K Pype
Biographic Data
| ID | 18822 |
|---|---|
| NAME | K Pype |
| GIVEN NAMES | K |
| FAMILY NAME | Pype |
| SIGNATURE | PYPE K |
| AFFILIATIONS | KU Leuven |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7766-1902 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 191 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Response to M. Shapiro’s “digital friction surfaces and new alterity formations
Shapiro’s provocation piece on digital infrastructures and their impact on alterity formations offers a stimulating framework to think about contemporary subjectivities. His notion of “friction surfaces” captures well the ways in which digital interfaces mediate connections between humans and systems. The observation that these data fragments can become self-referential and even autonomous raises important questions about agency and representatio…
Introduction: Infopolitics and Technology Contracts
sponsorship: FWO|Odysseus grant, G.A005.14N
Anne Reijniers, Nizar Saleh, Paul Shemisi, and Rob Jacobs. Faire-part. 2018. 58 minutes, French and Lingala. Belgium, Cordon Coffee X De Imagerie, Kinshasa, DR Congo. Kimpavita films
Anne Reijniers, Nizar Saleh, Paul Shemisi, and Rob Jacobs. Faire-part. 2018. 58 minutes, French and Lingala. Belgium, Cordon Coffee X De Imagerie, Kinshasa, DR Congo. Kimpavita films. - Volume 65 Issue 3
Pentecostal commoning through dance: An ethnography of spiritual mobilities, Pentecostal infrastructures, and the body from Kinshasa’s churches
Dance forms are significant Pentecostal practices that enable Christians to establish, consolidate, and sometimes, break relationships with other humans and with spirits. The social and spiritual work of the Pentecostal dancer capitalizes on various kinds of agencies and dance-generated mobilities. In order to tease out the various types of mobility that Pentecostal dances accommodate; this article explores the ways in which Pentecostal dance act…
Provisional notes on the postcolony’ in Congo studies: An Overview of Themes and Debates
This article considers the uptake of Achille Mbembe’s article ‘Provisional notes on the postcolony’ (1992), the book De la Postcolonie: essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporain (2000) and its translated version, On the Postcolony (2001), in Congo studies. ‘Congo’ here is a shorthand for the current Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaire. The article is concerned with the ways in which these two English-language…
Not) in sync – digital time and forms of (dis-)connecting: Ethnographic notes from Kinshasa (DR Congo)
Based on ethnographic research, this article explores the temporal politics of ‘electronic modernity’ in one locale in the Global South, in particular Kinshasa, capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo. A major experience of digital connectivity in Kinshasa is one of unexpected and undesired disconnection, that is, the involuntary logging off of the Internet due to political interference, lack of battery time, or credit time (phone credit…
Religion, social navigation and urban space in sub-Saharan Africa
review of H. Dilger, A. Bochow, M. Burchardt and M. Wilhelm-Solomon (eds), Affective Trajectories: Religion and Emotion in African Cityscapes (Durham, Duke University Press, 2020)
Le politique (en ligne) par le bas en Afrique subsaharienne
Cet article propose un panorama des travaux scientifiques portant sur l'engagement et l'appartenance politiques dans « l'Afrique numérique », une formule consacrée désignant les mondes médiatisés numériquement des habitants de l'Afrique subsaharienne et des populations de la diaspora. Le numérique est de plus en plus un lieu de l'expression publique et de la capacité citoyenne d'agir en Afrique subsaharienne. Trois hypothèses sous-tendent une gra…
Digital Creativity and Urban Entrapment in Kinshasa: Experiments in Solving Precarity
I attend to the dialectics between precarity, urban sociality, and digital technology (le numérique) in Kinshasa. Tech engineers, and those aspiring to become one, dream of solvent futures. They share a desire to leave various forms of precarity behind and attempt to produce new urban futures by means of tech skills and digital technologies. Especially the lack of trust in urban others is considered a problem solvable with mobile phone applicatio…
Decolonizing the Virtual: Future Knowledges and the Extrahuman in Africa
The peer reviewing was organized by the journal editor; i can provide reports of the peer reviewing of my own article, and of our introduction
Beads, Pixels, andNkisi: Contemporary Kinois Art and Reconfigurations of the Virtual
In the 2016 Abiola Lecture, Mbembe argued that "the plasticity of digital forms speaks powerfully to the plasticity of African precolonial cultures and to ancient ways of working with representation and mediation, of folding reality." In her commentary, Pype tries to understand what "speaking powerfully to" can mean. She first situates the Abiola Lecture within a wide range of exciting and ongoing scholarship that attempts to understand social tr…
Religion, gender and news media in Africa
This chapter addresses some key themes in the study of gender, religion and news media in sub-Saharan Africa. The main argument is that women actively participate in the production and circulation of information, but we can only appreciate their contribution therein if we take a broader stance toward journalism. Understanding journalism as the collection of data and their contribution in narrative form to a public allows us to integrate categorie…
Diverting Makila Mabe: Understanding Responsibility in Kinshasa’s Pentecostal Worlds
Dead Media Objects and the Experience of the (Once) Modern. Ethnographic Perspectives from the Living Rooms of Kinshasa’s Old Aged
This article departs from the observation that in many living rooms of elderly Kinois\n(inhabitants of Kinshasa), old and defunctive radio and television sets are put on\ndisplay. When their primary function, to inform, has been rendered obsolete, we are\nfaced with the question why people continue to display these objects, often next to\nnewer models, in their living rooms. The main argument is that Information and\nCommunication Technologies (I…
Pratiques religieuses africaines et médias numériques
Cette série de six articles, tous focalisés sur l’Afrique francophone, traite chacun à leur manière du thème principal de l’usage de l’Internet par des groupes religieux sur le continent africain. Cinq de ces contributions explorent l’usage religieux des médias numériques en Afrique de l’Ouest alors que la dernière se concentre sur l’Afrique centrale. Nous en tirons une vue d’ensemble équilibrée sur diverses communautés religieuses telles le Hibu…
The Art of Connection: Risk, Mobility, and the Crafting of Transparency in Coastal Kenya by Dillon Mahoney
status: Published
Chronotopes of Media in Sub-Saharan Africa
This article is an introduction to the special issue. The four articles collected here - which trace the movements of media and persons from the bedrooms of young women in Nigerian Calabar (Gilbert), through the living rooms of Kinshasa's elderly (Pype), to the taxis of rural Uganda (Vokes), and to the virtual spaces of a live radio show in Uganda (Brisset-Foucault) - offer rich ethnographic case studies of the temporalizing and spatializing work…
Branhamist Kindoki: Ethnographic Notes on Connectivity, Technology, and Urban Witchcraft in Contemporary Kinshasa
Based on an exploration of how Branhamist Christians in Kinshasa represent and live with kindoki (sorcery/witchcraft), this article attempts to bring science and technology in the debate about witchcraft. The Branhamist Christian community is divided among groups who jettison information and communication technologies (ICT) outright, while others formulate a pedagogy of responsibility and awareness of the potentially immoral nature of ICT. The et…
Dancing to the rhythm of Léopoldville: Nostalgia, urban critique and generational difference in Kinshasa's TV music shows
This article addresses social and symbolic differences in contemporary Kinshasa as these are expressed in and mediated via widely watched music TV shows such as Bana Léo (“The Children of Léo[poldville]”) and Sentiment Lipopo (“The feeling of Lipopo”), which have become extremely popular in Kinshasa (“Leopoldville” as the city was called during colonial times, or affectionately “Lipopo”) since the early 2000s. Recorded in local nightclubs, these …
Becoming a Diplômé in Kinshasa. Education at the Intersection of Politics and Urban Livelihoods
Like other cities around the globe where the state organizes exams, Kinshasa’s exétat shows the degree to which social difference and urban livelihood are intimately connected. However, despite the assumption that diplômés master book knowledge, recent changes in the practice of the exétat have transformed the meaning of a diplômé , turning that figure into a yankee , i.e., someone who possesses street knowledge that comes from experience with th…
Containers, Carriers, Vehicles”
This introduction launches the new portfolio of articles on African mobilities and situates the three articles of this special section within the portfolio’s approach. This could be summarized in three key objectives. First, it seeks to highlight the inadequacy of enthusing in Africa simply as a venue where the itineraries of things and people from outside take place. Second, African mobilities is a way to signal the mobilities of Africans and th…
Blackberry Girls and Jesus's Brides
Especially since the mid-2000s when cellular communication became more widespread in Kinshasa, Pentecostal leaders and followers increasingly reflect about the proper usage of the handset and insert it into reflections about 'approved' (ya malamu) and 'disapproved' (ya mabe) types of femininity. Via an examination of the critical role of electronic communication technologies in the construction of 'Christian femininities', I bring novel insights …
[Not] talking like a Motorola': Mobile phone practices and politics of masking and unmasking in postcolonial Kinshasa
The expression 'talking like a Motorola' (koloba lokola Motorola) was long used during the reign of President Mobutu in the Democratic Republic of Congo/Zaire to indicate the undesired disclosure of information. It manifests the perception of many Kinois (inhabitants of Kinshasa) that the Motorola handset was only deployed by Mobutu's secret service agents in order to detect and report critics of the regime. Today, mobile phones are no longer the…
The liveliness of Pentecostal/charismatic popular culture in Africa
This chapter is an initial attempt to bring together some of the exciting scholarly work carried out on various genres of African Pentecostal-Charismatic popular culture. I define African Pentecostal-Charismatic Popular Culture (PCPC) as an analytical space, and argue that PCPC is very much a “live” popular culture. The notion of a “live popular culture” gains its meaning when analyzing how the experience of immediacy is manipulated (see also Bre…
Remediations of Congolese urban dance music in Kinshasa
Following the continuing popularity of Congolese rumba music in the 1950s–1970s, I explore the technological spaces in which old songs appear more than 50 years later, and study the agency of those who initiate and actively contribute to the reinsertions of the old music in and on new media formats. By redefining the ‘repurposing’ of the remediations as strategies steered by human intentionality and occurring within social spaces, I investigate t…
Fighting Boys, Strong Men and Gorillas: Notes on the Imagination of Masculinities in Kinshasa
The article provides insight into the current violent practices of urban youngsters in Kinshasa. At nightfall youth gangs transform the streets of Kinshasa's townships into arenas of the fight. Frequent regular clashes between these gangs create young violent leaders, who not only sow terror but also provide security for the inhabitants (young and old) of their territories. Although many of these boys and young men are trained in foreign fighting…
Confession cum Deliverance: In/Dividuality of the Subject Among Kinshasa's Born-Again Christians
The article deals with the social significance of confessions among Kinshasa's born-again Christians.1 Together with conversion narratives and former witches' testimonies, confessions represent the main discursive rituals in the religious practices of newborn Christians. The analysis departs from the observation that among Kinshasa's born-again Christians confessions are usually preceded or followed by deliverance rituals, and, that they are rare…
Chronotopes of Media in Sub-Saharan Africa
This article is an introduction to the special issue. The four articles collected here - which trace the movements of media and persons from the bedrooms of young women in Nigerian Calabar (Gilbert), through the living rooms of Kinshasa's elderly (Pype), to the taxis of rural Uganda (Vokes), and to the virtual spaces of a live radio show in Uganda (Brisset-Foucault) - offer rich ethnographic case studies of the temporalizing and spatializing work…
[Not] talking like a Motorola': Mobile phone practices and politics of masking and unmasking in postcolonial Kinshasa
The expression 'talking like a Motorola' (koloba lokola Motorola) was long used during the reign of President Mobutu in the Democratic Republic of Congo/Zaire to indicate the undesired disclosure of information. It manifests the perception of many Kinois (inhabitants of Kinshasa) that the Motorola handset was only deployed by Mobutu's secret service agents in order to detect and report critics of the regime. Today, mobile phones are no longer the…
Dancing for God or the Devil: Pentecostal Discourse on Popular Dance in Kinshasa
This article studies the dance poetics and politics of Christians in contemporary Kinshasa. For Kinois (inhabitants of Kinshasa), dance is one of the most important technologies to get in touch with an invisible Other, the divine or the occult. In sermons, and other modes of instruction, spiritual leaders inform their followers about the morality of songs and dances. These discourses reflect pentecostal thought, and trace back the purity of speci…
Decolonizing the Virtual: Future Knowledges and the Extrahuman in Africa
The peer reviewing was organized by the journal editor; i can provide reports of the peer reviewing of my own article, and of our introduction
Media Celebrity, Charisma and Morality in Post-Mobutu Kinshasa
Media celebrity, or public status achieved through mass media, is a particular kind of social distinction that appears in most contemporary societies. It is difficult to predict what qualities define celebrity, since the associations conjured up by their names, and the meanings attributed to them, differ from one social context to another. Empirical research is needed in order to understand how celebrities' reputations are construed. This article…
Blackberry Girls and Jesus's Brides
Especially since the mid-2000s when cellular communication became more widespread in Kinshasa, Pentecostal leaders and followers increasingly reflect about the proper usage of the handset and insert it into reflections about 'approved' (ya malamu) and 'disapproved' (ya mabe) types of femininity. Via an examination of the critical role of electronic communication technologies in the construction of 'Christian femininities', I bring novel insights …
Of Fools and False Pastors: Tricksters in Kinshasa's Television Fiction
Sub-Saharan African public spheres have increasingly transformed following the Pentecostalist wave that is sweeping over the continent since two decades ago. This is also the case for Kinshasa, where this new type of Christianity dominates both the urban soundscape and the media world. A Christian popular culture flourishes with its own music, dance forms, TV shows and celebrities. This article focuses on local TV serials, that, disregarding the …
Not) in sync – digital time and forms of (dis-)connecting: Ethnographic notes from Kinshasa (DR Congo)
Based on ethnographic research, this article explores the temporal politics of ‘electronic modernity’ in one locale in the Global South, in particular Kinshasa, capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo. A major experience of digital connectivity in Kinshasa is one of unexpected and undesired disconnection, that is, the involuntary logging off of the Internet due to political interference, lack of battery time, or credit time (phone credit…
Containers, Carriers, Vehicles”
This introduction launches the new portfolio of articles on African mobilities and situates the three articles of this special section within the portfolio’s approach. This could be summarized in three key objectives. First, it seeks to highlight the inadequacy of enthusing in Africa simply as a venue where the itineraries of things and people from outside take place. Second, African mobilities is a way to signal the mobilities of Africans and th…
Dancing to the rhythm of Léopoldville: Nostalgia, urban critique and generational difference in Kinshasa's TV music shows
This article addresses social and symbolic differences in contemporary Kinshasa as these are expressed in and mediated via widely watched music TV shows such as Bana Léo (“The Children of Léo[poldville]”) and Sentiment Lipopo (“The feeling of Lipopo”), which have become extremely popular in Kinshasa (“Leopoldville” as the city was called during colonial times, or affectionately “Lipopo”) since the early 2000s. Recorded in local nightclubs, these …
Funerary Comedies in Contemporary Kinshasa: Social Difference, Urban Communities and the Emergence of a Cultural Form
The article situates a new type of stand-up comedy, performed in Kinshasa's mourning spaces (matanga), within the city's social universe. This type of funerary joking, enacted by comedians unrelated to the bereaved, represents a clear departure from the customary funerary humour in which accepted jokers occupy particular social positions vis-à-vis the deceased. Following recent changes in the organization of mourning rituals within the circles of…
Taboos and Rebels—Or, Transgression and Regulation in the Work and Lives of Kinshasa's Television Journalists
This article explores political transgression in Kinshasa's media space and informal and official reactions to these. Ethnographic material will exhibit violation and regulation in the context of two highly popular media genres, call-in shows and short reportages about life in the city. In order to extend our understanding of political mediation, I argue we need to pay attention to the management of public information, to the parties involved in …
Visual media and political communication: Reporting about suffering in Kinshasa
Many sub-Saharan African societies have undergone significant political shifts in the last two decades. Changes in political representation and leadership have generated new forms of political mediation and communication. This article interrogates one of the most visible transformations in Kinshasa's political society: television news reports about urban misery, often resulting from a malfunctioning state, in which Kinshasa's inhabitants testify …
Reciprocity and risk in the work and lives of Kinshasa's TV journalists
In the field of TV news journalism in contemporary Kinshasa, a strong division can be made between pro-government journalism and that criticizing the government. Notwithstanding the antithetical position of journalists in Kinshasa’s political society, still some generalities of the ‘journalistic condition’ in that city can be made. First, reciprocity structures the relationship between journalists and politicians, and shapes the journalists’ prof…
The interdependence of mobility and faith-an introduction
Re ́sume ́\nL’introduction de ce nume ́ro spe ́cial resserre les enjeux the ́oriques et analytiques qui\ntraversent ces quatre textes. Ces textes montrent que de ́votion et mobilite ́, croyance et\ntrajectoire vont de pair. L’argument principal en est que les mouvements religieux\ne ́tudie ́s ici ne constituent pas des phe ́nome`nes locaux qui cherchent a` transcender les\nfrontie`res e ́tablies. Ces mouvements religieux sont eux-meˆmes la transc…
Provisional notes on the postcolony’ in Congo studies: An Overview of Themes and Debates
This article considers the uptake of Achille Mbembe’s article ‘Provisional notes on the postcolony’ (1992), the book De la Postcolonie: essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporain (2000) and its translated version, On the Postcolony (2001), in Congo studies. ‘Congo’ here is a shorthand for the current Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaire. The article is concerned with the ways in which these two English-language…
The drama(s) of Independence Day: Reflections on political affects and aesthetics in Kinshasa (2010)
On June 30 2010, in Kinshasa, a “drama” unfolded as the military march was abruptly interrupted by street children intermingling and enacting ndombolo-inspired dances in front of the president. Police and soldiers started beating up people; the state radio and television channels aborted the live broadcasts; and people were urged to return home. The order and discipline that the military march had expressed, had in a few seconds given way to chao…
Digital Creativity and Urban Entrapment in Kinshasa: Experiments in Solving Precarity
I attend to the dialectics between precarity, urban sociality, and digital technology (le numérique) in Kinshasa. Tech engineers, and those aspiring to become one, dream of solvent futures. They share a desire to leave various forms of precarity behind and attempt to produce new urban futures by means of tech skills and digital technologies. Especially the lack of trust in urban others is considered a problem solvable with mobile phone applicatio…
Historical Routes Towards Religious Television Fiction in Post-Mobutu Kinshasa
Since the early 1990s Pentecostal-Charismatic Church membership has grown spectacularly in Africa. Scholars of these churches (which are sometimes also called Pentecostalist or Born-Again Churches) invariably mention how audiovisual media are used both in church gatherings and in the proselytising activities of their members. (...) Revisiting the colonial past and taking into account the interfaces of religion and visual media before the heydays …
The Noise of Still Images: Encounters in and with sub-Saharan Africa
status: Published
Dancing for God or the Devil: Pentecostal Discourse on Popular Dance in Kinshasa
This article studies the dance poetics and politics of Christians in contemporary Kinshasa. For Kinois (inhabitants of Kinshasa), dance is one of the most important technologies to get in touch with an invisible Other, the divine or the occult. In sermons, and other modes of instruction, spiritual leaders inform their followers about the morality of songs and dances. These discourses reflect pentecostal thought, and trace back the purity of speci…
Fighting Boys, Strong Men and Gorillas: Notes on the Imagination of Masculinities in Kinshasa
The article provides insight into the current violent practices of urban youngsters in Kinshasa. At nightfall youth gangs transform the streets of Kinshasa's townships into arenas of the fight. Frequent regular clashes between these gangs create young violent leaders, who not only sow terror but also provide security for the inhabitants (young and old) of their territories. Although many of these boys and young men are trained in foreign fighting…
We need to open up the country: Development and the Christian key scenario in the social space of Kinshasa's teleserials
This article discusses discourses on development in the social space of Kinshasa's post-Mobutu teleserials. The producers (dramatic artists and born-again Christian leaders; some are both) contend that their work will transform society, counter the social and political crisis and improve the nation in various ways. Pentecostalist Christianity meets the genre of the melodrama in the way the teleserials focus on the individual's spiritual developme…
Historical Routes Towards Religious Television Fiction in Post-Mobutu Kinshasa
Since the early 1990s Pentecostal-Charismatic Church membership has grown spectacularly in Africa. Scholars of these churches (which are sometimes also called Pentecostalist or Born-Again Churches) invariably mention how audiovisual media are used both in church gatherings and in the proselytising activities of their members. (...) Revisiting the colonial past and taking into account the interfaces of religion and visual media before the heydays …
Media Celebrity, Charisma and Morality in Post-Mobutu Kinshasa
Media celebrity, or public status achieved through mass media, is a particular kind of social distinction that appears in most contemporary societies. It is difficult to predict what qualities define celebrity, since the associations conjured up by their names, and the meanings attributed to them, differ from one social context to another. Empirical research is needed in order to understand how celebrities' reputations are construed. This article…
The Noise of Still Images: Encounters in and with sub-Saharan Africa
status: Published
Of Fools and False Pastors: Tricksters in Kinshasa's Television Fiction
Sub-Saharan African public spheres have increasingly transformed following the Pentecostalist wave that is sweeping over the continent since two decades ago. This is also the case for Kinshasa, where this new type of Christianity dominates both the urban soundscape and the media world. A Christian popular culture flourishes with its own music, dance forms, TV shows and celebrities. This article focuses on local TV serials, that, disregarding the …
Media and identity in Africa
status: Published
Taboos and Rebels—Or, Transgression and Regulation in the Work and Lives of Kinshasa's Television Journalists
This article explores political transgression in Kinshasa's media space and informal and official reactions to these. Ethnographic material will exhibit violation and regulation in the context of two highly popular media genres, call-in shows and short reportages about life in the city. In order to extend our understanding of political mediation, I argue we need to pay attention to the management of public information, to the parties involved in …
Visual media and political communication: Reporting about suffering in Kinshasa
Many sub-Saharan African societies have undergone significant political shifts in the last two decades. Changes in political representation and leadership have generated new forms of political mediation and communication. This article interrogates one of the most visible transformations in Kinshasa's political society: television news reports about urban misery, often resulting from a malfunctioning state, in which Kinshasa's inhabitants testify …
Confession cum Deliverance: In/Dividuality of the Subject Among Kinshasa's Born-Again Christians
The article deals with the social significance of confessions among Kinshasa's born-again Christians.1 Together with conversion narratives and former witches' testimonies, confessions represent the main discursive rituals in the religious practices of newborn Christians. The analysis departs from the observation that among Kinshasa's born-again Christians confessions are usually preceded or followed by deliverance rituals, and, that they are rare…
The Making of the Pentecostal Melodrama
How religion, gender, and urban sociality are expressed in and mediated via television drama in Kinshasa is the focus of this ethnographic study. Influenced by Nigerian films and intimately related to the emergence of a charismatic Christian scene, these teleserials integrate melodrama, conversion narratives, Christian songs, sermons, testimonies, and deliverance rituals to produce commentaries on what it means to be an inhabitant of Kinshasa.
The interdependence of mobility and faith-an introduction
Re ́sume ́\nL’introduction de ce nume ́ro spe ́cial resserre les enjeux the ́oriques et analytiques qui\ntraversent ces quatre textes. Ces textes montrent que de ́votion et mobilite ́, croyance et\ntrajectoire vont de pair. L’argument principal en est que les mouvements religieux\ne ́tudie ́s ici ne constituent pas des phe ́nome`nes locaux qui cherchent a` transcender les\nfrontie`res e ́tablies. Ces mouvements religieux sont eux-meˆmes la transc…
The drama(s) of Independence Day: Reflections on political affects and aesthetics in Kinshasa (2010)
On June 30 2010, in Kinshasa, a “drama” unfolded as the military march was abruptly interrupted by street children intermingling and enacting ndombolo-inspired dances in front of the president. Police and soldiers started beating up people; the state radio and television channels aborted the live broadcasts; and people were urged to return home. The order and discipline that the military march had expressed, had in a few seconds given way to chao…
Reciprocity and risk in the work and lives of Kinshasa's TV journalists
In the field of TV news journalism in contemporary Kinshasa, a strong division can be made between pro-government journalism and that criticizing the government. Notwithstanding the antithetical position of journalists in Kinshasa’s political society, still some generalities of the ‘journalistic condition’ in that city can be made. First, reciprocity structures the relationship between journalists and politicians, and shapes the journalists’ prof…
Les Kimbanguistes en France: Expression messianique d'une Église afro chrétienne en contexte migratoire
status: Published
Interview: Rosalind Hackett reflects on religious media in Africa
In October 2013, the editors of this special issue conducted an interview with Rosalind Hackett, one of the pioneering scholars in the field of media and religion. The interview took place via email and consisted of five questions that address the discussion in this special issue of Social Compass and attempt to look into the future of religion and technology studies. As African societies and their media production and reception are transforming …
Introduction: Visions du paradis/Visions of paradise
peer reviewed
Religion, migration et esthétique des médias. Notes concernant la circulation et la réception des films provenant du Nigéria à Kinshasa
In Kinshasa, films originating in Nigeria have become very popular. The author shows that the triad of migration, religion and media liberalization is dialectically related to the emergence of a new social and moral imaginary that, in its turn, has facilitated the reception of « Nollywood » films in Kinshasa. These films have become an intrinsic part of Kinois charismatic Christianity, partly because of local forms of power and authority and, in …
The liveliness of Pentecostal/charismatic popular culture in Africa
This chapter is an initial attempt to bring together some of the exciting scholarly work carried out on various genres of African Pentecostal-Charismatic popular culture. I define African Pentecostal-Charismatic Popular Culture (PCPC) as an analytical space, and argue that PCPC is very much a “live” popular culture. The notion of a “live popular culture” gains its meaning when analyzing how the experience of immediacy is manipulated (see also Bre…
Remediations of Congolese urban dance music in Kinshasa
Following the continuing popularity of Congolese rumba music in the 1950s–1970s, I explore the technological spaces in which old songs appear more than 50 years later, and study the agency of those who initiate and actively contribute to the reinsertions of the old music in and on new media formats. By redefining the ‘repurposing’ of the remediations as strategies steered by human intentionality and occurring within social spaces, I investigate t…
Sounding the Cape: Music, identity and politics in South Africa
"Sounding the Cape: Music, identity and politics in South Africa." Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines, 49(3), pp. 545–546
Funerary Comedies in Contemporary Kinshasa: Social Difference, Urban Communities and the Emergence of a Cultural Form
The article situates a new type of stand-up comedy, performed in Kinshasa's mourning spaces (matanga), within the city's social universe. This type of funerary joking, enacted by comedians unrelated to the bereaved, represents a clear departure from the customary funerary humour in which accepted jokers occupy particular social positions vis-à-vis the deceased. Following recent changes in the organization of mourning rituals within the circles of…
Becoming a Diplômé in Kinshasa. Education at the Intersection of Politics and Urban Livelihoods
Like other cities around the globe where the state organizes exams, Kinshasa’s exétat shows the degree to which social difference and urban livelihood are intimately connected. However, despite the assumption that diplômés master book knowledge, recent changes in the practice of the exétat have transformed the meaning of a diplômé , turning that figure into a yankee , i.e., someone who possesses street knowledge that comes from experience with th…
Containers, Carriers, Vehicles”
This introduction launches the new portfolio of articles on African mobilities and situates the three articles of this special section within the portfolio’s approach. This could be summarized in three key objectives. First, it seeks to highlight the inadequacy of enthusing in Africa simply as a venue where the itineraries of things and people from outside take place. Second, African mobilities is a way to signal the mobilities of Africans and th…
Sociology (36 works) · Political science (26 works) · Art (23 works) · African Studies and Ethnography (20 works) · Law (18 works) · Media studies (18 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Aesthetics (12 works)