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Papers by Eric Karikari

Research paper thumbnail of Sensemaking in Turbulent Contexts: African Student Leadership in a Postcolonial Context

Routledge eBooks, Aug 10, 2020

This study revealed the ways that student leaders make sense of their approaches to leadership in... more This study revealed the ways that student leaders make sense of their approaches to leadership in African student organizations in the United States. Seven leaders of recognized African student organizations in universities from the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and the South took part in interviews. Discourse analysis of interview data revealed the complexity of leadership discourses and practices in a postcolonial context in showing that African student organizational leadership (a) proceeds through the accommodation and resistance to dominant Western organizational and/or colonial discourses and (b) enables leaders to make sense of theirs and their organizations' identities in the context of discourses that marginalize African forms of cultural expression.

Research paper thumbnail of Conceptualizing organization: hybridity and the naturalizing of dis/order

Journal of Multicultural Discourses

Research paper thumbnail of Capital, the State, and the Digital Divide

Digital Dissidence and Social Media Censorship in Africa, Jun 16, 2022

Research paper thumbnail of USING TECHNICAL WRITING STRATEGIES TO CREATE ISLAMIC PAKISTANI SUBJECTS A Case Study of Textbooks in Pakistan

In response to the call by Agboka (2013) for the need to take up more international technical com... more In response to the call by Agboka (2013) for the need to take up more international technical communication projects that have a social justice goal, this paper engages some of the complex processes of globalization and cultural identity through the analysis of ‘Pakistan Studies’ textbooks used in grade 9 and 10 in some Pakistani schools. This paper is based on the fundamental assumption that the textbook, as an essential component of formal education, cannot be disassociated from the political, social, economic, and even religious realities of modern life. We argue that textbooks are technical writing projects that operate from scientific and technologized forms whose legitimation results in the subordination of alternative knowledge. An analysis of the data through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) reveals that these textbooks reinforce subjectivities through a project that privileges certain forms of cultural identification.

Research paper thumbnail of Mediating Social Media's Ambivalences in the Context of Informational Capitalism

International Journal of Civic Engagement and Social Change, 2016

This essay explores the dialectics of media, by considering the socially reproductive and transfo... more This essay explores the dialectics of media, by considering the socially reproductive and transformative function of social media from a political economic perspective. The authors claim that while media have consistently generated aspirations and fear of social change, their powerful capability of shaping societies depend on the historically specific social relations in which media operate. They engage such an argument by examining how the productive relations that support user generated content practices such as the ones of Facebook users affect social media in their capability to reproduce and transform existing social contexts. In the end, the authors maintain that the most prominent mediation of social media consists of the ambivalent nature of current capitalist mode of production: a contest in which exploitative/emancipatory as well as reproductive/transformative aspects are articulated by liberal ideology.

Research paper thumbnail of Illegal mining, identity, and the politics of ecocultural voice in Ghana

Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020

In Chapter 15 of the Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, Karikari, Castro-Sotomayor, and Asante exa... more In Chapter 15 of the Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, Karikari, Castro-Sotomayor, and Asante examine ecocultural identities implicated in galamsey-illegal mining-in Ghana. Through critical analysis of media texts and public comments in social media networks, the authors investigate how galamsey workers' identities are constructed within the framework of ecological disasters. The authors' analysis shows ways news media reports, Ghana government press releases, and public discussion of ecological disruptions construct galamsey workers' identities through security discourses and the invisibility of resistant voices. The authors argue that media and public framing of galamsey workers' ecocultural identities is situated within global environmental discourses that support Western notions of development, justify legal large-scale industrial mining, and criminalize illegal small-scale mining in the name of growth and national prosperity. Underlying the legitimization of legal extractive practices is Ghana's contemporary ecocultural national imaginary, which stems from an ontological split between humans and the more-than-human world. Thus, the authors end this chapter by emphasizing Sankofa, an Akan Adinkra symbol (from the Asante ethnic group in Ghana) meaning to 'return and take back,' as an ontological shift that can rekindle Ghanaian Indigenous ecocultural identities centering intrinsic interconnection and mutuality between humans and the more-than-human world.

Research paper thumbnail of Drawing the Contours of Organizational Culture Through Neoliberal and Colonial Discourses

Management Communication Quarterly, 2021

This study employed a cultural materialist framework to examine organizational culture through th... more This study employed a cultural materialist framework to examine organizational culture through the analysis of discourse at the National Communications Authority in Ghana (NCA-Ghana), the state-sanctioned regulator of the communications industry in the country. The study explored the interconnections among neoliberalism, colonialism, and organizational culture through an examination of discourses of professionalism and individualization. Using the discourse historical approach (DHA), the study found that neoliberalism functions in corporatized African organizations by activating colonial logics which in turn influence organizational culture. An important implication of the study is that, even for the individual, organizational culture is not merely symbolic but has material consequences. Because of these consequences, resistance efforts may not always look different from practices that reproduce dominant discourses.

Research paper thumbnail of Negotiating Culture in Africa: A Critical Analysis of Organizational Discourse in Ghana

Organizational culture is a concept that is theoretically contested, particularly within critical... more Organizational culture is a concept that is theoretically contested, particularly within critical approaches to communication. However, it is a highly crucial area of research which has symbolic and material implications for individuals, organizations and communities. This study contributes to the conversation about how organizational culture is constituted by interrogating the forces at play in this constitution. One of such forces is neoliberalism, which operates by subsuming all organizational practices under the umbrella of market value. The study takes a cultural materialist approach to organizational culture through the analysis of discourse at the National Communications Authority (NCA) in Ghana. The NCA is the state-sanctioned regulator of the communications industry in Ghana. Its unique position as regulator exposes it to several localized and globalized discourses which shapes how its employees conceptualize organizational cultural practices. This study seeks to 1) analyze...

Research paper thumbnail of Antonio Gramsci and Communication Studies

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, 2015

The strong affinity between the work of Antonio Gramsci and communication is based on several Gra... more The strong affinity between the work of Antonio Gramsci and communication is based on several Gramscian communication-related themes and particular modes of his thought that significantly resonate with this field of studies. They include his drawing on the rhetorical tradition inspired by Vico, his assumptions of the constitutive role of language in creating an intersubjective reality that shapes common sense, and the fact that language provides the conditions of possibility for a hegemonic project. The strong tie between communication and Gramsci’s thought creates a vantage point for understanding both how Gramsci developed his political theories based on communication concerns and how those theories in turn advanced the field of communication.On the one hand, Gramsci by his intellectual formation, as well as via life experiences, became extremely receptive of theories that linked language, culture, and society. Those theories can help illuminate Gramsci’s key ideas, such as hegemo...

Research paper thumbnail of African Postcolonial Leadership: The Contribution of African Student Leaders in the United States

Eric Karikari, a student in the Department of Communication Studies at Minnesota State University... more Eric Karikari, a student in the Department of Communication Studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato is the author of the study titled, African Postcolonial Leadership: The Contribution of African Student Leaders in the United States in May 2013. This qualitative study which is a contribution to literature on postcolonialism in Africa emphasizes the work of leaders in African student organizations in the US. The study seeks to investigate if the agenda in African student organizations align with those of postcolonial leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, and Julius Nyerere. There were four male and three female leaders interviewed for the study. The leaders, who came from universities in the Midwest, Northwest and the South, talked about their leadership styles, organizational vision, and knowledge of African colonial history in the context of postcolonial leadership on the continent. The study employed techniques in grounded theory and thematic analysis to analyze parti...

Research paper thumbnail of African Postcolonial Leadership: The Contribution of African Student Leaders in the United States

Research paper thumbnail of African Postcolonial Leadership: The Contribution of African Student Leaders in the United States

Research paper thumbnail of Sensemaking in Turbulent Contexts: African Student Leadership in a Postcolonial Context

Research paper thumbnail of Communication Studies Sensemaking in Turbulent Contexts: African Student Leadership in a Postcolonial Context

Communication Studies, 2018

This study revealed the ways student leaders make sense of their approaches to leadership in Afri... more This study revealed the ways student leaders make sense of their approaches to leadership in African student organizations in the United States. Seven leaders of recognized African student organizations in universities from the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and the South took part in interviews. Discourse analysis of interview data revealed the complexity of leadership discourses and practices in a postcolonial
context in showing that African student organizational leadership (a) proceeds through the accommodation and resistance to dominant Western organizational and/or colonial discourses and (b) enables leaders to make sense of theirs and their organizations’
identities in the context of discourses that marginalize African forms of cultural expression.

Research paper thumbnail of Antonio Gramsci and Communication Antonio Gramsci and Communication Summary and Keywords Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication

The strong affinity between the work of Antonio Gramsci and communication is based on several Gra... more The strong affinity between the work of Antonio Gramsci and communication is based on several Gramscian communication-related themes and particular modes of his thought that significantly resonate with this field of studies. They include his drawing on the rhetorical tradition inspired by Vico, his assumptions of the constitutive role of language in creating an intersubjective reality that shapes common sense, and the fact that language provides the conditions of possibility for a hegemonic project. The strong tie between communication and Gramsci's thought creates a vantage point for understanding both how Gramsci developed his political theories based on communication concerns and how those theories in turn advanced the field of communication. On the one hand, Gramsci by his intellectual formation, as well as via life experiences, became extremely receptive of theories that linked language, culture, and society. Those theories can help illuminate Gramsci's key ideas, such as hegemony, common sense, national popular, the strategic concept of translation, and the relational nature of concepts. On the other hand, Gramsci's own reflection on the nexus between language and history significantly contributes to a theorization of language as a cultural practice resisting hypostases, an important qualification of Saussurian structural linguistics, and finally can offer the basis for a materialist approach to communication. Thus, the common denominator of a Gramscian perspective on communication must be found in the consistent use of dialectical thinking, which mediates binarisms like diachronic– synchronic, stability–change, individual–collective, unity–diversity, and symbolic–material. This article discusses the above-mentioned connection between Gramsci and communication in more detail. First, it explicates the ways in which Gramsci's work was influenced by communication concerns, and then it analyzes how Gramsci's work influences the realm of human communication today.

Research paper thumbnail of Mediating Social Media's Ambivalences in the Context of Informational Capitalism

This essay explores the dialectics of media, by considering the socially reproductive and transfo... more This essay explores the dialectics of media, by considering the socially reproductive and transformative function of social media from a political economic perspective. The authors claim that while media have consistently generated aspirations and fear of social change, their powerful capability of shaping societies depend on the historically specific social relations in which media operate. They engage such an argument by examining how the productive relations that support user generated content practices such as the ones of Facebook users affect social media in their capability to reproduce and transform existing social contexts. In the end, the authors maintain that the most prominent mediation of social media consists of the ambivalent nature of current capitalist mode of production: a contest in which exploitative/emancipatory as well as reproductive/transformative aspects are articulated by liberal ideology.

Books by Eric Karikari

Research paper thumbnail of BOOK DISCUSSION now passed, but paperback out June 2022: 20% cost of hardback +20% off w/ code FLE22 ordering through Routledge.

by Tema Milstein, José Castro-Sotomayor, Laura Bridgeman, Carlos Tarin, Melissa M Parks, Jeffrey Hoffmann, Casper G Bendixsen, Emma Frances Bloomfield, Eric Karikari, Lars Hallgren, Dakota Raynes, John Carr, Bruno Seraphin, Carrie Packwood Freeman, Julia L Ginsburg, and Rebecca Banham

Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020

Use this link to join the discussion: https://www.academia.edu/s/da2195c5e5?source=link For this... more Use this link to join the discussion: https://www.academia.edu/s/da2195c5e5?source=link

For this book discussion, we've shared the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity's Introduction Chapter, Table of Contents, Endorsements, and Author Bios. We look forward to discussing the book with you! "The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (2020) is a timely book, as across the globe more and more of us awake to our always interconnected selves. The Handbook brings the ecological turn to sociocultural understandings of self and group identities, introducing an interdisciplinary, insightful assembly of original theory and research on planetary positionalities in flux in the Anthropocene – or what in this Handbook cultural ecologist David Abram presciently renames the Humilocene, a new “epoch of humility.” Forty international authors craft a kaleidoscopic lens, focusing on ways all identities are ecocultural and on the multiple and unspooling ways identities evolve and transform and, in so doing, may support reciprocal surviving and thriving."

Please write your thoughts, questions, and comments into the discussion. We will check in regularly to respond and move the conversation forward.

Note: Routledge is offering a 25% discount code for hardcover or Ebook until June 26. Routledge code=ACR02. (Order at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351068840)

You may enjoy the following podcasts on the book:

Australian Broadcasting Corporation: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/ecocultural-identity/13311966

Climactic:
https://omny.fm/shows/climactic-1/gretchen-miller-tema-milstein-routledge-handbook-o

Custodians of the Planet:
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/custodians-of-the/the-routledge-handbook-of-OuhdqzASWG-/

Research paper thumbnail of Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity Introduction, TOC, Endorsements

by Tema Milstein, José Castro-Sotomayor, Laura Bridgeman, David Abram, Melissa M Parks, Mariko O Thomas, Elizabeth Oriel, Toni Frohoff, Jeffrey Hoffmann, Casper G Bendixsen, Jessica Love-Nichols, Emma Frances Bloomfield, Charles Carlin, Eric Karikari, Godfried Asante, Dakota Raynes, Shilpa Dahake, Joe Quick, Gabriela Méndez Cota, Carrie Packwood Freeman, and Rebecca Banham

Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020

The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (2020) is a timely book, as across the globe more ... more The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (2020) is a timely book, as across the globe more and more of us awake to our always interconnected selves. The Handbook brings the ecological turn to sociocultural understandings of self and group identities, introducing an interdisciplinary, insightful assembly of original theory and research on planetary positionalities in flux in the Anthropocene – or what in this Handbook cultural ecologist David Abram presciently renames the Humilocene, a new “epoch of humility.” Forty international authors craft a kaleidoscopic lens, focusing on ways all identities are ecocultural and on the multiple and unspooling ways identities evolve and transform and, in so doing, may support reciprocal surviving and thriving.

Paperback out June 2022: 20% cost of hardback +20% off w/ code FLE22 ordering through Routledge.

Introduction chapter, table of contents, and endorsements are posted here. More, including editor bios and authors, can be found at this Routledge link: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Ecocultural-Identity/Milstein-Castro-Sotomayor/p/book/9781138478411. Please help share the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity among your networks. And please ask your libraries to purchase the book (or put it on their to-buy lists if budgets have been temporarily frozen due to Covid). The Handbook is an important resource for our times for scholars, teachers, students, protectors, policy-makers, and practitioners. The editors, Tema Milstein and José Castro-Sotomayor, are available for Q&A, interviews, guest commentary, talks, etc. Thanks for your interest and for helping to spread word!

What has been said about the Handbook:
“Intricately transdisciplinary and cross-geographical, it is the first volume of its kind to caringly craft a gathering concept, that of ecocultural identities, bringing together the social, political, and ecological dimensions of identity. What results is a treasure of insights on the politics of life, broadly speaking, and a novel toolbox for tackling effectively the damages caused by modern capitalist modes of extraction and the urgent task of Earth’s ontological repair and renewal.”
Arturo Escobar, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

“Too often mislabelled an ‘issue,’ the environment is in fact integral not just to everything we do but to who we are. This link between our identity and our ecology has long been recognised in many societies, but others seem to have forgotten its signal importance. This superb collection shows why all identities are ecocultural ones, and why full recognition of this is essential to all our political futures.”
Noel Castree, University of Manchester

“A smart, provocative, and original collection, the Handbook of Ecocultural Identity provides a definitive introduction to the constraints upon, and the contexts, formations, and impacts of, our diverse – but often unexamined – ecological selves.”
Robert Cox, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and three-time national president of the Sierra Club

“I am in complete solidarity with this book.”
Donna Haraway, University of California, Santa Cruz

Book Chapters by Eric Karikari

Research paper thumbnail of Illegal mining, identity, and the politics of ecocultural voice in Ghana

Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020

In Chapter 15 of the Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, Karikari, Castro-Sotomayor, and Asante exa... more In Chapter 15 of the Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, Karikari, Castro-Sotomayor, and Asante examine ecocultural identities implicated in galamsey-illegal mining-in Ghana. Through critical analysis of media texts and public comments in social media networks, the authors investigate how galamsey workers' identities are constructed within the framework of ecological disasters. The authors' analysis shows ways news media reports, Ghana government press releases, and public discussion of ecological disruptions construct galamsey workers' identities through security discourses and the invisibility of resistant voices. The authors argue that media and public framing of galamsey workers' ecocultural identities is situated within global environmental discourses that support Western notions of development, justify legal large-scale industrial mining, and criminalize illegal small-scale mining in the name of growth and national prosperity. Underlying the legitimization of legal extractive practices is Ghana's contemporary ecocultural national imaginary, which stems from an ontological split between humans and the more-than-human world. Thus, the authors end this chapter by emphasizing Sankofa, an Akan Adinkra symbol (from the Asante ethnic group in Ghana) meaning to 'return and take back,' as an ontological shift that can rekindle Ghanaian Indigenous ecocultural identities centering intrinsic interconnection and mutuality between humans and the more-than-human world.

Research paper thumbnail of Sensemaking in Turbulent Contexts: African Student Leadership in a Postcolonial Context

Routledge eBooks, Aug 10, 2020

This study revealed the ways that student leaders make sense of their approaches to leadership in... more This study revealed the ways that student leaders make sense of their approaches to leadership in African student organizations in the United States. Seven leaders of recognized African student organizations in universities from the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and the South took part in interviews. Discourse analysis of interview data revealed the complexity of leadership discourses and practices in a postcolonial context in showing that African student organizational leadership (a) proceeds through the accommodation and resistance to dominant Western organizational and/or colonial discourses and (b) enables leaders to make sense of theirs and their organizations' identities in the context of discourses that marginalize African forms of cultural expression.

Research paper thumbnail of Conceptualizing organization: hybridity and the naturalizing of dis/order

Journal of Multicultural Discourses

Research paper thumbnail of Capital, the State, and the Digital Divide

Digital Dissidence and Social Media Censorship in Africa, Jun 16, 2022

Research paper thumbnail of USING TECHNICAL WRITING STRATEGIES TO CREATE ISLAMIC PAKISTANI SUBJECTS A Case Study of Textbooks in Pakistan

In response to the call by Agboka (2013) for the need to take up more international technical com... more In response to the call by Agboka (2013) for the need to take up more international technical communication projects that have a social justice goal, this paper engages some of the complex processes of globalization and cultural identity through the analysis of ‘Pakistan Studies’ textbooks used in grade 9 and 10 in some Pakistani schools. This paper is based on the fundamental assumption that the textbook, as an essential component of formal education, cannot be disassociated from the political, social, economic, and even religious realities of modern life. We argue that textbooks are technical writing projects that operate from scientific and technologized forms whose legitimation results in the subordination of alternative knowledge. An analysis of the data through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) reveals that these textbooks reinforce subjectivities through a project that privileges certain forms of cultural identification.

Research paper thumbnail of Mediating Social Media's Ambivalences in the Context of Informational Capitalism

International Journal of Civic Engagement and Social Change, 2016

This essay explores the dialectics of media, by considering the socially reproductive and transfo... more This essay explores the dialectics of media, by considering the socially reproductive and transformative function of social media from a political economic perspective. The authors claim that while media have consistently generated aspirations and fear of social change, their powerful capability of shaping societies depend on the historically specific social relations in which media operate. They engage such an argument by examining how the productive relations that support user generated content practices such as the ones of Facebook users affect social media in their capability to reproduce and transform existing social contexts. In the end, the authors maintain that the most prominent mediation of social media consists of the ambivalent nature of current capitalist mode of production: a contest in which exploitative/emancipatory as well as reproductive/transformative aspects are articulated by liberal ideology.

Research paper thumbnail of Illegal mining, identity, and the politics of ecocultural voice in Ghana

Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020

In Chapter 15 of the Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, Karikari, Castro-Sotomayor, and Asante exa... more In Chapter 15 of the Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, Karikari, Castro-Sotomayor, and Asante examine ecocultural identities implicated in galamsey-illegal mining-in Ghana. Through critical analysis of media texts and public comments in social media networks, the authors investigate how galamsey workers' identities are constructed within the framework of ecological disasters. The authors' analysis shows ways news media reports, Ghana government press releases, and public discussion of ecological disruptions construct galamsey workers' identities through security discourses and the invisibility of resistant voices. The authors argue that media and public framing of galamsey workers' ecocultural identities is situated within global environmental discourses that support Western notions of development, justify legal large-scale industrial mining, and criminalize illegal small-scale mining in the name of growth and national prosperity. Underlying the legitimization of legal extractive practices is Ghana's contemporary ecocultural national imaginary, which stems from an ontological split between humans and the more-than-human world. Thus, the authors end this chapter by emphasizing Sankofa, an Akan Adinkra symbol (from the Asante ethnic group in Ghana) meaning to 'return and take back,' as an ontological shift that can rekindle Ghanaian Indigenous ecocultural identities centering intrinsic interconnection and mutuality between humans and the more-than-human world.

Research paper thumbnail of Drawing the Contours of Organizational Culture Through Neoliberal and Colonial Discourses

Management Communication Quarterly, 2021

This study employed a cultural materialist framework to examine organizational culture through th... more This study employed a cultural materialist framework to examine organizational culture through the analysis of discourse at the National Communications Authority in Ghana (NCA-Ghana), the state-sanctioned regulator of the communications industry in the country. The study explored the interconnections among neoliberalism, colonialism, and organizational culture through an examination of discourses of professionalism and individualization. Using the discourse historical approach (DHA), the study found that neoliberalism functions in corporatized African organizations by activating colonial logics which in turn influence organizational culture. An important implication of the study is that, even for the individual, organizational culture is not merely symbolic but has material consequences. Because of these consequences, resistance efforts may not always look different from practices that reproduce dominant discourses.

Research paper thumbnail of Negotiating Culture in Africa: A Critical Analysis of Organizational Discourse in Ghana

Organizational culture is a concept that is theoretically contested, particularly within critical... more Organizational culture is a concept that is theoretically contested, particularly within critical approaches to communication. However, it is a highly crucial area of research which has symbolic and material implications for individuals, organizations and communities. This study contributes to the conversation about how organizational culture is constituted by interrogating the forces at play in this constitution. One of such forces is neoliberalism, which operates by subsuming all organizational practices under the umbrella of market value. The study takes a cultural materialist approach to organizational culture through the analysis of discourse at the National Communications Authority (NCA) in Ghana. The NCA is the state-sanctioned regulator of the communications industry in Ghana. Its unique position as regulator exposes it to several localized and globalized discourses which shapes how its employees conceptualize organizational cultural practices. This study seeks to 1) analyze...

Research paper thumbnail of Antonio Gramsci and Communication Studies

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, 2015

The strong affinity between the work of Antonio Gramsci and communication is based on several Gra... more The strong affinity between the work of Antonio Gramsci and communication is based on several Gramscian communication-related themes and particular modes of his thought that significantly resonate with this field of studies. They include his drawing on the rhetorical tradition inspired by Vico, his assumptions of the constitutive role of language in creating an intersubjective reality that shapes common sense, and the fact that language provides the conditions of possibility for a hegemonic project. The strong tie between communication and Gramsci’s thought creates a vantage point for understanding both how Gramsci developed his political theories based on communication concerns and how those theories in turn advanced the field of communication.On the one hand, Gramsci by his intellectual formation, as well as via life experiences, became extremely receptive of theories that linked language, culture, and society. Those theories can help illuminate Gramsci’s key ideas, such as hegemo...

Research paper thumbnail of African Postcolonial Leadership: The Contribution of African Student Leaders in the United States

Eric Karikari, a student in the Department of Communication Studies at Minnesota State University... more Eric Karikari, a student in the Department of Communication Studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato is the author of the study titled, African Postcolonial Leadership: The Contribution of African Student Leaders in the United States in May 2013. This qualitative study which is a contribution to literature on postcolonialism in Africa emphasizes the work of leaders in African student organizations in the US. The study seeks to investigate if the agenda in African student organizations align with those of postcolonial leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, and Julius Nyerere. There were four male and three female leaders interviewed for the study. The leaders, who came from universities in the Midwest, Northwest and the South, talked about their leadership styles, organizational vision, and knowledge of African colonial history in the context of postcolonial leadership on the continent. The study employed techniques in grounded theory and thematic analysis to analyze parti...

Research paper thumbnail of African Postcolonial Leadership: The Contribution of African Student Leaders in the United States

Research paper thumbnail of African Postcolonial Leadership: The Contribution of African Student Leaders in the United States

Research paper thumbnail of Sensemaking in Turbulent Contexts: African Student Leadership in a Postcolonial Context

Research paper thumbnail of Communication Studies Sensemaking in Turbulent Contexts: African Student Leadership in a Postcolonial Context

Communication Studies, 2018

This study revealed the ways student leaders make sense of their approaches to leadership in Afri... more This study revealed the ways student leaders make sense of their approaches to leadership in African student organizations in the United States. Seven leaders of recognized African student organizations in universities from the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and the South took part in interviews. Discourse analysis of interview data revealed the complexity of leadership discourses and practices in a postcolonial
context in showing that African student organizational leadership (a) proceeds through the accommodation and resistance to dominant Western organizational and/or colonial discourses and (b) enables leaders to make sense of theirs and their organizations’
identities in the context of discourses that marginalize African forms of cultural expression.

Research paper thumbnail of Antonio Gramsci and Communication Antonio Gramsci and Communication Summary and Keywords Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication

The strong affinity between the work of Antonio Gramsci and communication is based on several Gra... more The strong affinity between the work of Antonio Gramsci and communication is based on several Gramscian communication-related themes and particular modes of his thought that significantly resonate with this field of studies. They include his drawing on the rhetorical tradition inspired by Vico, his assumptions of the constitutive role of language in creating an intersubjective reality that shapes common sense, and the fact that language provides the conditions of possibility for a hegemonic project. The strong tie between communication and Gramsci's thought creates a vantage point for understanding both how Gramsci developed his political theories based on communication concerns and how those theories in turn advanced the field of communication. On the one hand, Gramsci by his intellectual formation, as well as via life experiences, became extremely receptive of theories that linked language, culture, and society. Those theories can help illuminate Gramsci's key ideas, such as hegemony, common sense, national popular, the strategic concept of translation, and the relational nature of concepts. On the other hand, Gramsci's own reflection on the nexus between language and history significantly contributes to a theorization of language as a cultural practice resisting hypostases, an important qualification of Saussurian structural linguistics, and finally can offer the basis for a materialist approach to communication. Thus, the common denominator of a Gramscian perspective on communication must be found in the consistent use of dialectical thinking, which mediates binarisms like diachronic– synchronic, stability–change, individual–collective, unity–diversity, and symbolic–material. This article discusses the above-mentioned connection between Gramsci and communication in more detail. First, it explicates the ways in which Gramsci's work was influenced by communication concerns, and then it analyzes how Gramsci's work influences the realm of human communication today.

Research paper thumbnail of Mediating Social Media's Ambivalences in the Context of Informational Capitalism

This essay explores the dialectics of media, by considering the socially reproductive and transfo... more This essay explores the dialectics of media, by considering the socially reproductive and transformative function of social media from a political economic perspective. The authors claim that while media have consistently generated aspirations and fear of social change, their powerful capability of shaping societies depend on the historically specific social relations in which media operate. They engage such an argument by examining how the productive relations that support user generated content practices such as the ones of Facebook users affect social media in their capability to reproduce and transform existing social contexts. In the end, the authors maintain that the most prominent mediation of social media consists of the ambivalent nature of current capitalist mode of production: a contest in which exploitative/emancipatory as well as reproductive/transformative aspects are articulated by liberal ideology.

Research paper thumbnail of BOOK DISCUSSION now passed, but paperback out June 2022: 20% cost of hardback +20% off w/ code FLE22 ordering through Routledge.

by Tema Milstein, José Castro-Sotomayor, Laura Bridgeman, Carlos Tarin, Melissa M Parks, Jeffrey Hoffmann, Casper G Bendixsen, Emma Frances Bloomfield, Eric Karikari, Lars Hallgren, Dakota Raynes, John Carr, Bruno Seraphin, Carrie Packwood Freeman, Julia L Ginsburg, and Rebecca Banham

Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020

Use this link to join the discussion: https://www.academia.edu/s/da2195c5e5?source=link For this... more Use this link to join the discussion: https://www.academia.edu/s/da2195c5e5?source=link

For this book discussion, we've shared the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity's Introduction Chapter, Table of Contents, Endorsements, and Author Bios. We look forward to discussing the book with you! "The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (2020) is a timely book, as across the globe more and more of us awake to our always interconnected selves. The Handbook brings the ecological turn to sociocultural understandings of self and group identities, introducing an interdisciplinary, insightful assembly of original theory and research on planetary positionalities in flux in the Anthropocene – or what in this Handbook cultural ecologist David Abram presciently renames the Humilocene, a new “epoch of humility.” Forty international authors craft a kaleidoscopic lens, focusing on ways all identities are ecocultural and on the multiple and unspooling ways identities evolve and transform and, in so doing, may support reciprocal surviving and thriving."

Please write your thoughts, questions, and comments into the discussion. We will check in regularly to respond and move the conversation forward.

Note: Routledge is offering a 25% discount code for hardcover or Ebook until June 26. Routledge code=ACR02. (Order at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351068840)

You may enjoy the following podcasts on the book:

Australian Broadcasting Corporation: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/ecocultural-identity/13311966

Climactic:
https://omny.fm/shows/climactic-1/gretchen-miller-tema-milstein-routledge-handbook-o

Custodians of the Planet:
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/custodians-of-the/the-routledge-handbook-of-OuhdqzASWG-/

Research paper thumbnail of Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity Introduction, TOC, Endorsements

by Tema Milstein, José Castro-Sotomayor, Laura Bridgeman, David Abram, Melissa M Parks, Mariko O Thomas, Elizabeth Oriel, Toni Frohoff, Jeffrey Hoffmann, Casper G Bendixsen, Jessica Love-Nichols, Emma Frances Bloomfield, Charles Carlin, Eric Karikari, Godfried Asante, Dakota Raynes, Shilpa Dahake, Joe Quick, Gabriela Méndez Cota, Carrie Packwood Freeman, and Rebecca Banham

Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020

The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (2020) is a timely book, as across the globe more ... more The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (2020) is a timely book, as across the globe more and more of us awake to our always interconnected selves. The Handbook brings the ecological turn to sociocultural understandings of self and group identities, introducing an interdisciplinary, insightful assembly of original theory and research on planetary positionalities in flux in the Anthropocene – or what in this Handbook cultural ecologist David Abram presciently renames the Humilocene, a new “epoch of humility.” Forty international authors craft a kaleidoscopic lens, focusing on ways all identities are ecocultural and on the multiple and unspooling ways identities evolve and transform and, in so doing, may support reciprocal surviving and thriving.

Paperback out June 2022: 20% cost of hardback +20% off w/ code FLE22 ordering through Routledge.

Introduction chapter, table of contents, and endorsements are posted here. More, including editor bios and authors, can be found at this Routledge link: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Ecocultural-Identity/Milstein-Castro-Sotomayor/p/book/9781138478411. Please help share the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity among your networks. And please ask your libraries to purchase the book (or put it on their to-buy lists if budgets have been temporarily frozen due to Covid). The Handbook is an important resource for our times for scholars, teachers, students, protectors, policy-makers, and practitioners. The editors, Tema Milstein and José Castro-Sotomayor, are available for Q&A, interviews, guest commentary, talks, etc. Thanks for your interest and for helping to spread word!

What has been said about the Handbook:
“Intricately transdisciplinary and cross-geographical, it is the first volume of its kind to caringly craft a gathering concept, that of ecocultural identities, bringing together the social, political, and ecological dimensions of identity. What results is a treasure of insights on the politics of life, broadly speaking, and a novel toolbox for tackling effectively the damages caused by modern capitalist modes of extraction and the urgent task of Earth’s ontological repair and renewal.”
Arturo Escobar, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

“Too often mislabelled an ‘issue,’ the environment is in fact integral not just to everything we do but to who we are. This link between our identity and our ecology has long been recognised in many societies, but others seem to have forgotten its signal importance. This superb collection shows why all identities are ecocultural ones, and why full recognition of this is essential to all our political futures.”
Noel Castree, University of Manchester

“A smart, provocative, and original collection, the Handbook of Ecocultural Identity provides a definitive introduction to the constraints upon, and the contexts, formations, and impacts of, our diverse – but often unexamined – ecological selves.”
Robert Cox, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and three-time national president of the Sierra Club

“I am in complete solidarity with this book.”
Donna Haraway, University of California, Santa Cruz

Research paper thumbnail of Illegal mining, identity, and the politics of ecocultural voice in Ghana

Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020

In Chapter 15 of the Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, Karikari, Castro-Sotomayor, and Asante exa... more In Chapter 15 of the Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, Karikari, Castro-Sotomayor, and Asante examine ecocultural identities implicated in galamsey-illegal mining-in Ghana. Through critical analysis of media texts and public comments in social media networks, the authors investigate how galamsey workers' identities are constructed within the framework of ecological disasters. The authors' analysis shows ways news media reports, Ghana government press releases, and public discussion of ecological disruptions construct galamsey workers' identities through security discourses and the invisibility of resistant voices. The authors argue that media and public framing of galamsey workers' ecocultural identities is situated within global environmental discourses that support Western notions of development, justify legal large-scale industrial mining, and criminalize illegal small-scale mining in the name of growth and national prosperity. Underlying the legitimization of legal extractive practices is Ghana's contemporary ecocultural national imaginary, which stems from an ontological split between humans and the more-than-human world. Thus, the authors end this chapter by emphasizing Sankofa, an Akan Adinkra symbol (from the Asante ethnic group in Ghana) meaning to 'return and take back,' as an ontological shift that can rekindle Ghanaian Indigenous ecocultural identities centering intrinsic interconnection and mutuality between humans and the more-than-human world.