| dc.creator | Frederiksen, Bodil Folke | |
| dc.creator | Kimuyu, Peter | |
| dc.creator | Kinyanjui, Mary Njeri | |
| dc.date | 2011-08-04T14:40:41Z | |
| dc.date | 2011-08-04T14:40:41Z | |
| dc.date | 2000 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2013-01-04T16:30:20Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2013-01-04T16:30:20Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 04-01-13 | |
| dc.identifier | Frederiksen, B. F., Kimuyu, P. and Kinyanjui, M. N. (2000), Popular culture, family relations and issues of everyday democracy: a study of youth in Pumwani, Working paper no. 530, Nairobi: Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi | |
| dc.identifier | http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/123456789/1063 | |
| dc.identifier | 322356 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11295/7502 | |
| dc.description | This paper deals with young women and men's appropriation of
local and global popular culture in Pumwani, a poor Nairobi
neighbourhood. Local media articulate Christian ideals of marriage
and gender relations, ideals, which in the West would be considered
conservative. In a Kenyan context the ideals support the
transformation of extended family systems, based on a clear
separation of functions between generations and sexes, into
'modem' nuclear families, which are ..more fluid, and where power
may be distributed more equally between sexes and generations.
Influential global popular culture narratives, such as the television
soap opera, The Bold and the Beautiful, and several situation
comedies, featuring African American stars, also support ideals of
equality between the sexes and generations, implicit in the modern
love marriage and nuclear family ideal. At the same time they may
seem to encourage non-binding love affairs. The role of popular
culture in central areas of life is increasing in tandem with a general
social transformation, which renders the authority of older
generations and also of church and state debatable.
The arguments of the paper are based on group and life history
interviews and surveys of work and leisure activities of a group of
fairly well educated but mostly out-of-work or self-employed young
men and women. Accounts of selected popular culture texts and
reception analyses of visual material supplement the sociological
approaches. The conclusion of the article is that young women in
particular make use of a public sphere, understood as a process of
articulation. The discursive spaces opened up by media do not have
the barriers, which elsewhere keep women and poor people from
taking part in debates on key social and moral questions. In that
sense they contribute significantly to the creation of a democratic
public sphere | |
| dc.language | en | |
| dc.publisher | Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi | |
| dc.relation | Working papers;530 | |
| dc.rights | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ | |
| dc.rights | Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi en_GB | |
| dc.subject | Gender | |
| dc.subject | Children and Youth | |
| dc.title | Popular culture, family relations and issues of everyday democracy: a study of youth in Pumwani | |
| dc.type | Series paper (non-IDS) | |
