Post Class: Appadurai

In Arjun Appadurai's piece, "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Culture Economy," he talks about the sustained cultural forces that are occurring on a big scale in the society that we live in. He says talks about how global culture has changed so drastically in the past century (with technological advances making it easier for people to migrate and intermix cultures) that we can no longer understand it "in terms of existing center-periphery models" (514). To understand these complexities, one must "look at the relationship among five dimensions of global cultural flows" (514), including ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, finacescapes, and ideoscapes. If we can begin to understand the disjuncture of these five dimensions of global culture, we can better understand that we are living in a contemporary and complex world.

I really grasped Appadurai's idea of ideoscapes, which are images produced and recirculated by institutions. These images often are very political and seek to inculcate the masses with ideologies that promote the views and agendas of institutions, while also demoting ideologies that counter their movements. These images have the power to rewrite history and to affect cultural memory. Appadurai's ideoscapes are closely related to Herman and Chomski's reading on Propaganda. They both state how institutions have control over the media, and therefore can control what the masses are exposed to, effecting their opinions, views and thoughts. We as a society must be critical of the images presented to us through the media, and realize the specific agendas and intentions of the institutions controlling them.

Post Class 12/4, AsToldByGinger

In Appadurai's reading she speaks of globalization as "a fluid and dynamic phenomenon tied to worldwide migrations (both voluntary and involuntary) and the dissemination of images and texts via electronic media" (M 508). I feel that this reading relates so much to our current society and I liked what Ruqayyah had so say about this in the sense of the family; I also notice and somewhat look in disagreement at those families I see in restaurants or other public placed glued to their cell phones instead of making eye contact and conversation with those around them. I also dislike when I see small children glued to an iPad at the table and it seems as though the parents just force it into their hands so they don't have to deal with talking to the children or listening to them whine.

This also brought me back to many of our other previously discussed theorists and what they had to say about this virtual world we currently live in, such as Lyotard and his idea of verisimilitude as well as Baudrillar and simulacra, Žižek and the spectacle, Dorfman and the supernatural bridge, and finally Jenkins and participatory culture. I feel that Appadurai really summed up and tied together so many theorists and the idea of mass globalization in an interesting and enlightening way, and that the other theorists would agree with the thoughts she proposed.

Going back to what Ruqayyah said, I think that our social interactions with one another are extremely valuable and important, and believe that such social skills and connections are dwindling with the ever increasing use of technology that has replaced our physical connections.

Appadurai, post 12/4

Appadurai states, "The new global cultural economy has to be seen as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order that cannot any longer be understood in terms of existing center-periphery models (even those that might account for multiple centers and peripheries)" (Appadurai, 514). He is meaning that our contemporary world is multivalent and susceptible to many different meanings and interpretations. Nothing today just has one simple meaning, it can interpreted and critically analyzed differently by many different people. It is a notion of disjuncture that our postmodern society has taken on and that everything is overlapping. He believes that this disjuncture is very unsettling. Dr. Cummings introduced the term "contemporinarity" and the idea of big systems of flow and that we can move beyond the postmodern. The complexity of our global world now is dangerous because of how systematic it is. Things can do very wrong and it affects the whole system, it can be epidemic now. The complexity of the current global economy has to do with certain fundamental disjunctures between economy, culture, and politics that we have only begun to theorize" (Appadurai 514). This is why Appadurai created frameworks to dissect the relationship between global cultural flows: enthnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideascapes. These frameworks must be looked at critically to see this disjunctness of our world. The idea of America being the dominant culture now is at question. "...the United States is no longer the puppeteer of a world system of images but is only one node of a complex transnational construction of imaginary landscapes" (Appadurai 513).

just some pretty landscapes, enjoy :)

Appadurai 12/4

In his work, Appadurai discusses the importance of the modernity of nation states and globalization. Appadurai articulated a view of cultural activity known as the social imaginary. For him, the imaginary is composed of five dimensions of global cultural flow: (1)ethnoscapes;(2)mediascapes;(3)technoscapes;(4)financescapes;(5)ideoscapes. Situating globalization in the context of what he views as the transition from an international to a postnational political order, Appadurai argues that the ease and frequency with which media and migrants cross borders is producing new ways of imagining and creating alternatives to the nation-state. He talks about the role of “imagined communities” in the making of the nation-state into his own concept of “diasporic public spheres,” which he believes will bring about its demise. According to his analysis, these “diasporic public spheres” are forged in and through multiple overlapping “scapes”, the parts of global flows which, he contends, facilitate transnational imaginings and make the nation-state insignificant. Appadurai’s scapes offer a user friendly way of thinking about the fluid and smooth nature of goods, images, and human populations in the late-twentieth century, as well as the ways in which they encourage the reimagining of human communities. Part of his argument about the coming decline of the nation-state rests on his analysis of the increasingly transnational nature of cultural groups and the erosion of the connection between nation and state. As populations move across space and across borders, as they reconstruct and reimagine their histories, Appadurai states that cultural groups are becoming less tied to particular geographic places. He calls for a translocal approach to anthropology which can take more fully into account the complexity of human lives in the contemporary world. Although he may underestimate the persisting importance of local spaces for many cultural groups, Appadurai’s point about the need for greater attention to the complicated, translocal, and global processes that affect the lives and imaginations of people worldwide is well taken. I agree that the relationship between the global and the local in the contemporary moment of globalization deserves extensive interrogation. However, whether or not current global processes diminish the importance of the local or the national, they certainly will change the terms by which we understand them.

ruqayyahali, Appadurai

Appadurai says toward the end of the reading: "I have employed a set of terms (ethnoscape, financescape, technoscape, mediascape, and indeoscape) to stress different streams or flows along which cultural material many be seen to be moving across national boundaries." (M 521) These five terms are his descriptions of the various scapes of global culture. Appadurai's main discussion is about global culture and its development in the world today. He talks about how these landscapes are the building blocks of 'imagined worlds' which are created by historical imaginations of groups around the world. (M 514) 

From what I understand, Appadurai's imagined worlds are the ones created by technology. The social media networks that keep us globally connected but not interpersonally connected are a good representation of this. Rather than have connection through physical means, i.e. meeting and having a conversation, we connect through virtual world. A lot of people in today's society do not know their neighbors but they know people they've never met from around the world. This allows us to be more interconnected globally but miss out on benefits of those immediately around them.

One example I can think of is with families. When I was growing up and had just gotten a cell phone, I was not allowed to use it during family time or at the dinner table. Now as an adult, my parents still discourage the use of phones during family time but even more so because they are direct ways to access social media in addition to texting. The reason my parents were always so against this was due to the fact that we were not paying attention to the people, the humans, right around us. We were too busy paying attention to those we were virtually connected to. This is an increasing problem I see today with young people and adults. I rarely see a moment when a family is eating dinner at a restaurant when they don't all have their phones out.

Appadurai says that this is a negative influence of globalization because it takes away from human interactions and only allows us to exist in a virtual world. This is an issue because it makes the world seem interconnected when we really aren't. Real world issues seem to be bridged because we are all connected globally but the issues still exist, we just turn a blind eye because we live in these imaginary worlds. We care more about the global community rather than cherishing our local communities. 

lacansmirror, Appadurai

Appadurai addresses the new conditions of the global cultural economy as they have changed rapidly.  First, Appadurai explains that the two primary forces that sustained cultural interaction were warfare and religion. These interactions or perceptions would either connect directly with people or greatly impact others.  The creation of the internet and other modern technologies has caused a shift in the way our cultural economy functions.  For example, the small world idea of knowing everyone's neighbor and being friendly with others around the world is obviously untrue today.

The It's a Small World ride at Disney may give the impression that we are all connected and friendly, but reality is far from that.  Even though one could argue that social media connects us with others around the world, the world is still large, it is just more accessible.  The increase of access has put an emphasis on online relationships instead of the global villages Appadurai mentions.

Today, local community members are unaware of their immediate community but completely aware of the global community.  This survey found that only 53% of U.S. adults know their neighbors' names.  I would be curious to learn how many U.S. youths know their peers names down the block.  With younger generations spending more time online using social networking sites connecting with friends around the world, I assume the statistics could only be greater for them.  As it becomes more common to use social networking sites, the global culture economy will lose its local uniqueness.  Online we see the pastiche of cultural convergence which diminishes uniqueness but gives us a false sense of connectivity.  A lack of local community and culture will weaken the large scale cultural economy.

An observation I made as an RA last year was that students knew their roommates names, but they often didn't know their peers' names next door or down the hall.  We used events and other programs to help residents meet, but they would often not attend.  It is a lot easier to sit on Facebook and "meet" or "stalk" others than it is to actually meet them.  I typically do not accept friend requests from people I haven't met, but when I came to Rollins, that quickly changed for the worse.  I felt like people didn't need to meet me because they already "knew" me online. I still made friends and have a good social life, but it was still a little disturbing to think about.  People use Facebook to learn about others and make assumptions even if their profile doesn't represent who their true identity.  In fact, no matter how many posts, photos, comments, etc. a person has, their true identity will only be found by talking with them.

At the beginning of last year, my hall did a "speed friending" event where we had residents pair up in groups of two and answer a couple basic questions.  Since it was an early event, people actually attended.  The feedback we received was incredible.  Residents felt like they understood more things about their neighbors and made some "real friends". The most fascinating aspect to me wasn't that they made friends (even though that was rewarding), but the idea that this type of offline socializing was new or different.  When an entire generation is living online, communicating in person is challenging and abnormal.

After reading Appadurai, I became a little worried about the next generation.  If our social mentality is focused so heavily on online interactions, and our global culture economy weakens as a result, will it eventually collapse? Will it be easier and popular to Trick or Treat online? Appadurai explains the importance of larger global forces being built on the idea of the global village, but advancements in capitalism and technology seem to be working in the opposite direction.  Services like Facebook argue that they help us connect, but by spending our time connecting online limits our framework of traditional communication.  I understand the benefits of social media, but balancing them with offline reality is essential for maintaining a stable and diverse global cultural economy.

Post-Class: Foucault

Michel Foucault was very interested in the notion of surveillance. In his piece, "Discipline and Punish," he says that "the gaze is everywhere" (94), meaning that the society that we live in is a voyueristic one. We feel a sense of safety and piece of mind knowing that we, and everyone else around us is being watched and surveyed. Foucault talks about the idea of the Panopticon, which is an architectural figure that can be used as a metaphor for voyeurism. The building is composed of cells lining the outer ring of the building, with a tall tower in the center. Prisoners in the cells are unable to see into the tower, so they never know if there is a guard watching them at that precise moment. Foucault extends this by stating, "All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a school boy" (97) . By having the tower in place, we do as we are supposed to because we have fear that there is a person in the tower watching, and if we do something wrong, they will punish us.





As I traveled home for Thanksgiving, I couldn't help but notice the insane amounts of cameras in each of the airports I passed through. In the security checkpoints alone, I probably saw around 150-200 dark domes lining the ceilings. We can assume that there are cameras underneath each of those domes, but we don't know for sure. The fact that they are there, though, gives us a sense of safety because we know (or think that we know) if someone is doing something wrong, they will get caught. These domes almost deter people from doing wrong and keep them in line. As we discussed in class, the airport is a great example of a Panopticon, in part due to the fear surrounding what happened on 9/11.