Suchergebnisse

Back to work -- Staking a claim -- Magic and mortar -- Conflict and resolution -- Master and apprentice -- The Michelangelo of Djenné -- Vulnerable craftsmen -- Cat heads and mud miters -- Yappi's confession -- Finishing off

Fashioning Africa / Jean Allman -- Remaking fashion in the Paris of the Indian Ocean / Laura Fair -- Dress and politics in postWorld War II Abeokuta (western Nigeria) / Judith Byfield -- Nationalism without a nation / Heather Marie Akou -- Changes in clothing and struggles over identity in colonial western Kenya / Margaret Jean Hay -- Putting on a pano and dancing like our grandparents / Marissa Moorman -- "Anti-mini militants meet modern misses" / Andrew M. Ivaska -- From khaki to agbada / Elisha P. Renne -- "Let your fashion be in line with our Ghanaian costume" / Jean Allman -- Dressing dangerously / Karen Tranberg Hansen -- Fashionable traditions / Victoria L. Rovine -- African textiles and the politics of diasporic identity-making / Boatema Boateng -- Afterword / Phyllis M. Martin.

Drawing examples from ethnic and popular music as well as from folk art, the paper explores the multivalence of expressive forms as local and European, even global aesthetic resources, whose territorial or ethno-national connection is - due to the power of aesthetic affect - but one among many possibilities of identification. It is argued first that the resource dimension of cultural expression has been furthered by the documentation and classification techniques of ethnological and folkloristic knowledge production, which in turn also facilitated circulation in multiple context. Second, the paper encourages that scholarship expand from recognising a political identification and instrumentalisation of aesthetic resources to understanding the economic appropriation of the production and consumption of such resources.

Introduction: the historical importance of urban Ghana's Saturday nights -- Popular music, political authority, and social possibilities in the southern Gold Coast, 1890-1940 -- The making of a middle class: urban social clubs and the evolution of highlife music, 1915-1940 -- The friction on the floor: negotiating nightlife in Accra, 1940-1960 -- "The highlife was born in Ghana": politics, culture, and the making of a national music, 1950-1965 -- "We were the ones who composed the songs": the promises and pitfalls of being a bandsman, 1945-1970

Ever since the earliest forms of mass media, the dichotomy of mass culture/high culture has been a topic of debate. The concept of cultural democracy has developed as a way to acknowledge a variety of cultural activities. Despite attempts to develop a broader understanding of culture, cultural policy still seems to reproduce the dichotomies, and to value one over the other. In this article, we would argue for an expanded understanding of cultural democracy, which may serve as a starting point for a turn of perspective of arts advocacy and cultural policy—the perspective we call an expressive cultural democracy. KEYWORDS: Arts management, arts participation, cultural policy, expressive cultural democracy, notions of art and culture ; Ever since the earliest forms of mass media, the dichotomy of mass culture/popular arts and high culture/fine art has been a topic of debate. The discussion has focused on the value and use of different art forms and on different notions on and attitudes to the purpose of art. The concept of cultural democracy has developed as a way to acknowledge and support a variety of cultural activities. Despite attempts to develop a broader understanding of culture and to acknowledge different ways of participating in and experiencing and valuing art and culture, cultural policy still seems to reproduce the dichotomies between high and popular culture, and to value the first over the latter. Art and culture are rarely understood as an independent way to experiences, meaning creation and values in everyday life. In this article, we would argue for an expanded understanding of cultural democracy, which not only acknowledge different taste cultures, but also include the central perspective of giving voices and expression across interests and taste. Our goal is contribute to a new understanding of arts experience, which can serve as the point of departure for a turn of perspective of arts advocacy and cultural policy. The perspective of what we might call an expressive cultural democracy.

This article provides an analytic overview of scholarly work on the concept of collective identity by considering its conceptualization and various empirical manifestations, the analytic approaches informing its discussion and analysis, and a number of theoretical and empirical issues, including a synopsis of the symbolic means through which collective identity is expressed and asserted. Although the scholarly roots of the concept can be traced to classical sociologists such as Marx and Durkheim, and more recently to the mid-century work of scholars such as Erik Erickson and Erving Goffman, it was not until the latter quarter of the past century that the concept generated an outpouring of work invoking the concept directly or referring to it indirectly through the linkage of various collectivities and their identity interests via such concepts as identity politics, identity projects, contested identities, insurgent identities, nationalism, imagined communities, identity movements and even social movements more generally. Conceptually, the essence of collective identity resides in a shared and interactive sense of "we-ness" and "collective agency." Although the concept is distinguished analytically from both personal identity and social identity, the three types of identity clearly overlap and interact. Empirically, collective identity can surface in a variety of contexts, although the preponderance of research has focused on its connection to gender, ethnicity, religion, nationalism and particularly social movements. Analytically, collective identity has generally been discussed from a primordial, structural, and/or constructionist standpoint. Primordial and structural approaches are discussed as variants of essentialism, which is contrasted to constructionism. Among other things, constructionism focuses attention on the symbolic expression and maintenance of collective identities.