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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Repositioning African media studies: thoughts and provocations |
Author: | Tomaselli, Keyan G. |
Year: | 2009 |
Periodical: | Journal of African Media Studies |
Volume: | 1 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 9-21 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Africa |
Subjects: | media and communication studies African culture |
Abstract: | This article engages with contemporary debates on the state of media studies in Africa. It comments on the dialectic between metropolitan centres of knowledge production and dependent peripheries. Technological developments, new media products and new uses race ahead in the metropoles, while their introduction to Africa is seriously impeded by stifling legislation, punitive import taxes, lack of development in telecommunication infrastructures and expensive and restricted broadband and telephony. A brief discussion of Fordism and post-Fordism and their implications for Africa follows. Nationbuilding discourses are opposed to hyper-real notions of 'meaning', calling on Africans to transcend their idealized understanding of 'culture', 'African values' and identity as unchanging absolutes. The often alarming antidemocratic conceptual, policy and ideological shifts that occur when theories travel between different contexts are examined. Some research agendas for Africa in the postmodern age are proposed. Bibliogr., sum. [Journal abstract] |