Pub Date : 2021-06-15DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2021.1917347
Helen Ufuoma Ugah
Straddling the fields of gender, media and linguistic studies,Women, Visibility and Morality in Kenyan Popular Media engages with the media representation of an “ideal” woman in Kenya. Dina Ligaga renders a textual analysis of what it takes to be a woman in contemporary Kenya within the context of the cultural, political and secular prejudices with which Kenyan women grapple. Drawing from a large body of data mined from various media sources, digital, print and radio, the author has been able to cleverly utilise the data to present her arguments. The book thus not only provides a template for gathering and analysing data from the media, but also represents adequate evidence that too much data does not always make research clumsy – it enriches research by providing different perspectives on the research arguments. Though the book is about Kenyan women and their portrayal in public spaces and popular culture, Ligaga’s findings mirror similar situations in other African locations. The 2019 BBC documentary on sexual harassment in Nigerian and Ghanaian universities has opened the eyes of the public to the circumstances and spaces (such as the so-called Cold Room at the University of Lagos) where sexual violence regularly takes place. The Nigerian digital media has been agog with narratives of sexual harassment in Nigerian universities; new media framing of this phenomenon sometimes contributes to gendered stereotypical representations of females in its portrayal of women as willing accomplices. Despite the availability of data on debates and narratives about the issue of sexual harassment in Nigerian universities, academic research on it is quite scarce – Nigerian scholars seem to be neglecting this scourge at the detriment of the female students. But in a
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Pub Date : 2021-06-15DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2021.1917345
S. Omari
Women, Visibility and Morality in Kenyan Popular Media examines constructions of femininity in Kenyan popular media and how these constructions engage with morality, sexuality and gender. The book focuses on narratives from three media: radio plays, tabloid newspapers, and social media. By using a Black feminist approach and cultural studies engagement with popular culture (13), Dina Ligaga critiques public constructions of femininity in Kenyan mediascapes (2). She argues that these constructions not only circulate stereotypical representations of femininity in Kenyan public culture, but also punitive measures taken against women for their transgression of behaviour, thus increasing violence against them. The book explores representations of a range of women (urban, politicians, educated, rich and low-income, married and unmarried) in Kenyan media, and their struggle for their wellbeing. Gender, feminist andmedia studies is a significant and burgeoning field of scholarship in Africa. For instance, some examples in Tanzania include Tanzanian women’s life histories (Ngaiza and Koda 1991), women/gender in education (Meena 1996; IDS 2011), gender inequalities (Mukangara and Koda 1997; TGNP Mtandao 2013), transformative feminism (Kitunga and Mbilinyi 2009), women in agriculture (Mbilinyi 2016), women in politics and management (Killian and Pastory 2018) and women and micro-credit (Mwaipopo and Dauda 2019). Studies on the representation of women in media and literary works in Tanzania include work by Swilla (2000), Omari (2008, 2019), Ekstrom (2010) and Lyimo (2014). Ligaga’s book has both divergences and parallels to those studies in Tanzania, as most of them have intended to analyse woman’s representation, marginalised position, and struggles in various sectors/media in order to address the situation. As a feminist researcher and a media scholar from East Africa, Ligaga has provided an interesting discussion on the topic. Unlike some previous studies on Kiswahili media, Ligaga’s book is wide-ranging in terms of the media outlets (newspapers, radio, and online social media such as Instagram) and groups of women examined. Basing her data on textual analysis of both (narratives and public scripts), Ligaga explores gender and sexuality as their representations circulate in Kenyan popular media. By writing this book, Ligaga wants us to understand the significance of and the role played by various agencies in representing and shaping women, including the state, publics, media practitioners and women themselves. Ligaga gives us a broad picture of the representation
{"title":"Reading Dina Ligaga’s Women, Visibility and Morality in Kenyan Popular Media from Tanzania","authors":"S. Omari","doi":"10.1080/13696815.2021.1917345","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2021.1917345","url":null,"abstract":"Women, Visibility and Morality in Kenyan Popular Media examines constructions of femininity in Kenyan popular media and how these constructions engage with morality, sexuality and gender. The book focuses on narratives from three media: radio plays, tabloid newspapers, and social media. By using a Black feminist approach and cultural studies engagement with popular culture (13), Dina Ligaga critiques public constructions of femininity in Kenyan mediascapes (2). She argues that these constructions not only circulate stereotypical representations of femininity in Kenyan public culture, but also punitive measures taken against women for their transgression of behaviour, thus increasing violence against them. The book explores representations of a range of women (urban, politicians, educated, rich and low-income, married and unmarried) in Kenyan media, and their struggle for their wellbeing. Gender, feminist andmedia studies is a significant and burgeoning field of scholarship in Africa. For instance, some examples in Tanzania include Tanzanian women’s life histories (Ngaiza and Koda 1991), women/gender in education (Meena 1996; IDS 2011), gender inequalities (Mukangara and Koda 1997; TGNP Mtandao 2013), transformative feminism (Kitunga and Mbilinyi 2009), women in agriculture (Mbilinyi 2016), women in politics and management (Killian and Pastory 2018) and women and micro-credit (Mwaipopo and Dauda 2019). Studies on the representation of women in media and literary works in Tanzania include work by Swilla (2000), Omari (2008, 2019), Ekstrom (2010) and Lyimo (2014). Ligaga’s book has both divergences and parallels to those studies in Tanzania, as most of them have intended to analyse woman’s representation, marginalised position, and struggles in various sectors/media in order to address the situation. As a feminist researcher and a media scholar from East Africa, Ligaga has provided an interesting discussion on the topic. Unlike some previous studies on Kiswahili media, Ligaga’s book is wide-ranging in terms of the media outlets (newspapers, radio, and online social media such as Instagram) and groups of women examined. Basing her data on textual analysis of both (narratives and public scripts), Ligaga explores gender and sexuality as their representations circulate in Kenyan popular media. By writing this book, Ligaga wants us to understand the significance of and the role played by various agencies in representing and shaping women, including the state, publics, media practitioners and women themselves. Ligaga gives us a broad picture of the representation","PeriodicalId":45196,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cultural Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"111 - 114"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13696815.2021.1917345","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48147782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-17DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2021.1884971
Daniel Mulugeta
ABSTRACT In 2002, the African Union (AU) inaugurated its Chinese-funded, designed, built, and furnished headquarters building in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, receiving the admiration of African leaders. The building was hailed as a new material expression of pan-African unity. This article explores the affective potency of the AU built environment to unsettle and unfurl conceptions of pan-African identity. Beginning with an analysis of sensory impressions of the outer appearance and architectural forms of the built space, the article meanders through its inner structures to describe how these assemble affective intensities around the notion of pan-Africanism. In particular, it concentrates on the experiences of Addis Ababa residents and AU officials who express divergent sentiments and visions of pan-Africanism. It argues that affective reactions associated with sensorial encounters with built forms, mediated by pre-existing discourses, reveal the divergent modes of belonging to pan-Africanism. The affective potency of the AU is of acute interest because of its presumed role as a mediator in nationalist conflicts, not least those currently underway in Ethiopia itself.
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Pub Date : 2021-05-17DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2021.1884972
Elizabeth Tilley, M. Kalina
ABSTRACT Over the past decade, there has been increased awareness and discourse around the inequalities which structure North–South academic collaboration. The purpose of this discussion is to look at the other side of this dynamic: the gatekeeping burden of African scholars in facilitating Northern fieldwork within the African continent. We argue that this burden further exacerbates inherent inequalities within North–South relationships. By way of conclusion, we offer a number of practical steps that Northern researchers can take when engaging African academics which will contribute to more ethical collaboration, and a more positive and lasting impact within African institutions.
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Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2020.1824772
Hairong Yan, Weidi Zheng
Hairong Yan is an associate professor of the Department of Applied Social Science at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She specializes in politics of development, China– Africa links, rural-urban relations, socialism and cooperative economy, and agrarian change in China. Due to the global pandemic, all work has gone digital, including this conversation. In this interview, Dr Yan offered her insights on China’s location in the current world system, China’s involvements inAfrica, and thepossibility of aGlobal South solidarity. What’s more, she also shares her experiences of teaching Global China and China–Africa engagements in Hong Kong – a postcolonial Chinese city whose population is still trying to work out its relationships with its colonial past, the West and the Chinese mainland.
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Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2020.1824768
Rotimi Fasan
It was the morning of 16 November 2018. I had just finished an interactive session with the Faculty of the Centre of African Studies, specifically, the Department of Asian and African Languages and Culture, Peking University (PKU). It was, I think, the sixth day of my one week visit that was dubbed a “lecture tour”. Even though the meeting was formal, my talk, whose core focus I can no longer recall in its entirety, consisted of thoughts and reflections on possible areas of academic collaboration between China and Africa on the one hand, and the University of Peking and my own university, Osun State University, on the other hand. (Perhaps, due to the seven-hour time difference between Beijing and Lagos, I have a blurry and inaccurate recollection of the timeline of some of the events in Beijing.) The discussion, moderated by Ying Cheng, who served as the translator (as I spoke in English), was both animated and engaging. My meeting with the faculty was the first of the three main events lined up for me. The second was a talk delivered to a mixed audience of academics and graduate students entitled “Music is the Weapon of the Future: Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s Rebel Art, Popular Music in Nigeria and the Logic of Ideological Reconditioning”. The third event was an “African Culture Week”, a series of performances – dance, music and singing organised to coincide with my visit, and which aimed to bring together African and Africanist students studying in PKU and other universities in China as well as members of the Nigerian and larger African communities in China. Attending my first presentation were academics from other universities in China, and at least two other foreigners apart from me (Natalia Molebatsi, a performance poet from South Africa and a white American visitor) in the audience. After my talk, the Director of the Centre, distinguished scholar of African history (Li 2000) and Africa–China relations, and the most distinguished Africanist in China, Professor Li Anshan, gifted me a copy of the Annual Review of African Studies in China (2016) which was a Special Issue on African Literature, my own academic background. Professor Li signed the copy of the Annual Review with the following words in his own writing (in English for my benefit): “For our common interest”. His words will serve as an entry point for my reflections in this roundtable. They are carefully chosen and optimistic words from the distinguishedlooking Professor Anshan that gesture at the kind of role that African Studies could (and even should) play in Sino-Africa collaborations. African Studies is relatively new in
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Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2020.1824774
Yu Qiu
This short essay discusses how Covid-19 control over black Africans in Guangzhou in April 2020 (the Guangzhou incident) tells a story of deepened cleavages in China–Africa friendship politics. It argues that despite the political and diplomatic significance of the “friendship” ideology, the Guangzhou event manifests two kinds of its internal cleavages: one lies in how to deal with immigration issue of Africans in China as a derivative of friendbased hospitality, and the other lies in how to define and position the issue of racial identity, as a way of upholding the social infrastructure of this political ideology. On 1 April 2020, a 47-year-old Nigerian man was reported to have bitten a Chinese nurse when trying to escape from hospitalization in a Guangzhou hospital in South China, leaving bruises and marks on the nurse’s neck and face. As this incidence took place after he tested positive for the coronavirus, it ignited wide-range condemnation of his violence and impulsiveness. Despite this man soon apologizing and being heavily criticized within Nigerian community, the physical violence soon triggered a lot of hate speech in shoppingmalls, wholesale markets and other places where Africans congregate and on the internet. Furthermore, this hospital incident was further complicated by a few more confirmed cases within Guangzhou’s Nigerian community. Soon, to implement the “targeted accurate measures in fighting against the pandemic” (精准抗 疫), the Guangzhou local government started to work with community-based social workers to check the exact number of African nationals residing in Guangzhou. To prevent further transmission of the virus, all Africans in Guangzhou were ordered to undergo forced quarantine regardless of their travel history. Yet this sudden decision brought much discontent and critique. In the implementation of this quarantine policy, many Africans faced unexpected inhospitality and even inhuman treatment: many were then evicted out of their rented apartments and lodged hotels, prevented from entering restaurants and shopping malls, and their passports were seized. Through Africans’ personal media channels on YouTube and WeChat and international media, this Guangzhou incident quickly made international headlines and provoked intense discussions among local and national leaders: this “Guangzhou incident” unexpectedly became an international diplomatic focal point.
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Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2020.1824771
T. Huynh
The subtitle of this roundtable discussion, “an encounter with another ‘other’”, is strangely compelling to me, who is Asian American, broadly, and Vietnam-born ethnic Chinese American, specifically, engaged in research in South Africa and China. In these contexts, “another ‘other’” is a mirror of the “self” (i.e. other ethnic Chinese) and peoples who have also historically experienced marginalization and occupied a subordinate position in societies (i.e. African people). In relation to “another ‘other’”, my otherness is complicated by my American background. The Americanness is not phenotypically obvious, but subtly signaled through the clothes I wear, the accent (or ability to speak English in a way that non-American listeners regard as being “without an accent”) and certain values I hold, among other things. Needless to say, these identities aid and hinder ethnographic research in myriad ways. Rather than elaborating on dynamics from fieldwork in African and Chinese contexts, I want to think through the struggles and challenges of being Asian American, with scholarly expertise in South Africa and Chinese diaspora studies, working in Chinese academia. My thoughts on the state’s role in facilitating an essentialist view of China–Africa (Africa–China) studies, Eurocentrism in China–Africa studies and ambivalence towards diaspora scholars primarily draw on my position at a Chinese university in southern China since 2013 until now; and through these points, I share some observations of developments in the study of China–Africa relations in China. The first time I unequivocally recognized that I am an outsider of the China–Africa field in China was in late 2018, two years into my appointment as acting associate professor at the same university where I completed a postdoctoral fellowship. A colleague, who was the director of the African Studies Center in our school (or college) before a tragic death, inquired if I had received an invitation to participate in the inaugural conference of the ‘One Belt One Road’ African Research Alliance, organized by Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (广外“一带一路”非洲研究联盟会议), a university just 15.2 km from our own. Even though he could not obtain our school’s approval to transfer the Center’s director position to me in 2016 (he informed me at that time) due to my foreigner status, he still wanted me to represent the Center. He gave me the contact details of the organizer,
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Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2020.1824777
Joseph Oduro-Frimpong
In 2017, then Ambassador to Ghana, Sun Baohong, attended a Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology end-of-year exhibition, titled Cornfields in Accra (Asiedu 2017). During her exhibition tour, she visited the allotted space of Bright Ackwerh, a young and well-respected Ghanaian visual satirist. Within this space, Ambassador Baohong specifically had her picture taken standing next to Ackwerh’s latest satirical piece titled Them Threaten (2017) – Figure 1. What is intriguing about Madam Baohong’s photo-taking opportunity is that the work visually satirized one of her own prior actions. This act relates to Baohong’s subtly domineering posturing through an open letter to the Government of Ghana. In that communication, she complained about “a number of distorted or biased reports and stories on Chinese people, especially some reports and cartoons that are defaming Chinese leaders and senior officials” (Nyabor 2017). The note came soon after Ackwerh’s work titledWe Dey Beg (2017) (Figure 2), a critically acclaimed piece about the Chinese government that went viral in Ghana and beyond. The missive ended with what can be considered a veiled warning, in view of China’s global super-power status compared to Ghana:
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Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2020.1824775
Sara van Hoeymissen
In recent years, and as a result of growing Africa-China relations, a small but increasing number of African academic institutions have begun to offer training and conduct research in China Studies to meet new demands for local expertise on China. This paper looks at African scholarship on China through the lens of positionality. It asserts that this emerging field is strongly marked by the dynamic human mobility and shifting boundaries of disciplines and geographies of today’s interconnected globalized world. While the diversity in backgrounds and perspectives among African China scholars is enriching, the knowledge on China they produce should be embedded in and speak to local contexts. This is important for China Studies in Africa to be able to meet local expectations of strengthening African agency in relations with China. Africa’s growing relations with China over the past two decades have boosted demands for local expertise on China. A small but growing number of African academic institutions have become engaged in the production and dissemination of knowledge on China and Africa–China relations in particular. Admittedly, in terms of their scale and the attention they receive, these initiatives are overshadowed by some of the other China-related developments in the African academic landscape, such as the tens of thousands of Africans who are pursuing academic training in China or who study Mandarin Chinese through Confucius Institutes across the continent. Nonetheless, the development of African interdisciplinary academic expertise on China opens up a significant “new frontier in the academic world” (Iwata 2014, 106). As Ross Anthony (2018), who was the Director of the Centre for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University (2014–18), asserted, this can be an important catalyst to enable African countries and African people to make more informed choices in their growing interactions with China. This contribution looks at the field of China Studies in Africa through the lens of positionality. It situates this emerging field and its practitioners in a vivid landscape of personal, local, regional and interregional expectations, interests and perspectives. Considering these various dynamics, how can African scholarship on China generate knowledge that is embedded in and speaks to its unique local context?
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