a direct and dramatic impact, and they raise questions about the expression of power within popular culture and the force of caricature, humor, and parody as instruments of oppression.

Author : Kwabena N. Bame
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 174 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 1991-01-01
Category : Africa
ISBN : 9964910657

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Profiles in African Traditional Popular Culture by Kwabena N. Bame Pdf

Author : Karin Barber,John Collins,Alain Ricard
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 309 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 1997-06-22
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780253028075

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West African Popular Theatre by Karin Barber,John Collins,Alain Ricard Pdf

" . . . a ground-breaking contribution to the field of African literature . . . " —Research in African Literatures "Anyone with the slightest interest in West African cultures, performance or theatre should immediately rush out and buy this book." —Leeds African Studies Bulletin "A seminal contribution to the fields of performance studies, cultural studies, and popular culture. " —Margaret Drewal "A fine book. The play texts are treasures." —Richard Bauman African popular culture is an arena where the tensions and transformations of colonial and post-colonial society are played out, offering us a glimpse of the view from below in Africa. This book offers a comparative overview of the history, social context, and style of three major West African popular theatre genres: the concert party of Ghana, the concert party of Togo, and the traveling popular theatre of western Nigeria.

Author : Johannes Fabian
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0813917867

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Moments of Freedom by Johannes Fabian Pdf

Johannes Fabian was one of the first anthropologists to introduce the concept of popular culture into the study of contemporary Africa. Drawing on his research in the Shaba region of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), he has been writing for thirty years about the practices, beliefs, and objects that make up popular culture in an urban African setting: labor and language, religious movements, theater and storytelling, music and painting, grassroots literacy and historiography. In Moments of Freedom Fabian reflects on anthropological uses of the concept of popular culture. He retraces how his explorations of popular culture in this urban-industrial setting showed that classiclal culture theory did not account for large aspects of contemporary African life. Popular culture draws on various genres of representation and performance, and Fabian explores the notion of genre itself as it applies to Shaba religious discourse, painting, and the theater. He also addresses the element of time and how spatial thinking about culture, ethnicity, and globalization acts as an obstacle to appreciating the contemporaneity of African popular culture. The volume ends with a discussion of contestation in light of current calls for democratization. In Moments of Freedom, Johannes Fabian takes stock of decades of anthropological work on popular culture and examines the development of his own thought over time. Throughout the volume, he makes eloquent connections to other firelds such as history, folklore studies, and cultural studies, suggesting areas for further research in each.

Author : Carol Magee
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
Page : 411 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2012-04-26
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781628467215

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Africa in the American Imagination by Carol Magee Pdf

In the American world, the presence of African culture is sometimes fully embodied and sometimes leaves only a trace. Africa in the American Imagination: Popular Culture, Racialized Identities, and African Visual Culture explores this presence, examining Mattel's world of Barbie, the 1996 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and Disney World, each of which repackages African visual culture for consumers. Because these cultural icons permeate American life, they represent the broader U.S. culture and its relationship to African culture. This study integrates approaches from art history and visual culture studies with those from culture, race, and popular culture studies to analyze this interchange. Two major threads weave throughout. One analyzes how the presentation of African visual culture in these popular culture forms conceptualizes Africa for the American public. The other investigates the way the uses of African visual culture focuses America's own self-awareness, particularly around black and white racialized identities. In exploring the multiple meanings that “Africa” has in American popular culture, Africa in the American Imagination argues that these cultural products embody multiple perspectives and speak to various sociopolitical contexts: the Cold War, civil rights, and contemporary eras of the United States; the apartheid and post-apartheid eras of South Africa; the colonial and postcolonial eras of Ghana; and the European era of African colonization.