African Music and Politics: Negotiations of Violence in South African Popular Music (C05)

• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2021 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 438577023

The subproject studies interrelations between political violence and popular music. It analyses musical, textual and bodily thematizations of political violence in popular music and its political utilizations. The core of the empirical work consists in a total of 15 months of ethnographic research in South Africa, including interviews, observations, and archive research. The analysis follows Grounded Theory principles. The two other working areas address theoretical and conceptual consequences for the sociology of violence and political sociology, as well as interconnections between recent dynamics of stratifications in South Africa and musical preferences.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1472: Transformations of the Popular
• Applicant Institution: Universität Siegen
• Project Head: Professorin Dr. Katharina Inhetveen