Overview

Edited by one of the most prominent scholars in the field and including a distinguished cast of contributors, this collection of essays makes a striking intervention in the increasingly heated debates surrounding the cultural dimensions of globalisation. While including discussions about what globalisation 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 globalisation as a phenomenon wholly without precedent and those who see it simply as modernisation, 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 mobilisation and with the transformations of state power through which market rationalities are distributed and embodied locally. Contributors. Arjun Appadurai, Jerome Binde, Nestor Garcia Canclini, Leo Ching, Steven Feld, Ralf D. Hotchkiss, Wu Hung, Andreas Huyssen, Boubacar Toure Mandemory, Achille Mbembe, Saskia Sassen, Fatu Kande Senghor, Seteney Shami, Anna Tsing, Zhang Zhen

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9780822327257

Table of Contents

Reviews

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 and Colonial History --Rhoda Halperin, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History [F]ascinating. . . . [A] tour de force, . . . --Ade Peace, The Australian Journal of Anthropology 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 [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 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

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. <br>--Jeremy Stolow, Topia

Author Information

Arjun Appadurai is Samuel N. Harper Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.

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