Sensemaking in Turbulent Contexts: African Student Leadership in a Postcolonial Context |
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| Authors: | Eric Karikari Christopher Brown |
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| Institution: | 1. Eric Karikari is a doctoral candidate at the University of New Mexico (UNM), Albuquerque. His current research focuses on the construction of organizational culture in non-Western societies. His dissertation, scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2018, is titled Negotiating Culture in Africa: A Critical Analysis of Organizational Discourse in Ghana. This project, which combines organizational communication, media studies, and cultural studies, examines the means by which neoliberalism shapes the organizational culture of a media and communications regulator. Eric is also the 2017 Guest Scholar for the Aspen Institute’s Conference on Communications Policy. His most recent coauthored publications analyze the socially reproductive and transformative power of social media and the ideological role both private and public sector media organizations play in the construction of “national” culture.ekarikari@unm.edu;3. Christopher Brown is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the Minnesota State University, Mankato. Dr. Brown integrates philosophical work on race and critical race theories into understanding White privilege and institutional racism. Specifically, Dr. Brown examines discourses of White male elites and constructions of White masculinity, and critically engages the lived experiences of people of color navigating the politics and struggles of identity negotiation. Dr. Brown’s research appears in such publication outlets as the Communication Monographs, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Howard Journal of Communications, and Departures in Critical Qualitative Research. |
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| Abstract: | 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. |
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| Keywords: | Organizational Leadership Sensemaking Africa Postcolonialism Cultural Identity |
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