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Mass media, lifestyle and young adults' (un)reflexive negotiation of social and individual identities in Windhoek
... In contrast to South Africa, there have been only two scholarly articles published on hip hop in Namibia (Järvenpää 2013;Mwilima and Odada's 2014). A few additional observations can be glossed from Fox's (2012) analysis of media consumption by young people in Windhoek, which unsurprisingly shows American hip hop is influential in shaping young people's identity, with strong desires to appropriate American rappers' style, which is also true in South Africa (Magubane 2006; Hammett 2009), and elsewhere. ...
Drawing on interviews and ethnography with rappers in South Africa and Namibia, engaged in the production of Hip Hop with evangelical missional intent, this chapter will illustrate the particular points of rupture between this self-identified Christian Hip Hop and local religious, racial, and political identities, pointing towards new identity configurations. These self-identified Christian rappers experience ruptures with their local cultures around four key points, reflecting the constitutive elements of their religious and subcultural identities. The first rupture is around the question of religious “syncretism”, setting the North American-orientated evangelicalism of these Christian rappers against the beliefs and practices of African Independent Churches. The second rupture is around the question of the religious legitimacy of rap music and the broader Hip Hop subculture, reflecting ongoing debates within North American and global evangelicalism around liturgical and cultural practices, debates around the morality and theology of material success, as well as ecclesial “politics of respectability.” The third rupture is around the question of the legitimacy of evangelical subjectivities and evangelization within local Hip Hop scenes unregulated by churches, with local concerns in these strongly church-going societies shaping the specific points of conflict. Fourthly and finally, we identify a rupture around racial identities, especially given the re-emergence of the Black Consciousness movement and comparative discourses of Black nationalism and racial populism in contemporary South Africa, which contradict the implicit non-racialism and individualism of local, self-identified Christian Hip Hop.
... Corbin however, (cited in Fox, 2012, p. 72), in his later work indicates that "we (the researchers) need to keep a distance" from the interpretative process of the participants, by "sticking to the data rather than our preconceptions". This assertion, de facto, downgrades the position of the actors, making the data rather than the actors, the depositor of the constructivist process, while the researcher is relegated in the position of an observer (Fox, 2012). Those are some of the reasons why Charmaz (2008), still regards the Straussian approach (as well as the original Glaser grounded theory) as "objectivist", and, as such, she observes that it: ...
The dissertation attempts to present migration from a holistic perspective where the decision to move is the result of an assessment of competing strategies open to potential migrants. This is a bid by globally marginalised populations for economic security; a deliberate decision taken by the family to improve their livelihood. Migrants are here seen as social actors, or agents, who confront structural socioeconomic contexts, which offer both constraints and opportunities. The migrants’ reflexive rational assessment of such limiting and enabling structures determines the decision-making process, and the subsequent behavioural outcomes. Namibia is
currently experiencing a high level of unemployment and underemployment across large portions of its population, and hence levels of poverty and inequality remain high, 26 years after independence from South Africa. Migrants now seek lifestyles,
work, income, welfare benefits, and the chance to aid family networks back home through the strategic axial advantage of the remittance system. This thesis critically utilised the structuration and agency theory as a contextual and conceptual means to make sense of Namibian migration, while at the same time focusing on the way in
which both financial and social remittances can modify the socio-economic status of the migrants’ families, providing empirical evidence from Namibia on the role that migration can have on local development. The epistemological design used emphasizes a multidisciplinary approach, which combines economic and
sociological paradigms, to investigate the impact of internal migration on transforming the socio-economic structure of the Namibian family. These considerations were instrumental in the choice of Charmaz’s (2006, 2014), constructivist grounded theory version for the study. Using the grounded theory approach allowed the participants to express their own experiences related to the decision to migrate and to present their perspective on the consequences of such a
decision, while at the same time giving the participants and the researcher, the possibility of reflexively investigating on it. Internal migration appears to be a mix of specific coping strategies put in place by the family to face the socio-economic adversities, combined with the migrants’ personal motivations. The research found that individual aspiration to materially progress in life goes beyond mere economic
gratification. The moral sentiment of the migrant, out of a sense of responsibility for the family, and concern for the community (or country), is linked with the gratification and respect received by their family members, community and friends. Shifting the emphasis to the migrants’ personal motivations, as suggested in the thesis, provides an unconventional explanation of the drivers of migration compared
to the one presented by mainstream migration theories and doctrine. This research’s approach was found to provide a phenomenologically more meaningful and comprehensive understanding of the complexities (personal, familial, and community) of the migration challenges facing Namibians.
... NBC broadcasts FM radio in the country's official language, which is English, as well as in Afrikaans, which functions as a sort of lingua franca, in German, and in the regional languages of Ovambo, Damara/ Nama, Rukwangali, Setswana, Herero, and Silozi. All radio stations are streamed online, too (Cameron, 2013;Fox, 2012;Kavari, 2013). ...
In the last five years, Namibia has experienced an increase in the presence of people on social media platforms, creating various debates on its impact on citizen engagement in the political sphere. Studies from the global north have established a vibrant scholarship about the transformative influence these digital platforms have on direct democracy with limited empirical evidence whether this applies to contexts beyond the west. This 7 months ethnography, explores how the youth in the Ohangwena Regional Youth Forum use mobile social media to participate in regional and local politics by using participant observations, semi-structured interviews and content analysis of seven Facebook pages and two WhatsApp groups. The findings reveal that the youth and political leaders use social media for digital skilling and literacy; digital political site for leisure entertainment and engagement; as affective publics; promote direct and indirect digital democracy, despite network connectivity issues and the high unemployment rate.
Key words: Namibia, youth, Africa politics, affective publics, digital literacy, social media, digital democracy
With a focus on Namibia, one of the most unequal countries in the world, this thesis set out to develop a frame analysis tool for studying what kinds of social roles elite newspapers suggest for their well‐off readers. The interest was based on the conviction that media texts mirror and mould broader discourses in the society. The tool uses a theoretical construct of elite social responsibility, which is an action‐orientated concept founded on William Gamson's collective action frames (1992) and a sociological model by Abram de Swaan (1988). It measures elite social responsibility using the frame package approach developed by Gamson and colleagues. This involved the development of a set of variables and clear coding instructions for these. As such, the thesis makes a methodological contribution to transparent analysis of inequality and active citizenship issues in media texts. The study tested the new tool on a purposive sample of 135 newspaper texts. This test found that roughly 70 percent of the items were framed using the Minding My Own or Good Samaritan frames, which suggest that the well‐off should do either nothing or do charity. A little under 30 percent used the Active Citizen frame, which implies that the elites should take collective action for policy change. The results further suggested that media is most likely to use the Active Citizen framing in issues, which have direct consequences for the well‐off themselves. Moreover, the analysis identified several media routines, which contributed to the downplaying of the importance of solidarity through policy action. As such, the analysis suggested that elite newspapers in Namibia participate in a largely unintentional reproduction of discourses, which maintain the status quo. This supports earlier observations regarding political culture and inequality in post‐independence Namibia.
This article attempts to engage with a tendency in the theorization of social change and self-identity, evident in the work of a number of contemporary social theorists, to place an extended process of reflexivity at the heart of modern identity. As symptomatic of 'neo-modern' accounts of selfhood, critical readings of Giddens, Beck, Castells and some aspects of social theory more generally, and their account of modern reflexivity's relationship to culture, are assessed. In light of these criticisms, ways in which culture might still play an important part in the shaping of identity are considered. The relationship between language, culture and reflexivity, drawing from philosophy, sociology and G. H. Mead's own brand of social psychology, are all utilized in establishing a critique of the role Giddens and others designate for culture in the constitution of the contemporary self. By potentially repositioning self-identity in its connection to culture, the overall bearing of reflexivity upon the processes of self-identity is thus questioned. It is argued that a culturally-situated, yet fluid and multifarious account of self-identity is a necessary analytical and normative alternative.
Anthropological Quarterly 79.3 (2006) 483-508
We are accustomed to emphasizing the economic aspects of globalization and it is true that globalization corresponds to a displacement from a primarily industry-based economy to one where working on concepts plays a major role and where trade growth is tied in with financial deregulation and the new approaches this implies in terms of the circulation of capital. It is possible, though, that we have given insufficient weight to the fact that globalization is first and foremost a cultural phenomenon.
We should not see the violence of globalization purely and simply as a process of domination—like some new form of colonialism. The power of its impact is all the greater for the fact that it consists of a profound change in our awareness of time and space. "Globalization as a concept refers both to the compression of the world and the intensification of our consciousness of the world as a whole" (Robertson 1992:8). For Westerners, this notion of a self-contained world expresses itself in a strong feeling of insecurity. It only needs a sector of the economy, for example, to show signs of weakness, for the possibility of relocations to emerge. In the confrontations between staff and bosses that have always punctuated economic life, the outcome used to be that of a solution that took into account local social and economic conditions. Now, we "think globally"—meaning that relocation appears from the outset to be a pertinent alternative. In the face of this prospect, workers are caught in a very simple dilemma: either they accept the "sacrifices" or the company will quite simply disappear. Beyond this recurrent blackmail, what weakens people is the sense of the extraordinary "nearness" of other lands—which are easily identifiable, whether it be a country in Eastern Europe or Asia. There is a sense of temporal "nearness" too, in that in a few weeks or even days one can create a similar company on the other side of the world.
In practice, the compression of time and space can be perceived as a threat, not only because it accentuates the pressure of the invisible hand of the omnipotent market system, but also inasmuch as it makes possible a violent intrusion of alterity into our world. This was the case on September 11, 2001, when a place that represented the quintessence of the market was brutally attacked by a group that incarnated radical exteriority. We realized how easy it was for people we tended to think of as being on the other side of the world to reach the heart of the system by turning peaceful technologies into fatal weapons.
The awareness of globalization, therefore, is more than just the apperception of an ever closer interdependence of economies. It is equally, if not more, a matter of the citizens of the developed countries internalizing a simple, disturbing reality: that they will never again be "safe" from a threatening "elsewhere," hitherto considered marginal and today able to organize itself in a most "modern" manner and burst in. The whole "modernity" position, though, was based on the idea of there being an irreducible difference between all that represents civilization and fits into the scheme of progress and these Others who, while being part of humanity, were nonetheless doomed to the inertia of beings without history. We are part of the same planet, our destinies appear to us to be increasingly intertwined. There too, the evaluation can be interpreted optimistically: the fact that the compressing effect of globalization breaks down certain barriers between societies, overturns prejudices and obliges us to mix is cause for rejoicing. The concepts of cross-fertilization and hybridization have been invoked to describe the possibility finally at hand of a meeting between cultures so long separated and so long isolated by prevailing ideologies. The opposite of this ecumenical vision is an interpretation that highlights the virulence of the tensions generated by another huge present-day reality: that the other side of world unity is that resources and riches have to be shared.
Twenty or so years...