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Reworking and resisting globalising influences: Cape Town hip-hop

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Abstract

Global cultural flows have emerged as key influences in driving changes in local consumer behaviour, identities and social relations. These flows are negotiated and contested in the local context. This article considers how local hip-hop artists in Cape Town, South Africa, challenge and disrupt the dominant images of success linked to consumerism and individualism in popular American music imports. Drawing on Katz’s (Signs 26(4):1213–1234, 2001a, Antipode 33(4):709–728, 2001b) thinking around topographies and counter-topographies, this article suggests that local political hip-hop can be used to develop powerful critiques of the outcomes of globalisation.

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Notes

  1. Tanja Bosch was the station manager at Bush Radio at the time of research. She is now a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Cape Town.

  2. 50 cent is a famous American rap musician, Beckham is David Beckham the English footballer, and Hilton is the infamous socialite Paris Hilton.

  3. Mosima Gabriel (‘Tokyo’) Sexwale was born in Soweto in 1953 and joined the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC), the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), in the 1970s. Arrested in 1977 by South African security forces, Sexwale was imprisoned on Robben Island until 1990. After his release, Sexwale continued to work with the ANC before leaving politics in 1998 for the corporate sector. In 2009, Sexwale returned to politics and is currently the ANC’s Minister for Human Settlement.

  4. The Apprentice is a reality television show in which contestants undertake a series of business-related challenges, with the winner being offered a one-year job with a major company.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, England

    Daniel Hammett

  2. Department of Geography, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

    Daniel Hammett

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  1. Daniel Hammett
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Correspondence to Daniel Hammett.

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Hammett, D. Reworking and resisting globalising influences: Cape Town hip-hop. GeoJournal 77, 417–428 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-010-9395-1

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