Blue is hot, red is cold: Doing reverse cultural studies in Africa

This article is a theorized diary of three field trips to a remote part of South ern Africa. It develops a reflexive argument for a reverse cultural studies in discussing problems in fieldwork, globalization, academic access, and research accountability. Academy-bound scholarship claiming to be study ing the popular is questioned. An argument is made for an empirical space in cultural studies for a greater acknowledgement of fieldwork done in the Third and Fourth Worlds vis-à-vis theory development in the Western metropoles. The narrative aims to forge a space in the global publications industry for kinds of cultural studies done in Africa, in which detail is as important as theory, in which human agency is described and recognized, and in which voices from the field, our subjects of observation, are engaged by researchers as their equals in human dignity and thus as pro ducers of knowledge. Theoreticism is questioned.