Popular Culture, Gender Relations and the Democratization of Everyday Life in Kenya

Abstract

The article deals with young women's and men's appropriation of local and global popular culture in a poor Nairobi neighbourhood. Local media articulate Christian ideals of marriage and gender relations, ideals that in the West would be considered conservative. In a Kenyan context, the ideals support the transformation of family systems, based on large collectivities and a clear separation of functions between generations and genders, into 'modern' nuclear families, which are more fluid, and where power may be distributed more equally between sexes and generations. Influential global popular culture narratives, such as the TV soap opera, The Bold and the Beautiful , and several situation comedies featuring African American stars, also support ideals of equality between the sexes and generations, implicit in the modern love marriage and nuclear family ideal. At the same time they may seem to encourage non-binding love affairs. The role of popular culture in central areas of life is increasing in tandem with a general social transformation that renders the authority of older generations and also of church and state debatable. The arguments of the article base themselves on group and life history interviews, and surveys of work and leisure activities of a group of fairly well educated but mostly out-of-work or self-employed young men and women. The sociological approaches are supplemented by reception analyses of especially visual material. The conclusion of the article is that young women in particular make use of a public sphere, understood as a process of articulation. The discursive spaces opened up by media do not have the barriers which elsewhere keep women and poor people from taking part in debates on key social and moral questions. In that sense they contribute significantly to the establishment of a democratic public sphere.