‘Popular Media in Kenyan History: Fiction and Newspapers as Social Political Actors’ released
Senior journalism lecturer
Dr George Ogola has written a book examining popular fiction columns prevalent in twentieth century Kenyan newspapers and the impact they had on Kenyan politics.
‘Popular Media in Kenyan History: Fiction and Newspapers as Social Political Actors’ will be released on Friday 17 March and is published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Dr Ogola said: “Notwithstanding its limitations, Africa’s popular cultural economy has been particularly adept at capturing change in the continent. Various popular cultural productions in Africa are largely a manifestation of processes of change. However, because these forms of social and political engagements are often largely informal, they have routinely been ignored by mainstream scholarship.”
"I would hope that scholars and those interested in Africa and the developing world will start examining the informal spaces and ways in which ordinary people organise and respond to change."
Popular Media in Kenyan History attempts to rethink political and historical agency in the continent. Rather than focusing on formal institutions as the only place where we can understand both social and political processes associated with change, George commented: “I instead examine cultural productions produced in and by newspapers as sites of legitimate alternative histories through which we are exposed to the vagaries of Africa’s postcolonial modernity and its existential anxieties and dilemmas. In addition, the book is interested in how ordinary people respond to these challenges.
“I would hope that scholars and those interested in Africa and the developing world will start examining the informal spaces and ways in which ordinary people organise and respond to change. This is a thoroughly rich archive for scholarship on a range of disciplines.”
Read Dr Ogola's latest article which explores 'fake news' in Africa in The Conversation
