Still the Dark Continent: A Content Analysis of Research About Africa and by African Scholars in 18 Major Communication-Related Journals

Research about African communication and studies by African-affiliated authors remain scarce in the field of communication. To establish a comprehensive picture of the state of scholarship, 5,228 articles published in 18 top communication journals between 2004 and 2010 were reviewed. Articles were coded for topic nation, author affiliation, article type, category of communication studied, and research method. Thirty-nine Africa-focused articles including 25 authored by researchers from African institutions were found. Over half addressed health communication; most focused on Kenya and South Africa. Means are suggested by which the international scholarly community can partner to encourage African scholarship.     

Art for the Masses? Justification for the Public Support of the Arts in Developing Countries – Two Arts Festivals in South Africa

In the New South Africa, as in other developing countries, the equitable distribution of public resources is a priority. The case for public support of the arts is thus difficult to make because it has been shown and borne out by South African research, that arts audiences tend to represent the better educated, more prosperous minority of society, not the majority of the very poor, mainly African-origin population. Using data from willingness to pay studies conducted at two South African arts festivals, this paper shows that, when the positive externalities provided by the arts are included in their valuation, it can be shown that both high and low income earners benefit. However, as suggested by Seaman (2003), it is also found that some of what the WTP figure is capturing is current and expected future economic benefit from the event.     

Discursive negotiations of Kenyan LGBTI identities: Cautions in cultural humility

This study identifies and analyzes sites of discursive negotiation regarding sexual and gender minority identities in Kenya. A demonizing master narrative of homosexuality is constructed through cultural myths prevalent in Kenyan media yet challenged by claims of innate identity through strategic essentialism and glocalized naming practices. Using participant observation and creative focus group methodologies with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, and intersex community members and journalists in Nairobi, Kenya this research project demonstrates the necessity of cultural humility while addressing contemporary absences in the study of queer identities in intercultural scholarship and communication research within African contexts.     

“悦读浙江”：跨国与您共赏

2014年6月15日,位于约翰内斯堡的南非华文图书馆内,宾客云集。“浙江精品图书展暨‘悦读浙江-浙版图书海外百柜工程’南非站启动仪式”在这里举行。     

Investigating how the attributes of live theatre productions influence consumption choices using conjoint analysis: the example of the National Arts Festival,South Africa

While there is a fair amount of work on determinants of demand for the live performing arts, results have often been contradictory with little explanatory power. This may be because of the difficulty in describing the attributes of a performance, particularly in terms of its quality, and the heterogeneity of consumer preferences. This article uses conjoint analysis, also called choice experiments, to investigate the impact of the attributes of live theatre performances on demand, using data collected from 483 randomly chosen attenders at live theatre performances at the 2008 South African National Arts Festival. Attributes include the type of cast (professional, semi-professional or amateur), reputation of the producer/director, the context or setting, production type and ticket price of the show. Results largely support the a priori expectations based on the results of other demand studies. For example, it is found that the age of consumers affects the type of show chosen, that utility and willingness to pay increase for shows with professional and semi-professional casts and that 93% of the potential audience prefer shows with a South African context. It is concluded that the method could prove useful to both event organisers and policy makers, especially where the goal is to broaden access to the arts.

Performativity and grassroots politics: on the practice of reshuffling mafia power

Recent uses of performativity have been engaged with bridging the gap between the economy and politics. The concept of performation has for instance been used to enable discursive and material assemblages that challenge this dichotomy, with the general aim of transforming the economy. While the overall intent of this article is to contribute to this bridging, its direction of travel is the opposite: to bring the economy into politics. Specifically, it situates the notion of performativity within studies on grassroots politics in a material sense. First, it discusses some of the leading scholarship on grassroots movements, focusing on their take on the economy. It moves on to suggest that some of the problems that are identified can be addressed using performativity theory, the benefits of which are discussed in the second part. Finally, it empirically illustrates the theoretical discussion by analysing the performativity of the discourses, things and people that are jointly fighting the Mafia today. The article places social movement studies in dialogue with scholarship which is preoccupied with the economic-political cleft, in order to encourage thinking of the economy as a space for political possibility and social struggle, rather than seeing it as a place of capitalocentrism, structural exploitation and inescapability.     

The Role of Professionals in the South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme

This paper provides a short accountof the South African Defence Force's chemical and biologicalwarfare programme during apartheid, specifically during the period 1980 to 1994. It examines the circumstances ofrecruitment of the scientists and physiciansand their retention in the programme; detailsthe `scientific efforts' of the programme andits aberrations; and explores ethical issues inrelation to the involvement of scientists inthe programme.     

Performing Difference: Repetition in Context

Abstract

In this essay, I sketch a performative, constitutive theory of difference that avoids the major trappings of this discussion in current communication scholarship. Building from Gilles Deleuze and Judith Butler, I argue that by focusing on difference in intercultural communication scholarship we can, as a discipline, create more complex understandings of people in cultural contexts. I first examine how difference has been written in communication scholarship. Second, I offer a reading of Deleuze and Butler who, together, provide the grounding for seeing the repetition of difference as political and contingent ontology. I conclude by examining an everyday context, showing how intercultural communication scholarship can benefit from this kind of analysis.     

Glocalized whiteness: Sustaining and reproducing whiteness through “skin toning” in post-colonial Ghana

This research explores the changing discourse surrounding skin lightening currently referred to as “skin toning” in sub-Saharan Africa. This study problematizes the “skin toning” discourse which deceitfully implies that dark-skinned individuals can “slightly lighten” their skin with fewer social and physical consequences. Through critical discourse analysis of an interview with a former Ghanaian beauty queen (Nasara) on YouTube, it became evident that she utilized specific neoliberal ideologies to discursively frame “skin bleaching.” The concurrent interpretations of skin toning speak to the spaces where gender, race, class, and social status intersect to create particular subjectivities and produce particular discourses at specific times.     

Anti-media populism: Expressions of media distrust by right-wing media in India

ABSTRACT

Criticism of mainstream media as being “biased” has emerged as a defining characteristic of right-wing discourse all over the world. Such expressions are coupled with the establishment of right-wing news outlets that seek to undermine professional journalism. But while scholars have examined the operation of such outlets in the context of Western democracies, anti-media populism in the Global South has received little scholarly attention. Through a thematic analysis of articles published on OpIndia.com- a right-wing news site in India, this paper seeks to address this gap in the literature and identify the discursive strategies employed by the right-wing media to discredit the mainstream press in India.     

A critical analysis of the Nollywood film Osuofia in London

This article analyzes Nigeria’s Nollywood film Osuofia in London [Ogoro, K. (Producer & Director). (2003/2004). Kingsley Ogoro Productions] to understand how the film synthesizes African and Western cultural identities via the prisms of hybridity and postcolonial theory. The paper uses a critical approach within the contexts of three tenets (African, Western, and hybrid) to read the film. The analysis resulted in five themes: African/folk belief systems and Christianity; traditional Igbo attire and English garb; African/folk music and Western music; African and Western food and drinks; and African/traditional medicine and modern medicine. The analysis indicates that unequal power relations and the forces of globalization are inescapable. Even though the protagonist, Osuofia, challenges the Western ideology, he reproduces it as well.     

The Grand Challenges Discourse: Transforming Identity Work in Science and Science Policy

This article analyzes the concept of “grand challenges” as part of a shift in how scientists and policymakers frame and communicate their respective agendas. The history of the grand challenges discourse helps to understand how identity work in science and science policy has been transformed in recent decades. Furthermore, the question is raised whether this discourse is only an indicator, or also a factor in this transformation. Building on conceptual history and historical semantics, the two parts of the article reconstruct two discursive shifts. First, the observation that in scientific communication references to “problems” are increasingly substituted by references to “challenges” indicates a broader cultural trend of how attitudes towards what is problematic have shifted in the last decades. Second, as the grand challenges discourse is rooted in the sphere of sports and competition, it introduces a specific new set of societal values and practices into the spheres of science and technology. The article concludes that this process can be characterized as the sportification of science, which contributes to self-mobilization and, ultimately, to self-optimization of the participating scientists, engineers, and policymakers.     

Thoughts from Abroad: Theodor Adorno as Postcolonial Theorist

Abstract

This article shows that the work of the German Marxist philosopher Theodor W. Adorno offers a surprisingly rich resource for postcolonial theory. Adorno's work addresses the world outside Europe more often than one might expect. But it is not so much what Adorno thinks as how he thinks that makes him a postcolonialist. Adorno's philosophy of negative dialectics tracks particular phenomena to the totality of which they are a part. Everything, from the most innocuous details of everyday life to the Holocaust and imperialism, is linked to the world‐encircling, thought‐frustrating and violence‐inducing system of capitalism. But Adorno's characteristic negativity also makes him sensitive to that system's fallibility and its vulnerability to alternatives. The article therefore touches on the normative dimensions of Adorno's moral philosophy. Adorno's work commands attention because of its dialectical style of thinking, its consequent focus on capitalism's intrinsic violence, its belief that effective political action presupposes introspection and a moral capacity for empathy with others' suffering, and its attractive conviction that these aptitudes can be enabled by aesthetic experience. Accordingly, the essay concludes with a reading of the South African writer J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace. This article seeks to show that an Adornian postcolonial criticism is as concerned with the gratuitous longevity of capitalism and imperialism as it is inspired by the prospect of erecting a more just and egalitarian social order.     

Interrupting the Discourse of Development: On a Collision Course with Postcolonial Theory

This article examines the possibility of an engagement between the discourse of Development and postcolonial theory. To open up a space for this kind of engagement, the article proposes first that, while there is no singularity of project within the field of Postcolonial Studies, there is a productive set of debates; and second that the necessity of questioning Development as an idea springs out of these debates around the nature and existence of Postcoloniality itself. It attempts to show how the critiques which have currency within postcolonial theory can be used to deconstruct Development and expose the mechanisms and tropes of power which Development as a discourse has in common with colonial discourse and modernity as a project. The scope of this article is to lay the groundwork for a continued engagement of Postcolonial with Political Studies, and in particular with the discourse of Development.     

The Dangerous Individual('s) Dog: Race,Criminality and the ‘Pit Bull’

Abstract

Though it is generally acknowledged that there is a relationship between racist discourse and the figure of the non-human animal, this relationship is almost always assumed to be analogical: oppressed groups are compared with or treated as non-human animals. But the recent dogfighting case against NFL Quarterback Michael Vick and the attendant suspicion of ‘pit bulls’ suggests that racism today has a more complex relationship with (certain types of) animals than the analogy would capture. An analysis of this discourse both calls for and revises Foucault's notion of ‘the dangerous individual’ as an explanatory concept for contemporary racism. The concomitant revulsion toward both dogfighting and ‘pit bulls’ suggests an expression of fear of a perceived threat to normative whiteness, insofar as these ‘dangerous’ dogs are figured as carriers of the contagion of racial abnormality.     

Busy as a Bee or Unemployed?: Shifting Scientific Discourse on Work

Changing images of work in discourse both portray and co-constitute the shift from an industrial to a postindustrial economy. Specifically, work metaphors appear in extra-scientific and intra-scientific discourse on workers and work structures in the natural and social world. An analysis of the entomological discourse from the late nineteenth century to the present shows changes in these metaphors that overlap with the discourse of change in human work and organizational structures. For instance, the metaphor of a busy bee within an efficient hive had traditionally evoked a comparison to the modern industrial workplace. The discourse on the hive currently more closely resembles a postindustrial conception of work. Discourse analysis can illustrate the role of language in co-constructing shared changes in image of work.     

Black is not beautiful: Persistent messages and the globalization of “white” beauty in African women’s magazines

ABSTRACT

This study examines the representation of African women in an era of globalization. Using Dyer’s concept of whiteness and a visual content analysis approach, this study focuses on how four influential African magazines portrayed African women from 2010 to 2015. Findings suggest that African magazines’ portrayal of beauty is not representative of diverse body sizes, skin tones, and hair types common among African women. Rather, magazines represent an image of beauty rooted in white/western/Eurocentric beauty standards.     

Meanings and Policy Implications of “Transformative Research”: Frontiers, Hot Science, Evolution, and Investment Risk

In recent times there has been a surge in interest on policy instruments to stimulate scientific and engineering research that is of greater consequence, advancing our knowledge in leaps rather than steps and is therefore more “creative” or, in the language of recent reports, “transformative.” Associated with the language of “transformative research” there appears to be much enthusiasm and conviction that the future of research is tied to it. However, there is very little clarity as to what exactly it is and what criteria might be used to design policy instruments to make more of it happen. In this paper, we contribute to the construction of a framework within which some conceptual clarity might be gained. We develop four analogies, or metaphors, that are found in the discourse about “transformative research” and show what they imply for the meaning of the notion and, as a result, both the phenomena that might be associated with it and the levers that would be available to design policy instruments. The analogies serving as theoretical metaphors that we propose, and also document to be present either explicitly or implicitly in the discourse about “transformative research,” are the stock market highlighting risk; the process of evolution and its selection mechanisms; the process of popular culture and the power of “hot” events; and exploration of the frontier of the unknown. No single analogy covers all the relevant issues. Together they help identify a field of phenomena and the potential and challenges “transformative research” presents to policy.     

Honest Evaluation in the Academy

Minerva - Honesty is widely understood as an ethical imperative in science and scholarship. This article examines the operation of this ethic in an area crucial to academe but which has not...