The arts of practicing bureaucratization in Nollywood

Guilds, associations, (in)forma- lizations and legitimation of a Nigerian cinema

Abstract

This article uses ethnography to explore the heterogeneous arts of practicing bureaucratization of relatively autonomous West-African movie producers who have successfully emancipated from public television in the context of structural adjustment. Through the uses of guilds and associations, a fragile self-proclaimed elite of Nigerian cinema unfolds forms of creative adaptation dealing with the processes of bureaucratization of society. As these practitioners have to invent ways of “making do” bureaucratization, they reappropriate it and even circumvent some of its forms. At the same time, they “play bureaucratic”, that is to say they showcase themselves as willing to practice norms that come from the models of both liberal democracy and global capitalism. The bureaucratization of Nollywood actually turns out as the regulation of this allegedly informal space as a market working for the nation-state.