Duke University Press - Globalization

Subjects
Anthropology > Cultural Anthropology, Postcolonial and Colonial Studies

Edited by one of the most prominent scholars in the field and including a distinguished group of contributors, this collection of essays makes a striking intervention in the increasingly heated debates surrounding the cultural dimensions of globalization. While including discussions about what globalization is and whether it is a meaningful term, the volume focuses in particular on the way that changing sites—local, regional, diasporic—are the scenes of emergent forms of sovereignty in which matters of style, sensibility, and ethos articulate new legalities and new kinds of violence.
Seeking an alternative to the dead-end debate between those who see globalization as a phenomenon wholly without precedent and those who see it simply as modernization, imperialism, or global capitalism with a new face, the contributors seek to illuminate how space and time are transforming each other in special ways in the present era. They examine how this complex transformation involves changes in the situation of the nation, the state, and the city. While exploring distinct regions—China, Africa, South America, Europe—and representing different disciplines and genres—anthropology, literature, political science, sociology, music, cinema, photography—the contributors are concerned with both the political economy of location and the locations in which political economies are produced and transformed. A special strength of the collection is its concern with emergent styles of subjectivity, citizenship, and mobilization and with the transformations of state power through which market rationalities are distributed and embodied locally.

Contributors. Arjun Appadurai, Jean François Bayart, Jérôme Bindé, Néstor García Canclini, Leo Ching, Steven Feld, Ralf D. Hotchkiss, Wu Hung, Andreas Huyssen, Boubacar Touré Mandémory, Achille Mbembe, Philipe Rekacewicz, Saskia Sassen, Fatu Kande Senghor, Seteney Shami, Anna Tsing, Zhang Zhen

“The authors of Globalization argue that to counter the replacement of nation-state boundaries with those determined purely by corporate interests, we need to develop an alternative idea of globalization that resists the efforts of the powerful to remake global space in their own image. By offering narratives from the perspectives of the forgotten victims of exploitative global trade, this collection goes a long way towards addressing this imbalance.” — Tim Roberts, M/C Reviews

"[F]ascinating. . . . [A] tour de force. . . ." — Ade Peace, The Australian Journal of Anthropology

"[I]nteresting. . . . It brings together a unique collection of scholars, artists, cultural theorists, writers and appropriate technology activists. . . . [T]he book provides a stimulating, eclectic and thought-provoking collection. In putting the volume together, Appadurai has produced a welcome contribution to a more cultural and less essentialist reading of globalization." — Adrian Smith, Progress in Human Geography

"Appadurai’s edited book is an impressive, multidisciplinary, cutting-edge collection. . . . New thinking, new vocabularies, and new questions pepper the book in a well organized and lively treatment of many contemporary topics . . . . This is a good book to think with and to use to contextualize ethnographic work. It will also be useful to students who wish to understand the key issues in discussions of globalization." — Rhoda Halperin, Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History

"This volume combines an enlightened recognition of the constraints of the global economy, with a broad set of new images, which may help us to conceptualize the reconfigured inequalities and outline alternative possibilities for democracy in a global age." — Ida Susser, American Anthropologist

The thirteen articles and five photo-essays that make up the book come from a diverse body of anthropologists, historians, cultural critics, philosophers, cartographers and artists, engaging with objects of varying size and form, from different regions of the world. But the careful reader will find a provocative discussion, and no shortage of dialogue among contributors, in which the frontiers of globalization research and debate are pushed in ways that merit serious consideration. . . . [V]aluable . . . . [T]his book not only intervenes into some undeniably urgent debates for global society; it also provides a serviceable introduction to an international group of writers and cultural workers at the forefront of globalization scholarship. Among the many works that now compete for our attention in this market, Globalization certainly warrants close inspection." — Jeremy Stolow, Topia