The Kazanga Festival and Recent Ethnic Development in Western Central Zambia

Location: Zambia

• Keywords: ethnicity, ethnic festivals, commodification
• Subthemes: modernity, collective identity & cultural change
• Output: articles, and a joint book (with Professor M. Doornbos, Institute for Social Studies, The Hague)

Description: Recent ethnic developments in central western Zambia are studied, focusing primarily on the Kazanga festival, organized on an annual basis since the late 1980s in Kaoma district, Western Province. Our guiding perspective on the festival is that it constitutes a globalizing context par excellence, in which the local village culture is being mediated and transformed towards models of commodification, electronic media and the performance structure imposed by the latter, continuing class formation, and the post-colonial state. The present research forms a specific and concrete application of the globalization paradigm in anthropological participant observation in Southern Africa. It will contribute to the theoretical refinement of the paradigm, which also has an essential ethnicity component. (Open a full Internet book on virtuality, globalisation and the transformation of Africa, in which the Kazanga festival features prominently. )

write to me at vabin@multiweb.nl | return to homepage | return to Current Research

page last modified: 11-04-99