Performance, Self-Definition, and Social Experience in the Oral Poetry of Sotho Migrant Mineworkers

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2594810
AutoresDavid B Coplan (autor de correspondencia), David Coplan
Año1986
Volumen29
Número1
Páginas29
Fecha de publicación1986-03-01
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAfrican Studies Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0002-0206 • E-ISSN: 1555-2462
EditorialJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/524105
OpenAlexW2094280808
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6
Referencias citadas12

Attempts to further the study of popular culture in Africa face the difficulty of defining “popular” as distinct from traditional or folk culture on the one hand, and elite or dominant culture on the other. The features that emerge most often from the discussion of these distinctions center on the relative degree of separation between performers and audiences, and on change from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft as a basis for social interaction (Bigsby, 1976: 18). These contrasts have frequently been identified with movement from a rural to an urban social world, where communal, multidimensional relationships give way to associative forms characterized by a segmentation of roles, divided loyalties, and the primacy of hypothetical or contractual relations over categorical and personal ones. Thus we value traditional or rural folk culture for its idealized capacity to give integrated expression to all aspects of human life, and symbolic representation to the essence of the human condition. In contrast, the sociology of urban art forms focuses on the relations between class and culture, the artist and his work, market organization and cultural production (Barbu, 1976: 47, 55). As anyone familiar with its urban scene should recognize, these distinctions are not workable for Southern Africa. Yet their very inapplicability highlights the importance of both the struggle for cultural integration and the flow of people and communication between urban and rural areas in contemporary Africa

Art · Literature · Poetry · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Gender Studies · Multilingual Education and Policy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology