Reworking and resisting globalising influences: Cape Town hip-hop

Global cultural flows have emerged as key influences in driving changes in local consumer behaviour, identities and social relations. These flows are negotiated and contested in the local context. This article considers how local hip-hop artists in Cape Town, South Africa, challenge and disrupt the dominant images of success linked to consumerism and individualism in popular American music imports. Drawing on Katz’s (Signs 26(4):1213–1234, 2001a, Antipode 33(4):709–728, 2001b) thinking around topographies and counter-topographies, this article suggests that local political hip-hop can be used to develop powerful critiques of the outcomes of globalisation.