Tools
Tools
Ogunrinde, John Adeoluwa (2026) Body without organs: understanding TikTok reterritorialization and Ówànbe practices in Southwest Nigeria. In: Digital publics, identities and participation. IGI Global, Hershey, Pennsylvania, pp. 29-46. ISBN 9798260044056
TikTok continues to emerge as a research subject. While its affordances have been variedly researched, the app’s interaction with culture in the Global South is here interrogated. Through the philosophical lens of Assemblage theory, this chapter examines the mix of Ówàńbẹ̀ practices in Southwest Nigeria, and the introduction of TikTok app into this mix. It frames TikTok as a multiplicity in a relation of exteriority within a peculiar cultural, social and technological assemblage. Evolving communication and social practices are identified to account for how the relation of exteriority between Ówàńbẹ̀ and TikTok is constituted. This assemblage sets in motion a unique flow in which neither TikTok nor Ówàńbẹ̀ is individually capable. As Ówàńbẹ̀ is captured on TikTok, the app is reterritorialized from being a technology to a cultural code - charged by desires and connections in that environment. This work exposes social media as a cofunction of technology, sociality and culture with compelling evidence of this assemblage in the cultural context of the Yoruba people of Southwest Nigeria.
Download (547kB) | Preview
 |
View Item |