Appadurai Response

Matt Altstiel
11/10/05
3144
Ilona

Observations and Conclusions About Appadurai

The Appadurai piece enunciated several related themes crucial to knowledge and power. Appadurai contends that mass migration and electronic media have done more to bring globalization to the local and regional scale than nation states which only brought development to the national elites. Furthermore, rather than debating the economic nature and extensity of globalization, Appadurai shows the reader the role of mass migration and electronic media and their unintended consequences. The notion of imagined communities so strongly espoused by Said, today contains even more relevance. Diasporic communities throughout the world are able to maintain ties to their cultural homeland through increased technology allowing relevant media to pay a central part in their daily lives. Therefore, as an example, a Palestinian family in Wisconsin still identifies itself as Palestinian and maintains these bonds through Palestinian websites, television, e-mails and other networks of media. The strength of imagined geography and identity per Appadurai also strengthens global cultural ties, while simultaneously weakening the state. A key example of this: the American of the 1920’s regardless of race or ethnicity would identify himself/herself as an American. Now however, many racial or ethnic groups attach their ethnicity beforehand, as if to say for example they are a Mexican first, and an American second.

Another unintended consequence of both aforementioned phenomena is a strengthening of global institutions and an increase in religious affiliation. Certain assumptions made by early advocated such as: development would be universal and uniform, and lead to secular conceptions of governance, culture and economy have been proven false by reality. Certain religious revivals such as the Christian conservative movements in the United States and Europe have been facilitated by greater communications apparatuses allowing the interested party to obtain more information at a greater pace. Certainly, the revival of Islam as a powerful social, economic, and governmental force is both a counter to the increasing extensity of western market capitalism and a globalizing agent on its own terms for advocating a religious hegemony. Therefore, media and mass migration have allowed local and regional interests to flower and expand in global significance in unanticipated and unequal ways.