African Cultural Identity Research Articles

Amabhinca subculture: re-branded expression of black masculinity in South African townships

ABSTRACT Fears have been expressed that global forces diminish the integrity of local cultures through the influence of subcultures of consumption. This study examined the dynamic identities of black males, specifically within the amabhinca subculture to shed light on how neoliberalism and consumerist tendencies have re-shaped these identities. A qualitative research method was employed, with the researcher engaging with 30 males involved in the subculture on a social media platform. Contrary to the conventional notion of static, predetermined identities, the study uncovered a process of identity formation unfolding within distinct situational contexts. It highlights the pivotal role of clothing choices among amabhinca individuals as a potent emblem of identity, characterized by an urban sensibility and a preference for branded attire. These clothing selections that are often inspired by a tapestry of cultural sources, are recontextualized within the township milieu, significantly contributing to the evolution of a unique South African cultural identity. The research underscores the intricate interplay between global consumerist pressures and the preservation of local cultures, by its very existence, this subculture challenges and reshapes traditional perceptions of black masculinity within South African townships, offering a narrative of adaptability in the face of globalizing influences.

The 19th-century missionary literature: Biculturality and bi-religiosity, a reflection from the perspective of the wretched

The 19th-century missionary literary genre provides us with a window into how the missionaries viewed African cultural systems, such as polygamy. In their minds, polygamy was one of the obstacles to converting Africans to Christianity. Baptism functioned as a theatre of power and submission. To access baptism, a convert had to abandon and strip themselves of that which made them Africans and adopt Western colonial Christian norms and principles. In this article, we argue that the condemnation of polygamy by missionaries was a wielding of power within the colonial matrix of power. We further maintain that the decolonisation of Christianity cannot be achieved without a critical analysis of the impact of the missionaries in the deformation and labelling of African cultural identities as heathen and uncivilised.Contribution: The cultural transfer that was achieved through Christianisation, civilisation and colonisation has led to what Biko referred to as the flight from the black self and what Du Bois referred to as double consciousness. The article applies the intersectionality of theoretical lenses of Africana critical thought, Foucauldian notion of power, negritude and decoloniality.

Drawing hearts in the air within new African diaspora spaces: selling Nollywood and consuming nostalgia in London

ABSTRACT Nigerian video films circulate transnationally across various African diaspora communities, including London, England. This article explores conversations concerning the experience of both real and faux nostalgia regarding Blackness and the African diaspora as expressed through Nollywood cinema in London. Within these diaspora communities, Nigerian venders sell Nollywood DVDs as physical commodities from their homeland, triggering sensations of nostalgia and transporting audiences to experience pleasurable and painful emotions. By consuming these cultural products, Nollywood audiences may yearn for an actual African home or experience longing for a village life they have never truly experienced (Krings and Okome 2013, pp. 5–6). Nollywood DVDs serve as modern cultural artefacts containing a ‘record’, both literally and figuratively, transmitting a ‘‘communication’ of black nostalgia’ (Edwards 2009, p. 145) to consumers by providing imaginative sensory spatial representations of Nigeria and Africa. This article explores research from the liminal temporal space of 2013 London, where Nigerian consumption patterns shifted from a thriving market of Nollywood video-film consumers renting or purchasing DVDs – in ‘brick and mortar’ shops – to streaming these cultural commodities online. Viewer responses reveal the importance of physical and online movie distribution platforms as pan-African content providers, connecting virtual homeland spaces of nostalgia to the African diaspora. Thus, from the comfort of their homes, audiences conveniently accessed Black African representations of Nigeria. This investigation captures transnational socio-cultural exchanges in survey research, through questionnaires, and online social media research. Black venders and consumers reveal their experiences with Nollywood as a means to sustain nostalgic homeland bonds, cultural norms, customs, language, religion, and tradition (Krings and Okome, pp. 5–6). The findings elucidate the psychological importance of maintaining homeland connections through buying, selling, and consuming Nollywood experientially. Therefore, a social mechanism of nostalgia allows consumers and venders to retain and sustain Black African cultural identity abroad.

Forging an African Union Identity: The Power of Experience

Abstract Pan-Africanism and references to a shared African cultural identity have an important function in the way the African Union (AU) seeks to mobilize a sense of belonging among African citizens. However, we know very little about how African citizens, in turn, relate to and identify with the AU and what shapes their sense of belonging as political subjects of the AU. In addressing this lacuna, this article takes a bottom-up perspective on the formation of an AU identity among African citizens, placing citizens’ own sense-making practices about the relevance and value of the AU in their everyday lives center stage. Drawing on focus group discussions among citizens in Burkina Faso and The Gambia, I show that the way research participants relate to the AU is based on and mediated through experiences. Rather than a vague Pan-African identity, what shapes the way citizens relate to the AU are concrete experiences with the organization’s norms and policies and their tangible effects on everyday life, which are conditioned by people’s (different) exposure to AU policies and their positioning within existing social, political, and economic structures. The importance of experience in forging a sense of belonging among African citizens does not preclude the existence of a shared Pan-African identity, but it offers important cues for both how to study the formation of an AU identity and how it can be shaped in the future.

Language and Education in Africa: A fresh approach to the debates on language, education, and cultural identity

Language and Education in Africa is a 244-page monograph comprehensively dealing with the topic. It comes at a critical juncture of the debates on African languages in education. Over this decade, the theme has become topical and the book reinforces earlier appeals to develop African education in the medium of languages of Africa and to thus reclaim African cultural identity. A continuing burden of Africa is the diglossic system, characterized by the dominance of former colonial languages in all formal domains. The book starts with a short discussion of Adichie’s novel Americanah. The novel has been translated into many languages but is unavailable in Igbo, the mother tongue of the author. This is identified as a specific ‘African absurdity’. Adichie’s views on the issue are discussed; they all point to the complicated relationship between cultural identity, language and education. This leads to the book’s three central questions: Why African languages are not used in education?, what are the possibilities for rational language and education policies? and how can large-scale cultural differences and similarities in Africa be described?

Hybrid ‘Authenticities’ in youth popular culture: performing costume and identity in the work of South Africa’s Sho Madjozi

The professional stage act of one of South Africa’s newest musical prodigies, Sho Madjozi, may be analysed as a quintessential Afropolitan example of the innovative and hybrid combination of music, costume, and dance in urban youth popular culture in Africa. This paper analyses the dynamic intersection between costume, music, and dance, presenting it as a crucial site where urban youth popular culture can reimagine tradition, while simultaneously demonstrating that contemporary African cultural identities exist in a constant state of flux. The paper borrows from scholarly insights on hybridity, identity, the Afropolitan and popular culture, as well as other writings in youth agency and popular culture, to argue that South Africa’s Sho Madjozi belongs with a tradition of contemporary urban youth performance culture that continuously resurrects and destabilizes elements of the past as it reimagines the future. Sho Madjozi’s unique style as a rap artist in Tsonga is presented as an illustration of the progressive role that contemporary urban youths in Africa can play as proponents of cultural preservation, even as they stand at the cross-roads between the old and the new.

RETHINKING THE PEDIGREES OF AFRICAN CULTURAL WATERSHED: A POST-COLONIAL INQUEST NTO CHINUA ACHEBE’S ARROW OF GOD

The African cultural identities have undergone earth-shattering shifts from the precolonial epoch to the colonial and post-colonial periods. It is the colonial empire that advented in the African continent in the 15th century and attempted to erode and stigmatise African cultural practices as part of its mission to take control of Africa. Despite Africa being under a democratic administration today, African cultural identities are still marginalised, chiefly, by colonial remnants that have not yet been successfully uprooted. Thus, this paper aims to re-anatomise the African cultural identity-crises in the present day from the onset of colonialism on the continent. It utilises a qualitative approach and crystallises this African cultural watershed from a literary perspective. Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God is purposively sampled for the paper as a primary reference point by dint of its conformity to the main theme of the study. The paper, comprehensively, blames the enduring colonial fragments in the present day for the African cultural identity-crises as they hinder decolonisation and peril African cultures. The colonial legacies in Africa today, like in the colonial times, are found to be championing Western identities at the expense of African cultural identities, hence, the latter is still menaced.

Bonds and barriers: Mental health, service provision, and Middle Eastern/North African cultural identity in the U.S.

This exploratory study examined the intersections of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) American cultural identity and attitudes towards mental health and mental health services. Fifteen in-depth narrative interviews with participants of MENA descent in the United States were analyzed using qualitative thematic content analysis, revealing five primary themes within these data: denial, lack of awareness, stigma/shame, collective identity, and resistance. These results indicate cultural identity plays a unique and significant role in how this population understands and responds to mental health and substance use challenges, in a way that often creates barriers to social service provision and success. Implications and suggestions for how these findings might be used to develop more culturally competent and effective social work interventions for MENA communities are discussed.

Representation of African Cultural Knowledge and Identity in Versions of German-Translated Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe—A Critical Intercultural Communication Analysis

The translation of Things Fall Apart (TFA) into German has elicited interest in language interaction and especially in German-African textual intercultural communication within broader Euro-African cultural and postcolonial relations. The publication of a third German translation of TFA, Alles Zerfällt, in 2012 by Uda Strätling promises an alternative reading and possibly a truer representation of African cultural knowledge and identity compared to the two previous translations. Drawing on I.A. Richards’ theory of meaning, skopos theory, and postcolonial theory, this study examines, through a critical intercultural analysis of purposively selected cultural text units, the transfer of African cultural knowledge from the source text to the target texts in order to elucidate how African cultural identity is represented to the target readership. The study shows that while Strätling’s version appears to more adequately represent source text cultural knowledge and identity, it nevertheless still manages to perpetuate the exoticization of African culture as archaic, primitive, and inferior.

The Financial Commitment of Repository Countries: A Key Element of Reparation

The Financial Commitment of Repository Countries: A Key Element of Reparation

Abrahamic and African cultural identities: an appropriation of polygamy

Polygamy as a part of socio-cultural life was not peculiar to Africa but also had a strong biblical root. In this wise, disregard for African cultural values like polygamy, and the insistence on monogamy for the culture of Africa by European missionaries appeared inappropriate. They rather seemed to be an imposition of the European culture on Africans. Missionaries’ solution to the debate on polygamy in the Christian church which required the converted African polygamist to divorce all but a wife before baptism seemed to suggest extremism. In fact, socio-economic security and family stability depended on the socio-cultural background, and number of children in the household. These undoubtedly were Abrahamic and African identities. Hence, the security and stability of polygamous households in both cultures seemed to be more at high value than that of monogamy imposed by the missionaries. The paper adopted socio-cultural principle, and hermeneutical method to examine polygamy and its appropriation in Abrahamic and African cultures. The study revealed that while the teachings of the missionaries on polygamy ought to be tailored towards the tenets of the biblical disposition on marriage, they rather considered polygamy in Africa to be an immoral cultural practice and unacceptable marital union. The paper recommended that the missionaries should demonstrate tolerance and magnanimity towards polygamists in Africa.

Intersecting identities: interrogating women in cultural dress forms in contemporary Nigerian paintings

ABSTRACT This paper interrogates the identities in the representations of women adorned in African cultural dress forms in contemporary Nigerian paintings. While many studies have explored the subject of African dress forms from other viewpoints, not many are known to investigate the topic from the perspective of contemporary Nigerian paintings. It is for this reason I purposively selected five paintings from different artists in which they represented women adorned in African dress forms to communicate the expressions of personal, social, religious, and cultural identities within different contexts. Although the contemporary paintings give clues to the expressions of identities in dress, the ideas and meanings conveyed were also interrogated in each work. In engaging the paintings in close case study interrogations, the paper combines formal analysis and cultural history methodologies. Formal analysis is adopted for the analysis of the formal elements in each painting, whereas cultural history is used to contextualise each painting within the culture and history that is recalled to give the representation its proper identity. Besides, the close case study analysis reveals that the artists drew inspiration from the personal aesthetics of women adorned in African dress forms in different Nigerian cultures. Through the representations, three notable African cultural identities are manifested, which include Yoruba, Gwari, or Gbagyi and Hausa cultures, aside from other identities interrogated in each painting.

Media and Cultural Representation: The Symbolic Appropriation of Identity in West African Screen Media

This article explores the portrayal of cultural identity in West African screen media, especially through television, cinema and visual advertising. It is exclusively an exploratory research which demonstrates that African cultural identity is essentially linked to its language, art, music, sculpture, as well as the use of local symbols. Hence, this study – which applies in essence a qualitative research design – is conducted in order to better understand the strategy of cultural depiction on West African media screens. As a result, the main objective is to demonstrate that national televisions and cinema really promote cultural identity in West Africa via visual symbolism. Consequently, the current study goes beyond the field of culture and identity to include the multidisciplinary domain of semiotics and visual communication. In fact, the investigations help to clearly understand how cultural identity can be delicately portrayed through the means of visual communication media. Therefore, while this study tends to comprehend the portrayal of cultural identity on West African media screens (Cinema and TV), the research attempts to establish a nexus between culture and globalization before discussing respectively the notions of local languages and identity, as well as the appropriation of cultural symbols via West African TV, cinema and advertising. Also, taking into account the cultural and linguistic diversities through a concrete case study, the analysis focuses specifically on three West African countries (Ghana, Burkina Faso and Mali); which TV sets are well-designed with visual symbols to reflect local identities.

Decolonising African Cultural Identity in Es’kia Mphahlele’s Chirundu : A literary Appreciation

Though Africans are striving to re-define and re-construct themselves through re-asserting their eroded African cultural identity, this appears to be a mammoth, almost insurmountable task. It remains a nuanced terrain because, on the one hand, there is material benefit from being bedfellows with the neocolonial forces while on the other hand, there is hardship which is meted out against the proponents of African decolonisation, particularly the quintessential ones. Sanctions are one of the austerity measures which the neo-colonial powers use to suppress those Africans who genuinely want to advance African renaissance. This is the cause of identity crisis among many Africans, and unsavoury marriages of convenience between the West and African nations today. This paper, therefore, seeks to examine the dilemma faced by the essentialist adherents of African culture today and their supposed role in the advancement of Africa as a continent. It uses Chirundu's character in Es'kia Mphahlele's novel of the same name, as a case in point. The argument, in this paper, is grounded on Afrocentricity as a strand of Post-Colonial Theory (with or without a hyphen) with an implied suggestion that the solution to Africa's postcolonial challenges lies in forging cultural hybridity with the nations of the world.

Towards African humanicity: Re-mythogolising Ubuntu through reflections on the ethnomathematics of African cultures

Throughout the history of mathematics, Eurocentric approaches in developing and disseminating mathematical knowledge have been largely dominant. Building on the riches of African cultures, this paper introduces ethnomathematics as a discipline bridging mathematical ideas with cultural contexts thereby honoring diversity and fostering respect for cultural heritages. Ethnomathematics promotes a conceptualisation of culture to include the authentic humanity of the people sharing collective beliefs, traditions, and practices. I propose the term African humanicity to refer to the authentic African experience that reflects genuine African cultural identity. I further argue that immersion in the ethnomathematical practices of African cultures provides insight into critical factors shaping African students’ success in mathematics. Drawing upon the vast literature on the ingenuity of African cultures, I present ethnomathematical ideas that permeate numerous African indigenous knowledge systems that could be introduced in the mathematics curriculum. These systems include folk games and puzzles, kinship relations, and divination systems.

The Dislocation of Identity: An Analysis of Johnson’s Identity in Cary’s Mister Johnson

This study analyzes the dislocation of cultural identity as a result of the hegemony of the European-imposed cultural identity. It demonstrates the destruction and loss of African cultural identity through the character of Johnson in Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson. I believe that the study makes a significant contribution to literature because it highlights the effects of colonialism in Africa especially on identities. The analysis proves how identities were altered because of colonialism. It is an evaluation of the ambivalent attitudes and variations in the light of ambivalence along with quoting many examples that show this theme clearly.

Globalization and the Question of African Cultural Identity

This paper engages in the debate between cultural modernists and cultural traditionalists concerning the importance of cultural fidelity as faced by African people via globalization and its alleged homogenizing tendency. Central to this debate is the issue of cultural truths and its use, that is, development. The paper therefore argues that African peoples do not need to “essentialize” their cultures. This is because the “truths about reality” with which they intend to employ in this quest for development are not exclusive to any particular cultural society. The implication of the foregoing is the paper’s insistence that Africans adopt a complementarist attitude in their determination for cultural fidelity. It maintains that this attitude will make Africans avail themselves of ideas from elsewhere. Ultimately, the paper posits that this new disposition of Africans to their cultures and those of non-African societies will set her beleaguered states on a solid developmental trajectory.

ART: South Africa

The authors examine the role of the visual arts in the construction of the histories of South African cultural identity, with reference to social context, over-determination, transitional art, appropriation, acculturation and commodification. Includes a chronology of visual culture in South Africa between 1910 and 1990. Biographical notes. 17 bibl. ref.

Western Television Programmes and the African Cultural Identity of Nigerian Youths

Western Television Programmes and the African Cultural Identity of Nigerian Youths

Cultural Clash and the Manichean Translation of African Culture in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Colonial languages have caused a serious epistemological upheaval in the mind of Africa. Many aspects of African cultural identity are lost due to the failure of these languages to name concepts that do not exist in the semantic scope of the colonial linguistic structures. This article studies Chinua Achebe’s attempt to write back to the colonial discourse which has for a long translated African culture in Manichean ways that are informed by racist ideologies, most of which are used to maintain concepts and definitions rooted mainly in the anthropological imagination. Highlighting semantic gaps and ambiguities in the colonial representation of African culture, he commits himself, through his novel Things Fall Apart, to establish the ontological and epistemological perspectives of African cultural identity in an artistic manner. This novel becomes a narrative space that reflects the ideological struggle between the culture of the colonizer and the colonized for social and political dominance.