Harri Englund
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226498768
- eISBN:
- 9780226499093
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226499093.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
When Breeze FM Radio, in the provincial Zambian town of Chipata, hired an elderly retired school teacher in 2003, no one anticipated the skyrocketing success that would follow. A self-styled ...
More
When Breeze FM Radio, in the provincial Zambian town of Chipata, hired an elderly retired school teacher in 2003, no one anticipated the skyrocketing success that would follow. A self-styled grandfather on air, Gogo Breeze seeks intimacy over the airwaves and dispenses advice on a wide variety of grievances and transgressions by using idiomatic Chinyanja / Chichewa. Multiple voices are broadcast and juxtaposed through call-ins and dialogue, but free speech finds its ally in the radio elder who, by allowing people to be heard and supporting their claims, reminds authorities of their obligations toward the disaffected. This book is a detailed study of the popular radio personality that addresses broad questions of free speech in Zambia and beyond. By drawing on ethnographic insights into political communication, the book presents multivocal morality as an alternative to dominant Euro-American perspectives, displacing the simplistic notion of voice as individual personal property—an idea common in both policy and activist rhetoric. Instead, the book focuses on the creativity and polyphony of Zambian radio while raising important questions about hierarchy, elderhood, and ethics in the public sphere.Less
When Breeze FM Radio, in the provincial Zambian town of Chipata, hired an elderly retired school teacher in 2003, no one anticipated the skyrocketing success that would follow. A self-styled grandfather on air, Gogo Breeze seeks intimacy over the airwaves and dispenses advice on a wide variety of grievances and transgressions by using idiomatic Chinyanja / Chichewa. Multiple voices are broadcast and juxtaposed through call-ins and dialogue, but free speech finds its ally in the radio elder who, by allowing people to be heard and supporting their claims, reminds authorities of their obligations toward the disaffected. This book is a detailed study of the popular radio personality that addresses broad questions of free speech in Zambia and beyond. By drawing on ethnographic insights into political communication, the book presents multivocal morality as an alternative to dominant Euro-American perspectives, displacing the simplistic notion of voice as individual personal property—an idea common in both policy and activist rhetoric. Instead, the book focuses on the creativity and polyphony of Zambian radio while raising important questions about hierarchy, elderhood, and ethics in the public sphere.
Harri Englund
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226498768
- eISBN:
- 9780226499093
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226499093.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
This chapter concludes the book by elaborating on the sense of obligation informing Gogo Breeze's work. It draws attention to the specific combination of radio’s technological affordances and Gogo ...
More
This chapter concludes the book by elaborating on the sense of obligation informing Gogo Breeze's work. It draws attention to the specific combination of radio’s technological affordances and Gogo Breeze’s insistence on kinship as his preferred register of address. A perspective on the moral aspects of speaking and listening also challenges common assumptions in the literature about the corroding effects of the market on mass media. The final section restates multivocal morality as this book’s perspective on the value of free speech. It returns to the difference between Gogo Breeze’s practice of free speech and parrhȇsia.Less
This chapter concludes the book by elaborating on the sense of obligation informing Gogo Breeze's work. It draws attention to the specific combination of radio’s technological affordances and Gogo Breeze’s insistence on kinship as his preferred register of address. A perspective on the moral aspects of speaking and listening also challenges common assumptions in the literature about the corroding effects of the market on mass media. The final section restates multivocal morality as this book’s perspective on the value of free speech. It returns to the difference between Gogo Breeze’s practice of free speech and parrhȇsia.
