Power, Politics and Identity in South African media (2008)

South Africa offers a rich context for the study of the interrelationship between the media and identity. The essays collected here explore the many diverse elements of this interconnection, and give fresh focus to topics that scholarship has tended to overlook, such as the pervasive impact of tabloid newspapers. Interrogating contemporary theory, the authors shed new light on how identities are constructed through the media, and provide case studies that illustrate the complex process of identity renegotiation taking place currently in post-apartheid South Africa. The contributors include established scholars as well as many new voices. Collectively, they represent some of South Africa’s finest media analysts pooling skills to grapple with one of the country’s most vexing issues: who are we?

For teachers, students and anyone else interested in questions of media, race, power and gender, as well as the manner in which new identities are created and old ones mutate, much of interest will be found within the contributions to this important collection.

Editors Adrian Hadland, Eric Louw, Simphiwe Sesanti, Herman Wasserman
Publisher Human Sciences Research Council Press, 2008
ISBN 07969-2202-0, 978-07969-2202-1
Pages 416

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Hadland, Aldridge, Ogada (eds): Re-Visioning Television. Policy, Strategy and Models for the Sustainable Development of Community Television in South Africa (2007)

The introduction of a quality, accessible local television network represents the final piece in post-apartheid South Africa’s media jigsaw. With legislation and policy now in place, the fitting of the last piece is imminent. The race is now on to develop models and fine-tune systems that will make the most powerfully democratic tier of broadcast media sustainable, empowering and development friendly.

Free media and/or community media is anathema to repressive governments around the world. In South Africa, by contrast, community television is expected to play an important role in job creation and skills development as well as contribute to the strengthening of civil society, the promotion of participative governance and the expression of the country’s rich linguistic and cultural heritage.

This book, compiled by South African experts in community broadcasting with the assistance of many key figures in the sector, traces the two-decade campaign for local-level television in South Africa. It highlights the development of policy, reviews existing international models and spells out the technical, financial and managerial challenges that face this nascent sector.

Policy-makers, community television station managers and staff, development analysts and funders, media academics and students, press officers, organisations wishing to access local TV together with anyone interested in community media in the developing world generally, and community television specifically, will find this book important reading.

Editors Adrian Hadland, Mike Aldridge, Joshua Ogada
Publisher Human Sciences Research Council Press, 2007
ISBN 0-7969-2160-1, 978-07969-2160-4
232 pages

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Adam Haupt: Stealing Empire: P2P, Intellectual Property and Hip-Hop Subversion (2008)

Stealing Empire poses the question, “What possibilities for agency exist in the age of corporate globalisation?” Using the work of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt as a point of entry, Adam Haupt delves into varied terrain to locate answers in this ground-breaking inquiry. He explores arguments about copyright via peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms such as Napster, free speech struggles, debates about access to information and open content licenses, and develops a politically incisive analysis of counterdiscourses produced by South African hip-hop artists. From ‘empire stealing’ through their commodification of countercultures to the ‘stealing empire’ activities of file-sharers, culture jammers and hip-hop activists, this book tells the story of people defining themselves as active, creative agents in a consumerist society.

Stealing Empire is vital reading for law, media and cultural studies scholars who want to make sense of the ways in which legal and communication strategies are employed to secure hegemony.

Publisher Human Sciences Research Council, 2008
ISBN 0796922098, 9780796922090
Length 272 pages

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