‘21st CENTURY FOXED’: GLOBAL MEDIA BROADCASTING AND THE RECONFIGURATION OF MOÇAMBICANIDADE

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores the emergence of new global media corporations and examines some of the implications for the making of African cultural identities, particularly the construction of Mogambicanidade or Mozambicanness. Audiovisual geographies in contemporary Mozambique have become increasingly detached from the symbolic spaces of national culture as the processes of national identity formation have become ever more transnational. Far from witnessing the universalisation of a homogenous and homogenising international consumer culture, Mozambique is arguably experiencing what has been referred to as the globalisation of ‘concrete particulars’, not the emergence of abstract universals but rather of specific cultural particularities like the Portuguese language. This paper attempts to illustrate how the media marketplace in ‘post-socialist’ society has never been as ‘free’ and open to competition as neoliberal analysts have suggested. The broadcasting of Portuguese language and culture has continued to rise in recent decades whilst there have been relatively few corresponding increases in the broadcasting of other Mozambican languages. The paper concludes with a reassessment of the relevance of concepts of ‘media imperialism’, deculturation and deterritorialization and examines the implications of media deregulation and globalisation for the interrelationships between ‘national’ communication, the politics of national identity formation and the struggle for national ‘development’ in post-colonial society.