Imagined Sovereignties in African Cultural Industries: National Belonging on the Move (Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations)

Imagined Sovereignties in African Cultural Industries explores the evolving dynamics of imagined communities through the lens of cultural production in music and audiovisual media in Nigeria, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Morocco and the DRC. Positioned at the intersection of politics, international relations, and anthropology, this edited volume adopts an interdisciplinary, ethnographic, and comparative approach to examine how cultural industries contribute to reconfiguring notions of belonging and sovereignty.Drawing and building upon Anderson's concept of imagined communities, the book argues that technological innovation has destabilized traditional national boundaries, enabling the sentiment of belonging to expand transnationally or contract into localized, niche formations.These emergent configurations-resembling networks, silos, or bubbles-challenge the geographically bounded model of the nation-state, in terms both of how the nation is imagined and how state sovereignty is envisaged