Alter-egos: cultural and media studies

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Periodical article

Title:	Alter-egos: cultural and media studies
Author:	Tomaselli, Keyan G.
Year:	2012
Periodical:	Critical Arts: A Journal of Media Studies (ISSN 0256-0046)
Volume:	26
Issue:	1
Pages:	14-38
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	media and communication studies culture research centres
External link:	https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02560046.2012.663158
Abstract:	From the mid-20th century, media studies and its alter-ego, cultural studies, have examined media-society and media-power relations. The field was introduced to South Africa in the 1970s. This article offers a historical analysis of the role that the Centre for Communication, Media and Society (CCMS), University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, has played between its establishment in 1985 and 2012. How cultural and media studies travelled to South Africa and how the CCMS negotiated the intersections between the humanities and social sciences, health and the physical sciences, is examined in terms of the epistemological alliances and conflicts that emerged. New paradigms ranging from appropriations of African philosophy and critical indigenous methodologies are discussed in an environment where new nationalisms are emerging. The story of the CCMS offers the fulcrum around which to discuss specific paradigmatic shifts. A new imaginary for the humanities and social sciences for a rapidly changing South Africa is then briefly proposed. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract, edited]