Local media: Western media in a context of orality in Africa

This book project in four parts intends to study how people, coming from a centuries-old orality, act in a context of copyright introduced by colonial and postcolonial authority. I seek to understand how people cope and move from the free song to merchandise actively promoted by the neoliberal dictate of the state and international organisations. Considering technology as a total social fact in its own right, I will analyze the way in which African artists, with their own economic, cultural and historical traditions, use and appropriate the media beyond the strategy of poaching (braconnage) proposed by Michel de Certeau. The state promises rights and prosperity to the creators, who are transformed into romantic authors. This recalls the concept of economy of promises between the market and so-called cultural tradition, similar to the relation between biodiversity conservation and the market. Our ambition is take seriously everyday words of common people to which we do not usually pay enough attention, to give breadth to this quest (F. B. Nyamnjoh). The aim is to participate in the disciplinary renewal based on field ethnography.