Human Rights and African Airwaves: Mediating Equality on the Chichewa Radio

Human Rights and African Airwaves focuses on Nkhani Zam'maboma, a popular Chichewa news bulletin broadcast on Malawi's public radio. The program often takes authorities to task and questions much of the human rights rhetoric that comes from international organizations. Highlighting obligation and mutual dependence, the program expresses, in popular idioms and local narrative forms, grievances and injustices that are closest to Malawi's impoverished public. Harri Englund reveals broadcasters' everyday struggles with state-sponsored biases and a listening public with strong views and a critical ear. This fresh look at African-language media shows how Africans effectively confront inequality, exploitation, and poverty.

“"This book will certainly inspire anthropologists working on popular culture. And, because of its thorough theoretical discussions and claims, the monograph will help us not only to disentangle the complexity of Africa's public culture, but it will push us to reflect on methodological and epistemological traditions within the discipline." -Research in African Literatures”

"The author's intellectual rigor and analysis provide strong support for his arguments ... A valuable addition to any collection on human rights or media studies. ... Highly recommended." Choice, August 2012 "An inspired choice of topic. The conceptual framework within which it is presented has been worked out with impressive clarity and delicacy." Karin Barber, University of Birmingham

Harri Englund is Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. He is author of Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor, winner of the 2006 Amaury Talbot Prize of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Human Rights and African Airwaves focuses on Nkhani Zam'maboma, a popular Chichewa news bulletin broadcast on Malawi's public radio. The program often takes authorities to task and questions much of the human rights rhetoric that comes from international organizations. Highlighting obligation and mutual dependence, the program expresses, in popular idioms and local narrative forms, grievances and injustices that are closest to Malawi's impoverished public. Harri Englund reveals broadcasters' everyday struggles with state-sponsored biases and a listening public with strong views and a critical ear. This fresh look at African-language media shows how Africans effectively confront inequality, exploitation, and poverty.

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