Folklore’, cultural property and modernisation in sub-Saharan Africa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11416860 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Kerr (0000-0002-5635-1032, a Professor of Theatre and Media , University of Malawi, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 144-157 |
| Publication date | 2006-07-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Critical Arts (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0256-0046 • E-ISSN: 1992-6049 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/02560040608557783 |
| OpenAlex | W2056661084 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 9 |
In recent years there have been several attempts, through UNESCO and other international cultural agencies, to preserve African oral ‘folklore’. Many of the supporting arguments for such actions are based on a simplistic binary model of African oral culture, contrasting modern, individually authored, cultural products backed up by copyright laws, with anonymous, static and collective pre-capitalist cultural traditions. This article argues that the binary is itself questionable, since the collective nature of oral culture is more in the reception than the creation of artworks. In addition, a simplistic account of a shift from oral to literary/mediated culture as a shift from traditional to modern, ignores the complexity and dynamism of African cultural responses to globalisation. While not denying the possibility of African artists being exploitated in a modern context of industrial cultural production, the article suggests that African ambiguity to legalistic intellectual property rights may be part of a larger Third World dialectic struggling against globalised culture
Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology · Cultural heritage · Cultural homogenization · Cultural property · Dialectic · Dynamism · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Folklore · Globalization · Modernization theory · Political science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · Diverse Musicological Studies · History · Law
| Citations per year | 0.17 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2014 - 2022 (9) |
| Highly cited | No |