A thought-provoking discussion of globalization and post-modernity

books:


	• Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Public Worlds, V. 1) Arjun Appadurai University of Minnesota Press, 1996 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

An ambitious attempt, and some provocative thinking

Appadurai's book, Modernity at Large, offers quite a few tools to help us think about that big fuzzy thing called "globalization." He coins quite a few words to describe multiply-constituted networks of culture - ethnoscapes, mediascapes, ideoscapes, financescapes, and technoscapes. All are different ways of looking at the global cultural flows that we're trying to describe, and all are strongly influenced by perspective, overlapping, and rapidly shifting (though the term doesn't quite capture the instability and mutability of global cultural flows).

A book like this, to be useful, should help us think about important problems in manageable, intelligible, and useful ways. Appadurai's book offers more than most in this line. His terms, such as the above, are interesting, and his willingness to theorize as well as analyze is valuable. The ways that he situates himself in his analysis is also illuminating and useful. For example, Appadurai describes a trip he and his wife made to a Hindu temple in Bombay. His wife asked about a Hindu priest that she had known before, and they were told that he was in Houston. The point isn't just that they went there and he came here. He's talking about trans-locality, and the production of locality beyond mere connection to a place. Not all Hindus live in India, and not all Indians have to live in India to maintain their Indian-ness. At the same time, Houston is Houston because of both the people and the landscape located there. But part of its identity as a place derives from the trans-local identities of some of its citizens - a "cosmopolitan" city where some citizens are both Indian and American. He does a better job than I'm doing here explaining his thinking about the contemporary experience of diaspora, which is an accomplishment in itself.

There are some flashes of real insight in this text - for me, some of his coinages were brilliant, and the comment that some trans-local modern ethnicities are forced into violent anti-statism through an inability to articulate their identity except through the language of nation and state also resonates - but overall, Appadurai tried to accomplish too much in one book. He finds himself saying things like "the details of this argument are beyond the scope of this chapter," and it seems like this happens too much. It would have been better to flesh out his thinking about the production of locality in greater detail, with more case studies. And some of his terms could use additional explanation - he doesn't seem to notice his own un-critical use of the term "cosmopolitan," and he pays remarkably little attention to literature and film after professing the importance of both in the global exchange of ideas (mediascapes and ideoscapes, as he calls them).

This is a strong book, with some real value, but I wouldn't recommend reading the whole thing all the way through. The table of contents, the index, and the chapter titles are useful signposts. It's the kind of book that might be most useful in small doses.

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Inspiring Groundwork

With "Modernity at Large" Appadurai created a widely acknowledged groundwork for a viable perspective on globalization. This little book is a very thorough description about what is going on and changing in the world around us. Additionally, it provides numerous details and examples from all over the world - each of which could be developed even further. It should be read by everyone, who is afraid globalization is erasing the cultural diversity of this world.

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A thought-provoking discussion of globalization and post-modernity

Appadurai uses a number of powerful metaphors to talk about globalization. His language of -scapes (financescapes, mediascapes, etc) is an interesting way to look at global flows from different perspectives. He suggests that in the postmodern world, the collapse of time and space through technology gives rise to widespread agency as the work of the imagination. He also suggests the collapse of the modern nation-state, or at least the decoupling of those terms through the removal of the hyphen, as identities and allegiences become more transnational.
While this work is very thought provoking and a useful lens on globalization and global flows of people, goods, ideas and such, Appadurai overstates his points a bit. His prediction of the end of the nation-state seems premature in light of post 9/11 developments (which might be termed, to borrow one of his seciton titles "The Empire Strikes Back"). And while his discussion of works of the imagination is stirring and powerful, it does not adequately take into account power dynamics that are, on the one hand incredibly freeing to the haves, and on the other, quite restrictive to the have-nots.

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