Browsing by Author "Haupt, Adam"

Now showing 1 - 17 of 17
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    An Ethnographic Study on Heritage Preservation in Bo-Kaap
    (2020) Correia, Shannon; Haupt, Adam
    This research paper analyses the culture and community in Bo-Kaap, which is battling to preserve its heritage amid growing gentrification. Gentrification in this area is analysed as a special case in point, as although gentrification is happening in other neighbourhoods in Cape Town, Bo-Kaap is the home of Islam in South Africa, and is geographically set in a prime location of the city. This research paper includes an ethnographic study, as well as a photographic essay and a podcast series which supports the research in creative forms.The researcher interviewed several people from the area to discern the culture and the issues faced by the community. This paper examines the ethnographic lived experience of the researcher, as well as that of a local family. Three main events are examined to provide insight into the culture and community, namely an AirBnb traditional cooking experience, Eid AlAdha and the visit to the area by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The findings of this paper show that significant changes have and continue to occur, although the community is resilient in their efforts to preserve the culture. This research aims to provide additional and alternative records of the culture of the community as it stands in present day, in a holistic research effort. It also showcases the importance of the rich culture of the community which society needs to ensure is preserved.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Citizenship without representation? Blackface, misogyny and parody in Die Antwoord, Lupé Fiasco and Angel Haze
    (2013) Haupt, Adam
    This article explores Die Antwoord's blackface politics to question whether the concept of citizenship has any value in a context where marginal artists’ attempts to represent themselves on their own terms are overshadowed by the global reach of corporate entertainment media monopolies, and by the legacy of racism and sexism in the music industry. It analyses the work of Die Antwoord, Lupé Fiasco and Angel Haze to contend that global capital undermines the nation-state's ability to secure its citizens’ economic or cultural interests. Using Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's concept of Empire, the author argues that corporate globalisation undermines the sovereignty of the nation-state, effectively compromising democratic ideals. The global appeal of Die Antwoord tells us a great deal about the extent to which diverse cultural expressions are marginalised, as well as the extent to which colonial conceptions of race, gender and class endear in public discourse – specifically in light of the continuing appeal of blackface in the mainstream entertainment industry.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Communicative freedom in a digital democracy: political and economic resistance to freedom of speech and the rise of digital activism in South Africa
    (2022) Brevis, Chad; Haupt, Adam
    This dissertation explores political and economic resistance to communicative freedom in South Africa. Through a mixed methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics analysis, this dissertation seeks to explore how our understanding of democracy is being transformed as we move from a physical, industrialised world into a digital, networked society. South Africa is trying to keep pace with technological advances while still clinging to archaic forms of governance. This project considers whether these archaic forms of governance and older forms of communication legislation are effective in governing communicative freedom in South Africa's emerging network society. I argue that the Protection of State Information Bill (2010), Protection of Personal Information Bill (2009) and the Promotion of Access to Information Act (2013) are ineffective for two reasons. Firstly, the legislation's language is so open-ended that it can be abused by political and economic elites to stifle free speech and transparency. Secondly, the legislation can be used to punish whistleblowers and digital activists who are vested in sustaining a digital commons in the interest of openness and transparency in a functional democracy. In fact, digital activists say that they experience political and economic intimidation that forces them to self-censor under the threat of heavy-handed sanctions. The problem of corporate monopolisation contributes to this problem because the costs of meaningful online access and participation are prohibitively expensive. Effectively, this undermines constitutionally enshrined communicative freedoms. I also explore historical and theoretical approaches to democracy and consider what democracy is in a developing network society. This leads to a discussion of the ways in which vague language choices within laws are used to subvert and undermine the right to communicative freedom. I then engage the work of the civil society organisation, the Right2Know Campaign (R2K), as a legitimate response to impunitive exercises of power. The dissertation offers a Corpus Linguistics analysis of the Protection of State Information Bill (2010), Protection of Personal Information Bill (2009) and the Promotion of Access to Information Act (2013) to suggest that, in the nexus between political and economic resistance to communicative freedom and digital activism, South Africa has regressed into an autocratic dystopia. The argument is that digital activism should be protected in the same way as physical protests in our material world. In an age where South Africa's socio-political and economic sectors are reimagined in the digital space, an inevitable reliance on digital activism has emerged. This study explores newer forms of governance that may be established in the power vacuum created in the new, digital space of politics and economics in our networked society.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    The construction of the text, the production of multiple personae and the construction of the self on Bob Dylan's album, Blood on the tracks
    (2013) Erfort, Michael David; Haupt, Adam
    The construction of the text, the making of multiple personae and the construction of the self on Bob Dylan's album, Blood on the Tracks. Using arguments by theorists such as Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva and, more importantly, Mikhail Bakhtin, I examine the plurality of discourses on Bob Dylan's album, Blood on the Tracks. This thesis investigates the polyphonic nature of discourses in the form of text, personae and self construction. I argue that the above-mentioned areas of focus are inscribed with a variety of connotations because, ultimately, they rely on intertextual references. This implies that no author can claim sole ownership of a work because all works are made up of a "issue of quotations". I argue this point in reference; not only to Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, but also to the personae he created over the course of his 50-year career. Dylan's personae also influenced many of the characters he created in his songs. They often allude to each other and contribute to the plural way in which his work can be read. Dylan's personae and the self he projects, intentionally or unintentionally, prove to be problematic because it can be read in contradictory ways. I argue that the polyphonic nature of his text, his personae as well as the self he projects (through his lyrics) decentralises Dylan's intentions and places the reader at the centre of the text. The aim of this thesis is to highlight how Dylan's text is constructed as well as the plural ways in which his personae and the self can be interpreted. Through this I wish to show how central the reader is to meaning-making.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Discursive practices around film and music piracy in selected newspaper articles and radio broadcasts in South Africa
    (2015) Musundwa, Sibongile C; Haupt, Adam
    This thesis analyses South African news media discourses on piracy to consider whether corporate interests or those of civil society are served by stories about copyright infringement and piracy awareness campaigns. This thesis employs critical discourse analysis to show that hegemonic interests are ultimately served by news coverage, made up of selected newspaper articles and radio broadcast over a ten year period, that frames a range of commercial and non-commercial copying activities as criminal acts. Two dominant frames are identified: piracy as an economic issue and piracy as a crime. The thesis shows how the harms of copyright infringement are conflated by ideologies of the 'pirate' as a violent criminal and 'piracy' as an activity against commerce. The thesis finds a fracturing boundary between the orders of discourse of corporate and civil interests and those of news media. Entertainment media, as one block, garners a way to construct and sustain alliances with news and information media (such as newspapers and news and talk radio), taking on an ideological form. When this type of consent is won, and thus elite interests served, the ability to ensure a richly sourced and diverse public domain and public sphere is compromised.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Games, copyright, piracy : South African gamers' perspectives
    (2010) Malczyk, Anna; Haupt, Adam
    This thesis examines video games, copyright law and gamers' attitudes to copyright infringement, with particular reference to South Africa. The work provides an overview of the debates about copyright law and digital media, and offers an analysis of attitudes expressed by South African gamers about copyright infringement, popularly termed 'piracy'. The thesis reveals that, while about 70% of the gamers in this study share content illegally, they express complex and varying motivations for doing so, and have various and conflicting means of understanding the supposed illegality of the act. Some of the issues raised by participants in this study relate to contested perspectives on Digital Rights Management (DRM). In this work, I argue that DRM erodes civil liberties and does not necessarily extend the interests of gaming corporations. In this regard, the thesis explores alternative strategies to the restrictive approaches adopted by advocates of DRM as well as prohibitive copyright laws and multilateral agreements on intellectual property. In essence, this work intends to establish middle ground between gamers, who place a high premium on usability and affordability of gaming products, and the gaming corporations, who are interested in extending market share as well as protecting what they deem to be their intellectual property.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Open Access
    Hip-Hop activism in post-Apartheid South Africa
    (2014-09-29) Haupt, Adam
    ‘Why should I fight for a country’s glory/When it ignores me?/Besides, the township’s already a war zone/So why complain or moan?’ The opening lines from Prophets of da City’s (POC) 1993 song Understand where I’m coming from expressed a deep suspicion of the emerging ‘new’ South Africa. Twenty years later, this course examines the role hip-hop has played in engaging young South Africans both creatively and politically. It will offer an account of hip-hop’s political orientation in relation to debates about commercial co-option, censorship, gender, race and other identity politics, and examine how these politics have been taken up by South African hip-hop artists. It will focus specifically on hip-hop’s reception in Cape Town in the late 1980s and early 1990s and explore the work of early Capetonian hip-hop artists, in particular the Prophets of da City. Widely acknowledged for setting the scene for a range of emerging mother-tongue rappers in South Africa, POC’s influence on struggles over language, race and identity and on early Afrikaans hip-hop will be explored. The final session will be a panel discussion, featuring hip-hop artists and academics, which examines the warnings of Understand where I’m coming from, and considers the role of contemporary hip-hop artists in post-apartheid struggles for justice and equality.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    "I'm not going to let the patriarch stop me!": Examining the Obsession with Muslim Women's Bodies, Voices and Veils in Cinema, Television & Popular Culture
    (2022) Behardien, Thaakirah; Haupt, Adam; Maasdorp, Liani
    Historically, Muslim female bodies have been a key focus of attention in colonial and patriarchal discursive practices. This colonial and patriarchal desire to control Muslim women's bodies ± and, by extension, their voice ± is rooted in Orientalism. Today, Orientalist modes of representation are sustained via consumer culture as well as the ways in which Muslim women are represented in mainstream media, cinema, and popular culture. Arguably, the need to control Muslim women's bodies is none more evident than in the polemic over the hijab and veil, which are banned in countries such as France and enforced in states such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not only is this banishment and enforcement of the hijab inherently a sexist (and racist) policy that deprives Muslim women of autonomy, but this need to control Muslim women's bodies may also be linked to the fear of female sexuality. This paper seeks to analyse the policing of the Muslim female body and dress through representations in the mainstream media, television, and cinema. In addition, this paper argues that this fascination with the Muslim female body as well as her voice and dress are rooted in Orientalist traditions, which are still perpetuated today. Lastly, referring to my own documentary ± An-Nisaa (Women) ± as a case study, I attempt to demonstrate how the film resists Orientalist tropes and traditions.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Part IV: Is Die Antwoord Blackface?
    (2012) Haupt, Adam
    Is Die Antwoord blackface? In a word, yes. During an interview in the US, Waddy Jones reportedly said, ‘‘God made a mistake with me. I’m actually black, trapped in a white body.’’87 Jones’ claim is consistent with his lyrics on ‘‘Never le Nkemise’’ (off their recent album, Ten$ion): ‘‘Ninja, die wit kaffir/Ja, julle naaiers/Skrik wakker’’ [Ninja, the white kaffir/Yes, you fuckers/Wake up].88 ‘‘Kaffir’’ is a racially pejorative Afrikaans term for a black person and its use in everyday discourse has generally not become as acceptable as the term ‘‘nigga,’’ which has featured in the lyrics and interviews of gangsta rappers, like the late Tupac Shakur, or in ‘‘hood films,’’ such as Juice (starring Shakur), Menace II Society, or Boyz N the Hood. 89 Of course, the term ‘‘nigga’’ itself is a contested term and has been the focus of scholarly work, for example, Asim’s The N Word, 90 as well as documentaries such as Larkins’ The N Word91 and Lazin’s Tupac Resurrection. 92 Whilst, it is entirely possible that Jones is being ironic in the interview and his performances, it is worth noting that he reproduces racially problematic language that signals white, racist projections of blackness.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    The political economy of wilkiality: a South African inquiry into knowledge and power on wikipedia
    (2014) Ovesen, Håvard; Haupt, Adam
    This dissertation explores how knowledge construction on the English-language Wikipedia produces hegemonic representations of South Africa. Using Wikipedia's entries on Cape Town and various places in the Free State province as case studies, this dissertation demonstrates through critical discourse analysis that there is a systematic marginalisation, underrepresentation, and decontextualisation of 'black' working class communities and spaces, which echoes their historical marginalisation. This representation is contextualised through a historical narrative of Cape Town and the Free State, and explored against a theoretical background which, borrowing from Foucault, Castells, and others, sees the social construction of knowledge as an expression of power, and the networked society as an arena for the dynamics of hegemony. While Wikipedia is often hailed as a game-changer, the knowledge it produces tends to replicate and, thanks to its ever-increasing reach, further entrench hegemonic explanations of society. This might seem counter-intuitive given its credentials as a democratiser of knowledge, but can be explained with Wikipedia's architecture, which ultimately rests upon a regime of truth established during the Enlightenment. The online encyclopedia relies on well-established institutions and discourses of knowledge as sources of its content, and these, coupled with its particular preferences for some sources and topics over others, give it a particular slant in favour of the hegemonic status quo. The discourse it produces is given further gravitas and is naturalised through an insistence upon the knowledge it presents as 'neutral'. Studies have shown that Wikipedia's values are defined by its established community of editors and that, even as Wikipedia's reach is extending, it is increasingly difficult for new users to impact upon the online encyclopedia. Arguably it is rather the encyclopedia which impacts upon them by circulating seemingly uncontested representations of their communities, or, alternatively, simply ignoring the communities altogether. In a process I have, borrowing from American political satirist Stephen Colbert, termed wikiality, hegemonic representations have a tendency of becoming true when we act upon them as such. Thus, when certain communities are presented as marginal or unimportant, it becomes even more difficult for them to break out of this mould. Meaningful participation on Wikipedia can only be achieved if the user not only has access to relevant technological capital, but also the cultural capital required to make contributions which appeal to the established core of editors. In South Africa, as a result of its political economy, large parts of the population are politically, economically, and socially marginalised. This also means that they lack the cultural capital necessary to make meaningful contributions to Wikipedia. This tends to render them the subjects of Wikipedia entries, rather than their authors, which contributes to their further marginalisation. The key to understanding the relationship between knowledge and power on Wikipedia lies in the ability of some users to capture and define reality through representation and thereby effectuating it. Reducing this imbalance to a simple question of access downplays the social, economic, and political factors which created it in the first place, and accommodates discursive practices which downplay difference and perpetuate hegemony.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Remixing the tech: the digital media ecologies of the hip-hop artists from Grahamstown, South Africa
    (2017) Schoon, Alette Jeanne; Walton, Marion; Haupt, Adam
    This ethnographic study describes the digital media ecologies of hip-hop artists in the marginalised township spaces of a town in South Africa. It shows how technology appropriation here is highly contextual and linked to social context, while simultaneously informed by limited digital infrastructure that characterises marginalised communities in the Global South. In describing their social context, the study situates these young people in a post-apartheid space of entrenched racialised inequality, where unemployed black youth have very few economic prospects. Here hip-hop offers protection against despair as it allows a young person to claim a dignified sense of self, which is partly constituted through digital media competency. Through the Black Consciousness philosophy, hip-hop artists in Grahamstown become highly critical of self-defeating narratives rooted in racism, colonialism and apartheid, which often manifest in violent forms of urban masculinity. Instead they find ways to "remix" their identities by incorporating alternative notions of a successful self. These new identities foreground agency and competency, and are informed both by knowledge of African tradition and language, and newly acquired competency in entrepreneurship, artistic genres and digital skills. The study argues that acquisition of digital skills in this space is best conceptualised through the community of practice approach, where skills development is social and linked to a sense of belonging and progress. Just as the hip-hop artists claim agency in remixing their notion of self, they also claim agency in remixing the limited digital technology available to them into various assemblages, so crafting innovative solutions to the constraints of limited and expensive digital infrastructure. Here, through a hip-hop culture that champions overcoming adversity, dysfunctional digital technology is constantly repaired and remixed. Hitherto, research on digital media use in the Global South has predominantly focused on the mobile phone in isolation. This study instead argues for the merits of a holistic digital ethnography, since observations of how these young people combine technologies such as mobile phones, computers and DVD players in everyday life, illustrate how innovation in marginalised spaces may be focused around the remixing of technology.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Respectability and shame: the depiction of coloured, female murderers in the Daily Voice and Son tabloids - 2008 to 2012
    (2014) Samson, Sean; Haupt, Adam; Bosch, Tanja E
    This work analyses the depiction of coloured women on trial for murder in South Africa’s Western Cape tabloids, the Daily Voice and Son. It argues that these depictions preserve conservative race, class, and gender norms. The coverage of the murder trials of Najwa Petersen, Ellen Pakkies, Zulfa Jacobs, and Chantel Booysen constructs a notion of illegitimate femininity that is rooted in apartheid and colonial discourse on coloured femininity. The ideologies present in this coverage indicate how themes of sexuality; motherhood; victimhood and trauma; class and community; and religion expel the threat female offenders pose to traditional performances of identity. This work is motivated by the shortage of local research on the depiction of female offenders. While international research have developed useful typologies for how female offenders are represented, and have shown how these depictions are sites for the communication of gender expectations, an acknowledgement of the diversity of women’s experiences necessitates a focus on how local discourses of race, class, and gender further influence these representations. Moreover, this work is motivated by the opportunity to offer an indication of how tabloid content works ideologically. By focusing on the depiction of women on trial for murder, this work offers a snapshot of the discourses on race, gender, and class that circulate in the publics created by these titles. The construction of deviant femininity, and its intersection with 'colouredness’ and a working-class identity, is the means through which the status quo is communicated. This work relies on a Foucauldian frame to privilege the power of discourse to construct identity, and the work of Judith Butler to consider how identity is produced and performed under constraint. In line with this focus on language, and due to a specific consideration of the Cape Flats vernacular, this work employs critical discourse analysis to analyse a purposive sample of the coverage of Petersen, Pakkies, Jacobs, and Booysen’s murder trials. Interviews conducted with journalists who have authored these tabloid accounts, and focus groups with tabloid readers who hail from the Cape Flats supplement this analysis. The results of this triangulation indicate the complex interaction between discourses in subduing the threat female offenders pose to normative identities. It also indicates the potential for tabloid newspapers to cement hegemonic and essentialised notions of racialised gender identities, despite South Africa’s post-apartheid context. Tabloids’ recognition of marginalised subjects does not automatically signify democratic transformation, partly because such subjects are represented by corporate monopolies who rely on cultural translators to communicate fixed ways of being. If media are to transform, they need to break from the apartheid era's subjugating and pathologising discourses. This work demonstrates that an interrogation of race, class, and gender politics is crucial for analysing South African tabloids’ contribution to public discourse.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Sense of Style: constructing identity and managing impressions on Lookbook.nu
    (2016) Slemang, Zainab; Haupt, Adam
    This dissertation aims to explore how user-generated fashion content within the specific online community of Lookbook.nu is influenced by a set of underlying ideologies, such as beauty, power and gender to create specific and homogenous fashion identities in line with mainstream fashion trends, and which inform users' formation of identity within the structure of a community space. The aim of identifying the ideologies at play on the web site is to raise an awareness of how an individual's identity is influenced by others within his or her community space, even if that community happens to reside online. Furthermore, the means that inform the structures found on the community web site as well as the way in which the ideologies operate to maintain a certain criteria and level of fashion generated by users will be discussed in relation to identity formation. To determine how Lookbook users' perceive and portray identities on the site, semiology and multimodal discourse analysis were employed. It is important to keep in mind that while the media content in this thesis is as current as possible and while a great deal of content still exists on Lookbook, the platform is continuously evolving with new additions to its terms of use, mediums of access and overall design.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    South African art history: the possibility of decolonising a discourse
    (2017) Becker, Danielle Loraine; Haupt, Adam; Martinez-Ruiz, Barbaro
    In light of recent calls to decolonise curricula at South African universities there has been a renewed interest in what decolonisation might specifically imply for particular academic disciplines. Art history in South Africa has long struggled to move away from its settler colonial origins towards a more Afrocentric focus and its art world has frequently been criticised for being elitist and dominated by white practitioners. To this end, one of the primary questions that this dissertation seeks to answer is to what extent indigenous, African art and African epistemology has been included in South African art history and the institutions that support despite the discourse's traces of colonialism. Through a discussion and analysis of South African art history this dissertation seeks to describe the changes in the discourse since the late twentieth-century in light of the entanglements of the national; the colonial and the decolonial. Such an analysis is provided through a discussion of the biases of art history as a discourse originating in Western Europe; the geographical location of museums and university departments; the character of South African art historical writing; the curatorial strategies used to display African art in South African museums and the specific nature of art history curricula as it is taught at South African universities. The dissertation that follows therefore aims to provide an overarching view of South African art history that takes into account a range of factors impacting its particular framing so that the question of decolonisation can be adequately addressed. The dissertation finds that South African art history has a specific, settler colonial character and that historical African art has been neglected in art historical discourse despite overt attempts to transform the nature of the discipline post-democracy. It is argued that this may be the result of a shift in focus towards contemporary practice in the twenty-first century and away from the historical as a result of a resistance to cultural or racial labels attributed to art due to the legacy of apartheid legislation. As such, I argue that South African art history may find a path towards decolonisation through a renewed focus on historical South African and African art that is perceived on its own terms.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    South African film music: representation of racial, cultural and national identities, 1931-1969
    (2017) Jeffery, Christopher; Bezuidenhout, Morné; Haupt, Adam
    The thesis examines the role of music in South African film pertaining to representation of identity of South African peoples and cultures, from the country's earliest sound films until the industry expansion of the 1970s. Chapter 1 contextualizes the study in relation to South African film and music, mainstream (Hollywood) film music theory/analysis/history, and national film music studies outside the Hollywood context. Chapter 2 provides an analysis of nationalist trends in South African silent film and the transition to sound film. The subsequent two chapters analyse the filmic use of rural and urban African music as tools of representation of African identity across a continuum of films, from earlier colonial/Afrikaner nationalist-oriented films to later films with an explicitly anti-apartheid message. The final chapter returns to the themes of Chapter 2, exploring film-musical representation of Afrikaner nationalism. As with Chapters 3 and 4, the source material is eclectic, covering a broad spectrum of techniques to promote a nationalist agenda. The study reaches four principal findings. Firstly, film-musical representation of African identity develops nuance over time, as African subjects succeed in moving from being represented to achieving some self-representation. This representation remains within the ambit of diegetic music, however, and frequently maintains a subject/object relationship regarding white/black representation. Secondly, the use of diegetic African music functions as a form of othering, creating an illusion of representational "authenticity" while in practice ensuring the music remains external to the filmmakers' expressive universe, relegating it to the role of "ethnic" colour rather than engagement with characters' psychologies. Thirdly, film music is implicated in issues of land rights: rural African music questions the legitimacy of "whites only" city spaces, and is metaphorical of population displacement from rural to urban locales. Conversely, nationalist films use pastoral tropes to reimagine rural African spaces through European conceptualizations of "tamed" land, and sentimentalize spaces through song to lay claim to them through emotional ties. Fourthly, it evaluates African music's potential to function as dramatic, narrative, extradiegetic underscore, showing how this was partly achieved by certain films of the period, with possible implications for contemporary mainstream film scoring.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Stealing Empire : debates about global capital, counter-culture, technology and intellectual property
    (2005) Haupt, Adam; Stadler, Jane
    This thesis examines the agency of marginalised subjects in the context of global capitalism and the information age. The key question that is addressed is whether transnational corporations have appropriated aspects of cultural identity, creative expression and technological innovation for their own enrichment - to the detriment of civil society. Where this is the case, this thesis considers what opportunities exist for issuing challenges to the power of global corporations. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's concept of Empire provides the theoretical foundation for examining cultural, technological and legal conflicts between the interests of citizens and those of corporations. Hardt and Negri theorise the ways in which former imperial powers continue to extend their military, economic and political power in former colonies. The authors argue that former imperial powers no longer compete with each other for the same resources because they now co-operate with each other through multilateral organisations and trade agreements. Ultimately, the key beneficiaries of these modes of co-operation are global corporations that tend to monopolise the production and distribution of technological and cultural products at the expense of the public interest and the functioning of democracy. This work considers the possibilities of responding to Empire and resisting globalisation through strategies that employ some of the same decentralised, network-based techniques that benefit global corporate entities. Hardt and Negri's concept of 'the multitude' as a multiplicity of singularities makes sense of the diverse struggles under discussion in this study, providing the conceptual basis for possibilities of multiple engagements with Empire that are not reductive and that do not exclude certain interest groups. This is an interdisciplinary project that uses case studies to analyse the relationships between law and policy documents, technological development, and the production of cultural texts (such as hip-hop music). Specifically, this work explores the MP3 revolution and Napster (version one); digital sampling in hip-hop; hip-hop activism on South Africa's Cape Flats and these activists' use of new media in their pursuit of social justice. It addresses concerns about the commodification of youth culture as well as debates about intellectual property and the United States' use of trade agreements as enforcement mechanisms that serve the interests of its own corporations. This thesis presents an overview of copyright and trade agreements in order to examine the vested interests that underlie them. In keeping with the focus on globalisation and cultural imperialism, US legislation - such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act - is discussed in relation to alternatives to proprietary approaches toward intellectual property, such as open source software and Creative Commons licenses.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Stealing Empire: P2P, intellectual property and hip-hop subversion
    (2010) Haupt, Adam
    Stealing Empire poses the question, ""What possibilities for agency exist in the age of corporate globalisation?"" Using the work of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt as a point of entry, Adam Haupt delves into varied terrain to locate answers in this ground-breaking inquiry. He explores arguments about copyright via peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms such as Napster, free speech struggles, debates about access to information and open content licenses, and develops a politically incisive analysis of counter discourses produced by South African hip-hop artists. Stealing Empire is vital reading for law, media and cultural studies scholars who want to make sense of the ways in which legal and communication strategies are employed to secure hegemony.