New Forms of Cultural Identity in an African Society

Abstract

This article argues that the media offer a way of reading cultural identity. The theme of collective identity is conceptualized quite differently in the Northern and the Southern hemispheres, due to different historical processes of political and societal change. In the African context, the three liberation struggles of colonial liberation, political-economical liberation, and fight against authoritarianism has taken place within a short period of time. Hence, the customary western modes of thinking about identity politics in late modernity easily lead to false assumptions when transposed to the African context. In Africa, the locality and life-world experiences in the village are more important than global ‘media-scapes’and ideoscapes’, and the article discusses present changes concerning cultural identities in Africa, particularly in Tanzania and Kenya. © 1995, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.