How American Reggae Redefined Jamaican and Caribbean Reggae: A Theoretical Study of the Relationship Between Mass Communication and Cultural Domination

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Year:
Pages:132
ISBN:1-4955-0365-8
978-1-4955-0365-8
Price:$139.95 + shipping
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This work describes changes in the Jamaican and Caribbean reggae culture by examining the relationship between mass communication and the cultural domination of African, Caribbean, and other less powerful peoples that has been based primarily on importation/exportation theoretical framework of cultural domination. The author argues this importation/ exportation framework does not acknowledge the role of African, Caribbean, and other current less powerful peoples as originators in what history indicates is the millennia-old process of domination by the more powerful.

Reviews

“The study of relationships that involve mass communication has assumed that should we have some difference in ‘power’ between societies (especially the powerful “Western” societies and others), ‘culture’ essentially flows from the more powerful to the less powerful, and causes change in the less powerful. But from analyses of ancient, recent and contemporary history, the author argues for what he calls the re-importation or re-exportation framework for the study and discussion of cultural relations in general, cultural influence in particular, and cultural domination specifically, as well as the relationships between mass communication and these issues.”
-R.L. Nwafo Nwanko, Ph.D.,
Former Graduate Professor,
School of Communications,
Howard University, Washington, DC

“This is quite a fascinating perspective on the international flow of cultural influence… [the author] makes the compelling case that the flow of influence is not at all linear. He provides historical and analytical evidence to the effect that the “peripheral” countries are often the origins of cultural forms that are modified by the “Center” nations and then re-imported by the “peripheral” nations... a compelling theoretical framework.”
-Professor Minabere Ibelema,
Department of Communication Studies,
University of Alabama at Birmingham


“This book plants the seeds of a revolution in our thinking about certain relationships with which we must wrestle in the age of globalization – for example, the relationships between the less powerful and the more powerful peoples. It invites us to stress the value of the less powerful as originators of elements that may well be shaping the world, and therefore as full citizens of the age of the global – rather than observers of or appendages to it.”
-Professor L. Lashley,
Department of English,
Miami/Dade College, FL


Table of Contents

Abstract
Foreword by R.L. Nwafo Nwankwo
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. Culture and Cultural Change
-Domains, Dimensions, Attributes of Culture
-Process of Change and Domination in Culture
-Domination by Importation or Exportation
-Domination by Re-importation or Re-exportation:
-Changes Among People of the African Continent and Among Caribbean People of African Descent
-Domination by Re-importation or Re-exportation:
Caribbean Music, Culinary and Literary Cultures
3. Re-Importation or Re-Exportation in Jamaican and Caribbean Reggae
-Change Along Symmetry vs. Asymmetry Dimension
-Change Along the Members vs. Idol Dimension
-Change Along the Form vs. Content Dimension
-The Thread That Appears to Connect the Changes
-United States Reggae Culture, Cultural Domination, and 1970s Jamaican and Caribbean Reggae Culture
4. “Mass Communication Perspectives” and Cultural Domination of Reggae: Questions, Hypotheses and Contexts
-The Correlation Perspective
-The Transmission Perspective
-The Persuasion Perspective
-The Contextual Conditions Perspective
-The Conducting of the Proposed Studies
-Mass Communication, Development Studies, and Domination by Re-importation or Re-exportation
5. Mass Communication, Cultural Domination and Culture Cradles
-Diop’s Two-Cradle Thesis
-Implications of the Thesis
-Final Word on the Thesis
6. Explanatory Appendices
-Related to Definitions of Reggae
-Related to the Two-Cradle Thesis
-Related to Caribbean Characteristics
7. References
8. Recognitions – With Gratitude

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