2011/12: INFORMAZIONI PER CHI AVEVA 12 CFU E TUTTI GLI MP3 DELLE LEZIONI

lunedì 20 novembre 2017

Anthropology of Globalization for Global Governance #12 & #13

13 & 15 November 2017. Two classes (here the first, there the second) on Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. We worked on reading Arjun Appadurai’s most famous article, namely, Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.

We started from EXPERIENCE and REPRESENTATIONS as the two sources of our ACQUISITION of that ACQUIRED KNOWLEDGE we’ve termed CULTURE.

While our physical bodies has remained the same for the last 150 thousand years, thus living unchanged our sources of experience, some tremendous changes have occurred in the last 5 thousand years or so. WRITING has superseded the need for SYNCHRONICITY in communication, offering a brand new source of representation in form of EXTRA SOMATIC MEMORY. Then the PRESS popularized writing and reading and made it possible the commodification of books, giving sway to NATIONAL CULTURES. Steam power, Electric and Electronic revolution have set a further step in offering human beings entirely new sources of representations and here is where Appadurai devices his model.

We read the article well enough to became acquainted with ETHNOSCAPES, TECHNOSCAPES, FINANCESCAPES, MEDIASCAPES and IDEOSCAPES.
From a theoretical point of view, the most important fact is that these flows are DISJUNCTED, that is they are not automatically dependent one from the other on a deterministic line. Case by case, only empirical analysis can tell us what flow impinges on what, what is caused and what does cause.


Q1. Select any know social phenomenon of your interest (possibly something you already know about) and try an Appadurian reading by analysing it through the five -scapes.