1 Situating globality: African agency in the appropriation of global culture

Centre (ASC) in Leiden was devoted to the study of globalization and its local responses in Africa. This ‘Globalization and Socio-cultural Transformation in Africa ’ theme group was made up of some of the ASC’s permanent staff members, affiliated and visiting researchers in and from Africa, and research associates from within the Netherlands. It was closely linked with the national research project, which was funded and coordinated by the Netherlands Foundation for Tropical Research (WOTRO), on ‘Globalization and the Construction of Communal Identities ’ that was initiated in 1993 by Peter Geschiere and the theme group’s leader, Wim van Binsbergen. This project took its cue from work then beginning to appear on the cultural aspects of globalization especially in the articulation of identities, the dynamics of popular culture under globalizing conditions, and the negotiation of commodification.1 Through the national research group, the ASC’s theme group was incorporated in a worldwide ‘International Network on Globalization Research ’ (ING), whose prominent members included Arjun Appadurai, Seteney Shami, Mamadou Diouf, Partha Chatterjee, Jean and John Comaroff, and Ulf Hannerz. To mark the end of theme group’s life-span, an international conference was convened in Leiden in April 2002 to take stock of the theoretical, methodological and empirical progress that had been made in the study of Africa’s globalization. It was hoped that the conference’s title ‘Globalizatio