There are hardly any studies dealing with these partly conscious, partly unconscious, strategies of mutual interactions. Scholarly discourse also almost entirely ignores Africa’s influence on Europe as well as processes of normative appropriation and change between African societies within Africa itself and as a result of the diffusion of Islam. The formation of normative orders which are driven by other actors than the West therefore represent an important field of research. Another controversially debated research field in the domain of norms are the international debates on the implementation of patents and copyrights. In Africa these debates are particularly virulent as far as cultural and natural resources are concerned. In ongoing attempts to implement Western norms onto African societies, the media play an important role as they facilitate the reproduction of narratives of justification with which normative changes are disseminated for a broader public. Whereas the contribution of media and their impact on society has been sufficiently debated and theoretically reflected, rich ethnographic studies on media use in Africa have, however, rarely been carried out. Abu-Lughod already complained about this a decade ago, though little has changed in the meantime. Ferguson and Gupta attribute this neglect to an impression of difficulty in the localization of mass media. Their broadcast is global, though it is always manufactured locally by individuals with a specific cultural background. These complex processes of the mutual interdependence of cultural norms can only be understood by studying them in the field among the people themselves. In this way, we contribute to a theory of development with genuine practical relevance.
