Most cited

COVID-19 and the Ugandan Presidential Election: Contesting Lockdown Authority in Popular Songs
David G. Pier, Micheal Mutagubya
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

23 December 2022, pp. 149-175
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
The COVID-19 pandemic struck when Uganda was in the middle of an acrimonious campaign season, in which longstanding president Yoweri Museveni was being challenged by Bobi Wine, a reggae singer turned politician. When Museveni imposed a strict lockdown, musicians sympathetic to Wine responded with songs about COVID-19 that challenged the government’s short-term, biopolitical demarcation of the national emergency. Pier and Mutagubya interpret a selection of Ugandan COVID-19 pop songs from 2020, considering in musical-historical perspective their various strategies for re-narrating the health crisis.

Beauty and the Bikini: Embodied Respectability in Nigerian Beauty Pageants
Oluwakemi M. Balogun
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

29 May 2019, pp. 80-102
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
In the world of Nigerian beauty pageants, the bikini remains a fraught embodied symbol and aesthetic practice. Pageant affiliates, critics, and fans alike strongly debate the question of whether to include bikinis in these events. This article draws primarily from nearly a year of ethnographic observations of two Nigerian national beauty contests in 2009-2010 to show how various stakeholders used personal, domestic, and international frames about women’s bodies, and the bikini in particular, to bolster respectability. Through embodied respectability, women’s figurative and literal bodies were used to strategically situate propriety, social acceptance, and reputability for the self and the nation.

African Studies Review