Beschreibung
Be it the vitality of African popular culture, the vitality of religious
ideas or the vitality of artistic forms of expressions – invoking the
notion of vitality has become a common practice in Africanist discourses.
Most often, the purpose of invoking this notion is to emphasize the
unexpected and astonishing power and strength of certain cultural fields in
Africa. But what is really meant with the notion of local vitality beyond
its metaphorical usage, beyond the underrated and unforeseen?
The present volume brings together a number of essays exploring the answers
to these questions from different perspectives and disciplines. Based upon
an international conference on Local Vitality and the Globalization of the
Local organized by the Humanities Collaborative Research Centre at the
University of Bayreuth, Germany, the contributions discuss the various
dimensions of vitality in the context of debates about identity and
self-assertion, locality and appropriation, and rivalry and resistance.
