Western norms and local media in Africa

Project manager: Prof. Dr. Mamadou Diawara

Africa is known worldwide for its diverse intangible culture, its unique music, oral traditions, artistic performances, textile art, but also its literature and local knowledge about plants, the environment, or the construction of earthen architecture. As knowledge of this African cultural heritage has grown, so too has the uncertainty of how to deal with these cultural and artistic expressions in a global context from a legal perspective, particularly with regard to commercial interests, technologies of reproduction, the application of legal regulations and global broadcasting through the media.

The aim of the project was to investigate the clash between Western and African norms. The colonial transfer played a particularly important role here, as it set in motion complex reinterpretation processes of local practices and existing norms. The aim was to investigate on site in Africa how exactly local actors in various African societies deal with and interpret new and old norms, transforming and reshaping already established practices and values. The research was carried out in Mali and Cameroon.

Specifically, the project was dedicated to the changes in two interlinked subject areas: the handling of copyright and authors’ rights in relation to music and performance and the changes in media, advertising and consumer norms. The focus was on examining the tense relationship between the concerns of different actors and interest groups, social expectations and competing legal forms. In particular, the project followed the developments of the last two decades under the following questions: How has media practice changed with the addition of electronic media in Africa? How do local actors understand the concept of the inventor and author (as new categories of cultural actor) developed in a specific historical situation in Europe and the associated protection of their inventions and works? How do sellers, consumers, patrons, producers or media stations deal with the associated legal measures? In whose interest are standards enforced and justified, and who are the actors and interest groups involved?

The research results of the project show that copyright and authors’ rights in relation to music and performance have played an increasingly important role in Africa over the past two decades. Cultural forms of expression are increasingly subject to processes of legalization. Two trends are emerging in dealing with the issue of regulations on how to deal with intangible cultural assets. On the one hand, individual local actors appropriate cultural forms of expression from their own group, transform them and declare the result to be their own creation, which they market under their name as their intellectual property. On the other hand, ethnic groups are increasingly claiming certain cultural expressions and local knowledge as their cultural heritage, which belongs to them alone and is their very own ancestral heritage. Our findings show that the changes associated with juridification, commercialization and mediatization are not directly caused by the introduction of Western legal regulations or new technologies such as the printing press or electronic media, but that the processes are more complex. Before the influence of Western innovations can be assessed, the existing local regulations on the handling of intangible cultural assets must first be understood. This shows that the new regulations and technical innovations only become relevant in the local context and influential factors for change when they acquire significance for the actors in a particular historical situation. The question is therefore less whether the norms of intellectual property fit Africa or not, or whether the electronic media impose a Western style, but rather what the local actors do with the new regulations, how they appropriate, use and transform them (Diawara, Mamadou/Röschenthaler, Ute (2011): “Immaterielles Kulturgut und konkurrierende Normen: Local strategies of dealing with global regulations on cultural property protection’, Sociologus 61 (1): 1-17; Röschenthaler, Ute/Diawara, Mamadou (eds.) (2016): Copyright Africa. How Intellectual Property, Media, and Markets Transform Immaterial Cultural Goods . Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston Publishing.)

Similar results were found in the study of changes in the role of the media in sub-Saharan Africa (Mali and Cameroon) (Diawara, Mamadou/Röschenthaler, Ute (2013): “Mediationen: Changing norms and the power of the media in sub-Saharan Africa”, in: Andreas Fahrmeir/Annette Imhausen (eds.), The diversity of normative orders. Conflicts and dynamics from a historical and ethnological perspective (Series: Normative Orders Vol. 8), Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 129-164.) Media translate experience into another new form through which people can better understand their environment. They play an important role in social integration and the reflection of societies on themselves. Ideas of society, nation or culture are all based on mediation. Here too, continuities in pre-colonial and new electronic media played a major role in the formation of norms and the acceptance of new media.
It became clear that this investigation requires a comprehensive concept of media that includes historical and social contexts. Even from pre-colonial times, i.e. before the Berlin Conference in 1885, the use of media has been handed down in a variety of forms. The colonial era, the nation-state’s handling of media since independence and increasing urbanization in the 20th century brought about far-reaching changes. With the democratization efforts and the liberalization of markets in Africa since the end of the 1980s, a new dynamic has emerged, which is expressed in the multiplication of electronic media and new consumer products, among other things. It emanates from the cities with their accelerated movements, the densification and heterogenization of people and goods and forms an ideal environment for the emergence of new media practices.

In various regions of Africa, different instances have emerged over time that have taken on the role of the medium as a mediator of authenticated messages and social integration. Examples are the praise singers or griots in the Mande world in West Africa and the men’s and women’s societies in the forest and savannah regions of West and Central Africa. The human medium initially appears to reinforce norms, but on closer inspection, i.e. observation over a longer period of time, it becomes clear that societies as media, just like electronic media, are repeatedly used to settle conflicts between generations, men and women, and other interest groups to negotiate norms.

The project organized conferences and workshops in Bamako (2009) on the clash of normative orders and their implementation in the field of development as part of the Point Sud programme with members and doctoral students of the cluster, among others; two international conferences in Bad Homburg (2010 and 2011) on the transformation of cultural assets in the context of changing legal norms, mediatization and commercialization.

The results of the project make the practices of local actors visible and provide a differentiated picture of social and cultural change processes. They enrich the arguments often generated from theory and counter them with dense descriptions of how norms are dealt with. The history of intellectual property in Africa in its various forms that existed before the colonial era, as well as the way in which state and international regulations on copyright and trademark law are dealt with in connection with the respective understanding of such rights, is still largely underexposed and requires further research. The findings can provide clues as to how the widespread problem of piracy in Africa can be better understood and how the actors (artists, traders, entrepreneurs) themselves deal with this problem.