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 WRITING has superseded the need for SYNCHRONICITY in communication, offering a brand new source of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.
