Popular Culture, Media and Different Modes of Femininity in Early 21st Century Dar es Salaam
Fred Halla’s cartoon summarizes overarching themes of my thesis
how popular media culture (in a very broad sense) is intertwined into contemporary urban culture in Tanzania,
(2) that ‘modern’ female identities are articulated at the intersection of mediated and lived experience,
(3) and at the intersection of such power dimensions as gender, generation, class, ethnicity and sexuality,
(4) changing ideals and attitudes in society concerning the performance of femininity,
(5) the continuous discursive reproduction of different binary oppositions, such as male – female, modern – traditional, urban – rural, global – local, Western – African, in popular (political) discourse.
Analysis of…
interviews, focus groups, informal discussions, observations, essays, diaries, photos of a particular group of female upper secondary school students in Dar es Salaam
a broad variety of media ’texts’ / narratives (news articles, music videos, song lyrics, ads, magazines, tv shows, and ’media events’ such as beauty contests)
interviews with different media professionals
The ‘modern’ woman subject positions herself, above all, in relation to those Other(s) that:
- “live under the law of tradition”
- “lived back in the years (miaka ya nyuma)”
- “are uneducated”
- “look like Miss Bantu” (namba nane body)
- “just want to be house-mothers (mama wa nyumbani)”
- is separated from bys through gendered space, place and duties
For a ’modern’ woman…
- ”education is a way to escape tradition” (school uniform as a symbol)
- independence is the goal (husband not necessary)
- the city is the place to live (as a dada wa mjini)
- kanga in the streets is unthinkable
- Miss Tanzania is a role-model (demu ya kimobitel, privileged femininities)
- a mobile phone is a necessity (at least in fantasy)
- mobility and connecting to the world is the dream
- needs to know certain modern female duties
- wants to become a mother, but not mama wa nyumbani
Wanawake na Maendeleo
W-I-D and G-A-D discourses reproduced and contested in popular political discourse
Different perspectives on ’modern’ women…
’positive’ influenced by G-A-D perspective and popular discourses around globalisation etc
’negative’ influenced by cultural imperialist fear, religious morality discourse, heritage from colonial gender segregation politics, and TANU’s disciplining of ‘the African woman’ (Operation Kijana)
Bongo Flava Culture
… and the ‘glocal’ formation of contemporary Tanzanian (youth) identities
… that is (truly) ‘globally’ influenced but ‘promoting’ the local (Tanzanian and African music, Kiswahili, Tanzanian celebrities, and politics)
… but still very urban focused/produced and consumers’ oriented
Faraway So Close
The clash between dream and reality
The weaving of mediated dreams
Imagination as a social practice (Appadurai 1996)
Knowledge of media discourse as cultural capital
Mobile phones and Internet
as symbols of status and mobility
and means of connecting and belonging to the global economy
… to Ulaya and Nyu Yoku
to Hongkong, Isidingo or Bongo
Internet and the Tanzanian diaspora
the "glocal" formation of Bongo identities
Based on…
… experiences from PhD research, and continuous contacts with the young women
… my experience / observations of the Tanzanian (EA) community in Sweden, and their Internet practices
… inspiration from recent diaspora studies (for instance Mano & Willems 2008)
