Youth and Popular Culture in Africa

Youth and Popular Culture in Africa PDF Author: Paul Ugor
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1648250246
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
"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"--

Youth and Popular Culture in Africa

Youth and Popular Culture in Africa PDF Author: Paul Ugor
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1648250246
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 419

Get Book Here

Book Description
"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"--

African Youth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture

African Youth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture PDF Author: Vivian Yenika-Agbaw
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134623933
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
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.

Popular Culture in Africa

Popular Culture in Africa PDF Author: Stephanie Newell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135068941
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
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.

East African Hip Hop

East African Hip Hop PDF Author: Mwenda Ntarangwi
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252076532
Category : Adolescent psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Hip hop music that empowers and engages youth in East Africa

A History of African Popular Culture

A History of African Popular Culture PDF Author: Karin Barber
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107016894
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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

African Youth Cultures in a Globalized World

African Youth Cultures in a Globalized World PDF Author: Dr Lord Mawuko-Yevugah
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1472429753
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
All over the world, there is growing concern about the ramifications of globalization, late-modernity and general global social and economic restructuring on the lives and futures of young people. Bringing together a wide body of research to reflect on youth responses to social change in Africa, this volume shows that while young people in the region face extraordinary social challenges in their everyday lives, they also continue to devise unique ways to reinvent their difficult circumstances and prosper in the midst of seismic global and local social changes.

The Outcast Majority

The Outcast Majority PDF Author: Marc Sommers
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 082034883X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
The Outcast Majority invites policymakers, practitioners, academics, students, and others to think about three commanding contemporary issues—war, development, and youth—in new ways. The starting point is the following irony: while African youth are demographically dominant, most see themselves as members of an outcast minority. The irony directly informs young people’s lives in war-affected Africa, where differences separating the priorities of youth and those of international agencies are especially prominent. Drawing on interviews with development experts and young people, Marc Sommers shines a light on this gap and offers guidance on how to close it. He begins with a comprehensive consideration of forces that shape and propel the lives of African youth today, particularly those experiencing or emerging from war. They are contrasted with forces that influence and constrain the international development aid enterprise. The book concludes with a framework for making development policies and practices significantly more relevant and effective for youth in areas affected by African wars and other places where vast and vibrant youth populations reside.

Hip Hop Africa

Hip Hop Africa PDF Author: Eric Charry
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253005825
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
Hip Hop Africa explores a new generation of Africans who are not only consumers of global musical currents, but also active and creative participants. Eric Charry and an international group of contributors look carefully at youth culture and the explosion of hip hop in Africa, the embrace of other contemporary genres, including reggae, ragga, and gospel music, and the continued vitality of drumming. Covering Senegal, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, and South Africa, this volume offers unique perspectives on the presence and development of hip hop and other music in Africa and their place in global music culture.

Constructing Race

Constructing Race PDF Author: Nadine E. Dolby
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791490041
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
As apartheid crumbled in South Africa, racial identity was thrown into question. Based on a year-long ethnographic study of a multiracial high school in Durban, this book explores how youth make meaning of the still powerful, yet changing, idea of race. In a world saturated with media images and global commodities, fashion and music become charged, polarized racial identifiers. As youth engage with this world, race simultaneously persists and falters, providing us with a glimpse into the future of race both within South Africa and throughout urban youth cultures worldwide.

Nollywood

Nollywood PDF Author: Paul Ugor
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781611637779
Category : Motion picture industry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In June 2013, Nigeria's then-Minister of Youth Development, Alhaji Inuwa Abdul-Kadir, declared that, out of a total population of about 167 million, almost 50% were young people between the ages of 15 and 35. Thus, young people constitute almost 81 million of Nigeria's total population, out of which about 68 million are jobless. Given the popular argument that Nollywood is truly the people's art because the industry visually expresses the struggles of the ordinary masses, the author argues that a significant part of its popularity derives from Nollywood's ability to resonate with the mounting worries, dreams, and troubles of Africa's bulging youth population. Nollywood addresses this theme of youth as a representative conceptual/social formation and its textualization in some early Nollywood video films. Following the emerging critical developments in new media studies that transcend textual reductionism, the author discusses the subject of youth in Nollywood films, both theoretically and empirically, using socio-economic analysis to supplement representational analysis. In order to adequately problematize the conjunction between social and economic power and the visual representation of youth-related themes in Nollywood videos, the author draws on both close reading and a political-economic approach, which allows for the historicization of visual representations. This kind of interdisciplinary method allows the author to apply concepts such as uncertainties, social struggles, risks, social aspiration, belonging, agency, and other such sociological concepts specific to youth studies in the analysis of Nollywood videos. This book is part of the African World Series, edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin. "It is an in-depth study of the peculiar contours of new politics of citizenship by youth, especially as represented in popular video films in Nigeria."--African Studies Quarterly, Volume 18, Issue 2