Global Popular Culture Research Articles

Cameroonians in Oslo, Diaspora, and Uses of the Media

Abstract In this study a series of in-depth interviews were conducted with Cameroonians living in Oslo in order to analyze the role of media in the way they constructed their identities. The article showed how through the use of email and Cameroonian websites transnational social networks were strengthened, and ethnic identities were maintained. It examined the role of public discourse in the host country’s mass media in the way Cameroonians negotiated their relationship with the host country. It also showed how the popularity of Anglo-American audiovisual products indicated a willingness to embrace global popular culture. This article’s main argument was that the construction of diasporic identities involved a multi-directional gaze; looking inward to the local context of the host country, backwards to the home country, and all around to the global context, and that the media played a major role in all these processes.

Bollywood, Tibet, and the spatial and temporal dimensions of global modernity

While Bollywood is established as global popular culture, its journey into Tibet has been an idiosyncratic and complex one. Unlike the well-known manifestations of transnational Bollywood, in Tibet, Bollywood is not underpinned by an Indian diaspora or indeed Islamicate-based crossovers in the cultural and linguistic expression of romance. Furthermore, there is no legal import of Bollywood films or music into China's still protectionist cultural market, and zero attempts by Bombay producers to target China as yet. This ethnographically-based article describes Bollywood in Tibet in live and recorded performing arts, analyzing in historical perspective the legal and illegal flows of people and goods, as well as other ties between Tibet and India and South Asia that drive this fashionable corner of Tibetan popular culture. This article also explores how Bollywood (and India) slot into the context of Chinese multiculturalism as an exotic and also erotic other. The article as a whole highlights the historical as well as the modern forces of globalization, seeing the roots of Bollywood in Tibet as lying in ancient ties between Tibet and India and also Nepal, as well as in modern tourism and trade. This points to the fluidity of cultural topographies and trajectories in the pre-modern world. The article also emphasizes how far the globalization of Bollywood is due to specific regional and national issues, most notably, the nationalist project of the PRC which brought into being exile Tibet in India and Nepal as a kind of collateral damage.

Leisure and Tourism in the Changing China

Recognizing the need of more research on the meanings of leisure and tourism in diverse social and cultural contexts, this paper aims to situate the concepts of leisure and tourism in the specific social, cultural, and historical conditions of mainland China. Drawing insights from existing literature, the paper first discusses the impacts of two indigenous philosophies, Confucianism and Taoism, on Chinese approaches to leisure and travel. It appears that under the influence of Confucianism, leisure is undervalued due to the general orientation toward work, learning, and family in society. Another indigenous philosophy, Taoism, considers leisure'as a state of mind and encourages individuals to cultivate a love for nature and a longing for a peaceful leisure life. As a consequence of the tremendous social and economic transformations the country has undergone in recent years, a new leisure culture appears to be burgeoning in contemporary Chinese society. The leisure culture is grounded in people's everyday life with mixed and complex realities. It involves a dynamic exchanging process between the global and the local, and promises exciting new life experiences with much wider assortments of leisure and recreation opportunities. At the same time however, the society experiences new pressures of the global market economy and global popular culture, and leisure is used to mitigate the negatives effects of lingering anxiety and uncertainty about the radical social transformations. It can be argued that cultural patterns and social structures have greatly influenced the development of Chinese leisure and tourism—how they have been lived, felt, and made sense of by Chinese people.

Popular culture and the ’darker side’ of alternative spirituality: the case of metal music

Metal is perhaps the most extreme and aggressive form of contemporary Western popular music. Even though it continues to spark controversy and debate, it has also enjoyed enduring popularity for decades and has spread on a global scale. Metal music and culture has always been characterized by its fascination for dark and austere themes and imagery. Commonly dealing with topics such as evil, death, war, alienation and suffering, metal groups have traditionally found much inspiration in the world of religion, particularly Judeo-Christian eschatology and apocalypticism, different forms of paganism, occultism, esotericism and, last but not least, Satanism. These kinds of religious/spiritual themes have arguably developed into an integral part of metal culture on the whole. They contribute significantly to investing metal music and culture with an apparent aura of sincerity and mystique as well as to raising its shock and entertainment value. At the same time, metal culture is also marked by its high degree of humour and self-irony, its fondness for exaggeration, spectacle and over-the-top theatrics. Even so, metal stands out as a global popular music culture replete with various kinds of often dark and austere religious and spiritual themes, many of which stand in stark contrast to Christianity. Seen in the wider context of the changing face of religion in the West and the increasingly important role played by popular culture in the transformation of religious and spiritual identities, metal has come to play an important role in the dissemination of a wide variety of ‘dark’ alternative religious/spiritual beliefs and ideas. This article sheds further light on this issue through focusing on some contemporary and successful metal groups from the Nordic countries. In relation to this, attention is also drawn to some of the ways in which dark alternative religious/spiritual ideas may be viewed as having become an inseparable part of some sections of metal culture as they have become actively and consciously explored, and sometimes explicitly pro­moted, by the well known contemporary metal groups discussed in this article.

Slogans and mottos on commercial vehicles: a reflection of Liberian philosophy and culture

Liberia, like many other developing countries, follows the common custom of writing slogans and mottos on commercial vehicles. While studies have been conducted on such slogans and mottos in other countries, very little analysis of the ones in Liberia has been conducted. The purpose of this study therefore is to conduct such an analysis to determine what the slogans and mottos reveal about Liberian philosophy, culture, and history. A sample of 250 slogans and mottos were collected in 2005 and 2006. Overall, the slogans and mottos reveal a strong emphasis on God and religion in Liberia, indicating that Liberians believe in God or a Supreme Being. They also suggest that traditional culture is very important in Liberia. A part of this culture is the practice of giving advice. Liberians are fond of giving unsolicited advice, which may be a manifestation of the kindness and goodwill of Liberians and the belief in Africa that ‘it takes a village to raise a child.’ Trends in Liberia's political and social developments and the global popular culture are also reflected. The trends show the changing political environment from one in which political freedom was proscribed to one in which such freedom is permitted. The slogans and mottos on commercial vehicles are an important source of information and education on Liberian philosophy, culture, and history. The Liberian Government could use commercial vehicles as a means of informing and educating the people or communities on important public policy issues.

Global and African: exploring hip-hop artists in Philippi Township, Cape Town

This article investigates hip-hop, identity and global cultural flows among young people in contemporary Cape Town. We argue that hip-hop functions as a vehicle for identity negotiations in contemporary South Africa. The discussion of hip-hop in an ‘African’ township shows that the search for local forms of African identity in the time of globalisation does not necessarily mean the confirmation of old boundaries or the construction of bounded ‘new ethnicities’. Instead of dismissing forms of global popular youth culture as a threat to presumably ‘authentic’ African culture, the protagonists of the spaza hip-hop culture coming out of Capetonian townships have appropriated hip-hop in their quest for alternative, fluid African identities in contemporary South Africa.

The Changing Face of Heritage at Canada’s National Historic Sites

In order for all citizens to fully belong to a nation or a community, they must have membership in that society’s institutions, systems and social relations on both the formal and everyday levels. Heritage sites are public institutions of formal cultural presentation and informal social encounters where society demonstrates community membership. But in a country such as Canada where global economics and popular culture combine with an unprecedented influx of immigrants, how a community imagines itself and articulates its heritage is changing radically. Canada’s National Historic Sites (NHS) is among the important public institutions devoted to both the presentation of heritage and demonstration of citizen membership. This paper describes how this institution is adapting to changes in imaginings about citizenship, on both the formal and informal level. It looks at how NHS is expanding the involvement of all citizens in the why, what, how and to whom of heritage presentation, evolving its practices to include ethic minorities in its imaginings of Canadianness. Using as an example a new NHS exhibit and designations related to the Underground Railroad and African‐Canadians, the paper considers how historic sites, as formal instruments of the state, can be re‐tuned as informal sites of discourse and negotiation about identity, citizenship and belonging.

Global Selves: Marginalised Young People and Aesthetic Reflexivity in Inhalant Drug Use

Sociologists have observed that young people increasingly draw on global as well as local images in their constructions of individual selfhood. This article provides a narrative analysis of stories of inhalant use-induced hallucination, drawn from interviews conducted with young people in Melbourne, Australia. Young people's stories of the hallucinations they experience while using inhalants frequently reference the narratives, images and ontological preoccupations of contemporary popular culture; in particular, interactive electronic games. I argue that drug use provides a means by which some marginalised young people are able to integrate their constructions of selfhood within wider networks of power expressed through global popular culture, through mobilising what Scott Lash has referred to as an ‘aesthetic’ form of reflexivity. This occurs when they construct and narrate their hallucinations through four practices identified as central skills for engaging with contemporary texts: immersion, viewing the world as a hybrid technological self, re-imagining place and play on the borders of story worlds. The research highlights the need to develop drug-treatment interventions that will enable marginalised young people to fulfil—in less harmful ways—the imperative to be part of the globalising world.

Dancing back to front: regeton, sexuality, gender and transnationalism in Cuba

In this Middle Eight using ethnographic observation and interviews made in Cuba in May–July 2005 and March–April 2006 I problematise the new Latina/o dance music ‘reggaetón’ which in the USA is being heralded as ‘‘an expression of pan-Latino identity … the latest Latin musical style to sweep the world … the one with the most promise of finding a permanent, prominent place not just in US but in global popular culture …” (Marshall, 2006). Notably along with hip-hop with which it is now related in Cuban cultural politics, this is the first pan-Latin style of non-Cuban origin to have a strong presence in post-‘Special period’ 1990s revolutionary Cuba. I focus on the significance and possible history of the dance moves and the lyrics of two key songs, discussing possible political double meanings and implications within a Cuban context. While focusing particularly on issues of regeton in Cuba, I place regeton in Cuba in the larger context of reggaetón history in the Latin world and of Latin dance history and discuss it within the constant construction of an appropriate Cuban national identity. I pose open questions about gender, sexuality and generational attitudes. The overall theoretical context falls within the context of Järviluoma et al's work on ‘gender as cultural construction’ (2003). It builds on work on gender and dance which forms a small part of Fairley (2004).

Black cultural traffic: crossroads in global performance and popular culture

Black cultural traffic: crossroads in global performance and popular culture

Hip-hop through the world Englishes lens: a response to globalization

Abstract: This paper proposes that global popular culture and, specifically, hip-hop music offers prospective sites for examining interaction between varieties of English in the context of globalization. The data consist of extracts from Nigerian hip-hop song lyrics. Sociolinguistic features of fusion as a social process of globalization include divergence through (deliberate) phonological variation, codeswitching, cross-referencing, nicknaming, colloquialisms, and reinterpretation.

Madonna: Bawdy and Soul

Madonna: Bawdy and Soul Karlene Faith. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Hers was one of the best-known names in America. Madonna Louise Ciccone was born of working class Italian Catholic parents in 1958. Later Veronica was added to her baptism name. Her Mother, also named Madonna, died when she was five years old, causing her great grief. After that loss, she learned to cope for herself. The name Madonna, derived from Old French, literally my lady, was long used as a form of respectful address, and also to refer to the Virgin Mary. Madonna is central to the Christian story. Madonna, also called Mary, the Virgin Mother, bore the infant Jesus and played a central role in Christ's life. Her statues are everywhere in the Roman Catholic and Protestant worlds. The difference between that Madonna and our current one is startling. Small town life was not for Madonna Ciccone. She was a white girl fascinated by the black community and street life. Deciding to move on, she never forgot her working class background; and that class never forgot her. At the age of 20 she left home and took a bus to New York City, hoping for a show business career. She always liked to test her parameters by exceeding them. Taking any work she could find; she modeled, danced, was a hat-check girl, sang disco back-ups, and was a drummer with a band named Breakfast Club. These were years of poverty but also unflagging self-confidence. She knew she would make it, and she was right. Good luck and sex played a big part too. What is young Madonna about but sex? She was a sex queen in the old Clara Bow-Mae West-Jane Mansfield pattern-tempting but not available. She laughed at sex, flaunted her good body, and did not mind showing much or all of it. Sex was for her a private theater, a valuable asset, to be treated as private theater always ready to be viewed. She seemed to be repeating Mae West's famous question: Why don't you come up and see me some time? Quite a few young males were willing to come. Free and independent, she could project both a put-down and a come-on. Madonna helped to invent liberated social values and body-centered living, which captivated America, and later made their mark around the world. She has always been a work-in-progress, right up to today, a kaleidoscopic commodity, disrupting and reinvigorating familiar codes. Crowds love her. She delivers good-time big time. She is the ultimate sex symbol, even in her 40s. Not only her long-sacred name but also complex cultural forces helped her to succeed in many areas (stage, film, video, literature, advertising, talk shows, photography). She ignored the downs of feminine propriety and ended up representing different things to different people: hero, villain, slut, celebrity. Alert and intuitive, she not only mastered the traditional and pop media of the moment, but also the new crossover genres which shift the cultural context and reception. Madonna has drawn from cultural studies, postmodernism, poststructuralism, semiotics, psychology, and lifestyles. She even writes best-selling books for children. She is in sync with the postmodern age. Nothing demonstrates this better than her career as musician and singer. During the 1940s, before she was born, Hollywood's singing cowboys (Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, Roy Rogers) changed cowboy songs into hillbilly mountain music-a marketing strategy which Madonna understood and used. So did female country artists like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. They recast and produced a mare salable commodity, as have less famous Faith Hill, LeAnn Rimes, Gillian Welch, and the Dixie Chicks. Madonna has benefited from being a metaphorical cowgirl, which fitted her liberal politics and global outlook. She used the American Dream as a free-roaming cowgirl, encompassing the wide open plains of global popular culture, introducing European electronic dance music into mainstream American pop culture; she also opened doors for other celebrities like the Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Destiny's Child, and Jennifer Lopez. …

Variations on a Hebrew theme: The politics of art music in Israel

No culture, no society, remains static but changes imperceptibly day by day. The struggle waged by western art music in Israel for survival is eerily suggestive of how Israeli society in general has changed since the early Zionists set the course for the creation of a Jewish nation-state. Once regarded as the civilized face and civilizing influence of the Jewish national endeavour in Palestine/Israel, its advocates claim ever more desperately that western art music in Israel is in a state of rapid decline. Yet public opinion surveys reveal that the Israeli public backs state support for arts and culture whether or not people participate in cultural activities. Despite this, the internal ethnic struggle for domination of the arts and culture world and the rearguard action by culture administrators are both in danger of being overtaken by the country's exposure to global popular culture.

Telecentres and transformations: Modernizing Tanzania through the internet

This article argues that a discourse which constructs the Internet as an inclusive development tool that can be deployed in strategies for modernizing Africa has become hegemonic among development donors and telecommunications organizations. Based on research carried out in and around three Internet cafes in Dar es Salaam, and one Multipurpose Community Telecentre (MCT) in Sengerema, this article takes issue with this discourse and suggests that the geographies of inclusion and exclusion created by the Internet are more complex. For Tanzania’s information and communication technologies (ICT) elites, the Internet will shape the population into knowledge- and market-seeking, productive citizens, stimulating national growth. For Internet cafe users and non-users, the Internet has become a marker of modernity, a way for people and places to indicate their relative level of development, and Internet use is currently dominated by leisure, communication and information relating to global popular culture. However, the article demonstrates that development interventions which turn the symptoms of poverty into technical problems to be solved with technological responses are inherently flawed, since the failure to deal with the causes of poverty means that the majority of Tanzanians continue to be excluded from the ‘information society’.

Tourism and glocalization “Local” Tour Guiding

In tourism studies globalization and localization are often conceived of as a binary opposition. The ethnography of an Indonesian group of tour guides presented here illustrates how the global and the local are intimately intertwined through what has been described as the process of “glocalization”. The guides studied are remarkable front-runners of glocalization. They fully participate in global popular culture and use new technologies in their private lives. While guiding, however, they skillfully represent the glocalized life around them as a distinctive “local”, adapted to the tastes of different groups of international tourists. It is concluded that tourism offers excellent opportunities to study glocalization, but that more grounded research is needed.

Diaspora and drug trafficking in West Africa: A case study of Ghana

This article interrogates the emergence of drug trafficking in contemporary Ghana and West Africa within the context of a global political economy, situated within a deeper historical perspective. It examines the earlier trafficking of cannabis along the coast of West Africa in the colonial period, and the later transnational networks that have emerged to promote international drug trafficking (cocaine and heroin). The article probes how the African diaspora and international travel service these emerging drug networks in Ghana, West Africa, Europe and the Americas. It suggests that the concept of an ‘ideological diaspora’ could shed light on a shared global popular culture, which constitutes a counter culture and rationalizes criminal activities.

Is Straight the New Queer?

Is Straight the New Queer?

Transnational imagination in action cinema: Hong Kong and the making of a global popular culture

Taking action cinema as an example, this paper outlines a historical approach to the transnational study of globally popular cultural forms. Action cinema has long had a complex economy in which Hollywood not only trades stars, styles and narratives with the hybrid culture of Hong Kong cinema itself, but draws on a vast ‘direct to tape’ industry significantly based in East Asia. The paper outlines a Hong Kong‐based approach to two earlier phases in the history of action: the ‘international co‐production’ as an industrially innovative form (1973–85), and the golden age of the ‘direct to tape’ industry enabled by the rapid spread of video technology (1985–93). Focusing on the latter, it suggests that the global uptake by filmmakers of a ‘contact’ narrative and an ethic of emulation taken from Hong Kong cinema allowed direct‐to‐video action to address issues of social class in emotionally complex ways.

“No Ugly Women”

Current research on construction of the female body focuses on non-Hispanic women in the United States. The idealized Latina body, however, is rapidly becoming commodified and objectified in global popular culture. Using standardized and open-ended surveys and group and individual interviews, the author examines the negotiation of sociocultural ideals and body image by adolescents at the intersection of gender, race, and beauty. These young women hold racist beauty ideals but are flexible when judging the appearance of real-life women. They perceive two competing or complementary prototypes of beauty, one white and one Latina. This study fills a gap in the literature on beauty and the body by examining a non-U.S. sample that does not fit into the usual Black-white dichotomy of race.

Enduring colonialism in cricket: From Ranjitsinhji to the Cronje affair

Half-a-century after the end of colonial rule, the popularity of cricket in the Indian subcontinent is greater than at any point in the past. With the emergence of globalized television markets, the metropole of the sport has shifted away from England to the subcontinent and its settler colonies, such as Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, and Toronto, Canada. Cricket in the decolonizing world functions as a metaphor of war between old and new metropoles, and simultaneously provides marginal populations with the means of overcoming their marginality in global popular culture. This article examines some of these battles, including the furore over K.S. Ranjitsinhji's presence on English cricket fields in the 1890s, and more recent confrontations over corruption and national character. I argue that cricket has long been a forum for contests over race, culture, gender, and moral authority in the British Empire/Commonwealth. Even as the game has functioned as an instrument for the assertion (and defense) of English-elite-male models of authority, the colonized have attempted to subvert or capture this authority. These attempts have been resisted by the defenders of the old centre, by co-option if possible but, if necessary, by casting aspersions on the morality, masculinity and centrality of the challenger.