Paper short abstract:

This paper tries to explain why affluent white males are looking to marginalized urban black males for cultural inspiration. This is done using Mailer's concept of the White Negro and Elias and Foucault's theories of Western subjectivity. It also offers a new interpretation of Black Coolness.

Paper long abstract:

For some time now, more reflexively-minded anthropologists have been urging their colleagues to take into account their own subjective experience whilst writing up ethnography. Yet with few exceptions, this has rarely gone beyond paying lip-service to the need to turn the looking glass on the anthropologist's own culture and, as a result, the tendency has been to reduce this culture to a rather glib and essentialist notion of a White Western Self. To counteract this trend - which it hardly needs pointing out commits the same fatal errors James Carrier (1992) has warned anthropologists against doing in what amounts to a reversal of Orientalism - I intend drawing upon the ideas of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault to delineate a rough outline of what this White Western Self might actually look like. Along the lines of Norman Mailer's explanation of the White Negro in post-war American society, I will be arguing that the social restraint indicative of being incorporated into western bourgeois institutions may well explain why white males are copying the style of their more culturally creative black peers.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how marginalized Maroon youth in urban Suriname use musical strategies in combating stigmatization and improving their socio-economic position. They use reggae and dancehall to create and recreate physical and social spaces of their own within the city and outside the forest.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how marginalized Maroon youth in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname, make use of musical strategies in combating stigmatization and improving their socio-economic position. Traditionally, Surinamese Maroons, after escaping the plantations during slavery, have lived in semi-isolation in the country's dense rainforest. In recent decades, they have become increasingly urbanized, to the discontent of many in Paramaribo who view Maroons as backwards, violent criminals. The fact that many Maroons live in 'bad' low-income neighborhoods within the city reinforces such ideas. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and analysis of music lyrics and video clips, the paper discusses how young Maroons use reggae and dancehall to create and recreate physical and social spaces of their own within the city and outside the forest. They protest local conditions and inequity by drawing on regional images of marginality that have been shaped by Rastafari musicians in Jamaican. Simultaneously, they use this Caribbean frame to imagine hemispheric unity with Africans and African Americans. In the self-proclaimed ghettos of Paramaribo, young Maroons relate to global soundscapes and strategically use music to combat their urban marginality.

Paper short abstract:

The manner in which black, brown, and white youngsters in European metropolises are taking on the new identity of urban blackness (an effect of commoditisation of black music) and its impact on prevalent notions of racial categorisation are the main themes that will be explored in this essay.

Paper long abstract:

Amidst all the noise of misogyny and bling-bling talk, black music also asserts the need for a utopian home. A home where black, brown, and white (the way we currently understand these markers) will be no more. Instead a new meta-ethnicity, urban blackness, based on ones love of black music and not upon the colour of ones skin, will render older racial categories obsolete. With the exponential rise of the culture industry however, nowadays this utopian dream is incorporated into corporate capitalism. Urban blackness is a commoditised identity marker sold to black and white youngsters who wish to be down MTV style. The manner in which black, brown, and white youngsters in European metropolises are taking on the new identity of urban blackness is the main theme that I will explore in this essay. As such it contributes to a growing body of work in Cultural Studies (Hall 1991, Mercer 1994) and Anthropology (Nassy Brown 1998, Cornips & de Rooij 2004, Guadeloupe 2005) that alerts us to the role of commoditised black popular culture in the construction of new ethnicities and concomitant racial categorisations in the urban settings of Western Europe.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the socio-political activism of Angela Davis and the way in which she has been remembered /appropriated within the realm of US popular culture.

Paper long abstract:

Angela Davis is perhaps one of the most influential scholar-activists of the 20th century. Yet, in the contemporary moment, through historical reductionism, anarchronism and the romanticizing of the Black Power era and its couture, Davis' afro—the hairstyle she wore during the 1970's—has yielded greater attention than the socio-political episodes that launched her into radical celebrity. Rather than simply focusing on the revolutionary glamour inspired by her militant posture and infectious afro coif, this study explores the social and political processes through which Davis emerges as a cause célèbre of American Radicalism. As such, this paper explores the visual images and commentary surrounding three major episodes: (1) Davis' 1969 termination from the University of California at Los Angeles, (2) the declaration of Davis as among the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitives, and (3) her incarceration and trial from 1970 to 1972. I look specifically at the way these events are narrated and visualized in mainstream, Black Power, and Communists Party publications. In this regard, I attempt to (a) explore the orientation of Davis' socio-political activism, namely her advocacy of Black Power and Communism and their investment in responding to the plight of marginal communities, particularly those located in urban enclaves, and (b) re-contextualize the "Afro" by examining how it has been appropriated within contemporary popular culture as an emblem of ghetto rebellion and black counter-culture, with Davis as the arbiter of this form of black revolutionary aesthetic.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the success of rap in Dakar (Senegal) and its role in shaping new identities partially based on the reappropriation of urban territory and the rivalries between city areas.

Paper long abstract:

Rap has emerged in Dakar (Senegal) in the late 80s as an expression of urban middle class youth, more oriented towards foreign cultural products and with a larger access to imported media; during the following years, though, it has become widespread, gaining support among a whole generation. Belonging to a certain city area, more or less privileged, more or less marginal, has become for young rappers in Dakar an important source of legitimacy, fostering rivalries based on urban territorial disputes which can also mirror differences in style and class, and at the same time allowing the rap community members to debate political and social issues. Furthermore, "the city" is in constant confrontation with "the world" (the international hip hop community, and especially the blackness of African American youth), while geographical cleavages overlap with generational and gender data, making the creation of a new male youth identity in post-colonial Senegal even more complex.

This paper will offer some results from a Ph.D. research among young and beginner rap artists in Dakar; it will also present some visual material (music clips, filmed interviews) showing the special link young artists have with the urban space.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper will present ethnographic material from various park groups, and will try to explore the meaning of Black Music for marginalised park kids in Vienna - adolescents who spend most of their time in parks and public space and places.

Paper long abstract:

All young people need to be with their peers. They seek to meet, and it is most important to see and be seen (scene). Special and very obvious groups are adolescents who spend most of their time in parks and public space and places. These teenagers are regarded here as marginalised by society due to several reasons, belonging to low-income families and non-access to costly leisure time activities included. These young people, while inevitably feeling the economic pressure, act according to their means: they leave their often small homes and acquire considerable social and cultural skills by using public space and places for meeting, playing, sports, dancing, and sexual activities.

In 1997, Street Heroes for park kids were Michael Jackson, Tupac, Ronaldo, Muhammed Ali, and Michael Jordan. Graffiti and BreakDance as favorite pastimes were well established in youth centers. Via MTV, Gangster Rap (Snoop Dogg) entered parks and parties. Presently, HipHop from Germany has been modified into Viennese park style by some groups, mainly as mode of expression, aggression, and myths of male dominance. For park groups, black music cultures - mainly gangster rap - serve as models for fighting discrimination and for seeking their images of self.

The paper will present ethnographic material from various park groups, and will try to explore the meaning of Black Music for marginalised park kids in Vienna.

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