Cultural Interventions: Repositioning hip hop in India

In this article we show how subject positions are assumed when hip hop is used by institutions supported by western nation-states as a ‘cultural intervention’ in the global south. Focusing on the Indo-German Hip Hop & Urban Art Project 2011–2012, a hip hop educational project sited in several cities in India and sponsored by cultural institutions funded by the German State, we study how actors negotiate between what we identify as a discourse of hip hop authenticity and a discourse of internationalization. Employing a theory of scales allows us to investigate how actors on the ground engage in the semiotic play of repositioning of and in historically situated notions of authenticity and pedagogy. We argue that the findings have implications for future applied and theoretical work on the internationalization of hip hop as an educational and diplomatic endeavor.