Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T10:23:24.286Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Performance, Self-Definition, and Social Experience in the Oral Poetry of Sotho Migrant Mineworkers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

David Coplan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Attempts to further the study of popular culture in Africa face the difficulty of defining “popular” as distinct from traditional or folk culture on the one hand, and elite or dominant culture on the other. The features that emerge most often from the discussion of these distinctions center on the relative degree of separation between performers and audiences, and on change from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft as a basis for social interaction (Bigsby, 1976: 18). These contrasts have frequently been identified with movement from a rural to an urban social world, where communal, multidimensional relationships give way to associative forms characterized by a segmentation of roles, divided loyalties, and the primacy of hypothetical or contractual relations over categorical and personal ones. Thus we value traditional or rural folk culture for its idealized capacity to give integrated expression to all aspects of human life, and symbolic representation to the essence of the human condition. In contrast, the sociology of urban art forms focuses on the relations between class and culture, the artist and his work, market organization and cultural production (Barbu, 1976: 47, 55). As anyone familiar with its urban scene should recognize, these distinctions are not workable for Southern Africa. Yet their very inapplicability highlights the importance of both the struggle for cultural integration and the flow of people and communication between urban and rural areas in contemporary Africa.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 1986 , pp. 29 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, C. 1974. “Ethnography of Basotho Evaluative Behavior in the Cognitive Domain Lipapadi (games).” Ph.D., University of Indiana: Bloomington, Indiana.Google Scholar
Ashton, H. 1952. The Basotho. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barbu, Z. 1976. “Popular Culture: A Sociological Approach,” in Bigsby, C.W.E. (ed.), Approaches to Popular Culture. Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press.Google Scholar
Bastide, R. 1978. The African Religions of Brazil. (Trans., Sebba, H.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Bigsby, C. W. E. 1976. “The Politics of Popular Culture,” in Bigsby, C. W. E. (ed.), Approaches to Popular Culture. Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press.Google Scholar
Bloch, M. 1964. Caracteres originaux de l'histoire rural Francaise. Paris.Google Scholar
Burke, P. 1976. “Oblique Approaches to the History of Popular Culture,” in Bigsby, C. W. E. (ed.), Approaches to Popular Culture. Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press.Google Scholar
Casalis, E. 1861. Les Bassoutos. Paris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coplan, D. 1981. “Stylistic Process and Development in Black South African Urban Music,” in Card, C., et.al (eds.), Discourses in Ethnomusicology, Il. Bloomington: Ethnomusicology Publications Group.Google Scholar
Coplan, D. 1982. “The Emergence of African Working-Class Culture in the South African Industriual Revolution,” in Marks, S. and Rathbone, R. (eds.), Town and Countryside: Essays on African Class Formation, Culture and Consciousness, 1870-1930. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Damane, M. and Sanders, P. B. 1974. Lithoko: Sotho Praise Poems. Oxford Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Fernandez, J. 1972. “Persuasions and Performances: Of the Beast in Every Body …and the Metaphor of Everyman.” Daedalus 1 (2).Google Scholar
Finnegan, R. 1970. Oral Literature in Africa. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. 1965. The Social History of an Indonesian Town. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. 1975. “On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding.” American Scientist Jan/Feb.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. 1976. New Rules of Sociological Method. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Hellman, E. 1948. Rooiyard: A Sociological Survey of an Urban Native Slumyard. Rhodes Livingstone Papers No. 13. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jackson, M. 1977. The Kuranko. London: C. Hunt.Google Scholar
Jules-Rosette, B. 1981. Symbols of Change: Urban Transition in a Zambian Community. Norword, N. J.: Ablex.Google Scholar
Kunene, D. 1971. Heroic Poetry of the Basotho. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Little, K. 1974. Urbanization as a Social Process. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Magubane, B. 1971. “A Critical Look at the Indices Used in the Study of Social Change in Colonial Africa.” Current Anthropology 12, 4/5 (Oct/Dec).Google Scholar
Magubane, B. 1973. “The Xhosa in Town, Revisited Urban Social Anthropology: A Failure of Method and Theory.” American Anthropologist 75.Google Scholar
Mapele, S. D. 1976. “Lifela.” B. A. Honors thesis: National University of Lesotho.Google Scholar
Mayer, P. 1961. Townsmen or Tribesmen. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mayer, P. 1980. “The Origin and Decline of Two Rural Resistance Ideologies,” in Mayer, P. (ed.), Black Villagers in an Industrial Society. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Morelet, A. 1864. Journal du Voyage de Vasco da Gama en 1497. Lyons: Perrin.Google Scholar
Pauw, B. A. 1963. The Second Generation. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Poulantzas, N. 1973. Political Power and Social Class. London: New Left Books.Google Scholar
Rycroft, D. 1975/1976. “The Zulu Bow Songs of Princess Constance Magogo.” African Music 5, 4.Google Scholar
Rycroft, D. 1977. “Evidence of Stylistic Continuity in Zulu Town Music’, in Essays For a Humanist: An Offering to Klaus Wachsman. New York: Townhouse Press.Google Scholar
Schapera, I. 1962. “Should Anthropologists Be Historians?” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 92.Google Scholar
Sebilo, P. 1976. “What Do the Miners Say?” B. A. Honors thesis. National University of Lesotho.Google Scholar
Smith, M. G. 1962. “History and Social Anthropology.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 92.Google Scholar
Speigel, A. D. 1980. “Rural Differentiation and the Diffusion of Migrant Labour Remittances in Lesotho,” in Mayer, P. (ed.), Black Villagers in an Industrial Society. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vilakazi, A. 1965. Zulu Transformations. Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter.Google Scholar
Williams, G. 1902. The Diamond Mines of South Africa. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar