About the Book
Blow-ups, stand-offs, hair-trigger reactions and frenzied public protests have become commonplace in contemporary South Africa. Spearheading Debate adopts the robust concept of �culture wars� to analyse a broad range of impassioned controversies regarding race and ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and national identity.
Culture wars pivot upon such hot-button issues as these and spawn dramatically polarised views: confrontations between orthodoxy and progressivism, the traditional versus the contemporary, suppressive regulation in opposition to freedom of expression. Examining disputes concerning art, music, media, editorial cartoons, history, collective memory and a variety of social practices, from The Spear to same-sex marriage and from �De la Rey� to �Umshini Wam�, Spearheading Debate parses the meanings, motives and responses of provocateurs, partisans, politicians and the public.
About the Author
Steven C. Dublin is Professor of Arts Administration at Columbia University in New York. He earned his MA and PhD at the University of Chicago in Sociology, and is the author of four previous books: Bureaucratising the Muse, Arresting Images; and Displays of Power and Mounting Queen Victoria (Jacana, 2009). Professor Dubin has won many awards, including the Fullbright-Hays Research Fellowship, The Lady Davis Visiting Professorship at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
