Toward an ‘African’ take on the cultural and creative industries

Bibliographic Data

ID11268136
AuthorsChristiaan De Beukelaer (0000-0002-9045-9979, The University of Melbourne, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume39
Issue4
Pages582-591
Publication date2017-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedia Culture & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0163-4437 • E-ISSN: 1460-3675
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0163443716664856
OpenAlexW2515989819
LanguageEN
Citations received15
References cited28

This article questions the extent to which ‘Africa’ can simply buy into the creative economy discourse. This is necessary because the relative lack of attention to the cultural and creative industries on the continent in the academic literature creates a double blind. First, the empirical context in which culture is created, traded, and consumed remains absent from the largely Western literature. Second, the same Western literature serves as a way to make cultural production on the African continent fit the notion of the cultural and creative industries. This creates a tension between the cultural and creative industries models and the context in which most cultural stakeholders on the continent work. My argument is that far greater empirical attention is needed to the practices in the cultural sector across the continent, because ‘Africa’ cannot simply pick and adopt a model, it needs to conceptualize and theorize its own models and approaches to the cultural industries for this discourse to become a useful tool

Argument (complex analysis · Context (archaeology · Creative industries · Cultural diversity · Empirical evidence · Empirical research · Epistemology · Political science · Sociology · Work (physics · Anthropology · Art History and Market Analysis · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Cultural Studies · Engineering · History · Law

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