For Appadurai the ‘central feature of global culture today’ is the endless interplay of
sameness and difference, which includes both positive outcomes and (with more
emphasis) the destructive struggles of homogenizing states and particularizing ethnic
movements (p. 43). Although the essay claims a wider agenda, one suspects that at its
heart is a concern with these politics.
Appadurai concludes his influential essay by repeating the idea of focusing on flows,
especially across national boundaries, and his five scapes as different and disjunctive. He
argues that the traditional anthropological notion of ‘cultural shape will have to alter, as
configurations of people, places, and heritage lose all semblance of isomorphism’ (p. 46).
Lack of order is the analytical theme: in such situations, the ‘configuration of cultural
forms . . . [is] fundamentally fractal’ (p. 46). He suggests that chaos theory might be
appropriate (though it is really just metaphorical in this instance) and rejects systems in
favor of dynamics, as if they were opposites (pp. 46–7). Then, he raises as a potential
Marxist counterargument that there is a ‘pre-given order to the relative determining force
of these global flows’, but he rejects this on the basis of his term ‘pre-given’, favoring
instead a case-by-case, context dependent ordering (p. 47). Of course, ‘pre-given’ shifts
the argument, since even without a teleological bias in doing analysis we may still be
allowed to make the case for certain patterns of causal priority based on assembling a
number of instances, processes, and results, especially within particular historical
periods, such as we face in the present (i.e. the causal power of financial markets). And
finally he denies that his approach implies a ‘random or meaninglessly contingent’
approach to the ‘causal-historical relationship among these various flows’, but our work
is too premature to recognize its patterns (p. 47).
Despite Appadurai’s insights, his infatuation with multiple and unprioritized flows
and his simplistic rendition of history mystifies the actual relationships that lead to
differentiation and polarization, which are important in understanding persistent
(though reformulated) world inequality. In critiquing Appadurai’s formless globalism
that emphasizes chaotic or fractal shapes we examine the strengthening of borders,
explore the limitations of an approach that is highly dependent on relegating the nationstate
to the past, and look at new forms of movement control and unequal rights of
mobility in a world that is seeing new forms of ‘state’ power emerge beyond the bounded
national units of recent history.
For Appadurai the ‘central feature of global culture today’ is the endless interplay of
sameness and difference, which includes both positive outcomes and (with more
emphasis) the destructive struggles of homogenizing states and particularizing ethnic
movements (p. 43). Although the essay claims a wider agenda, one suspects that at its
heart is a concern with these politics.
Appadurai concludes his influential essay by repeating the idea of focusing on flows,
especially across national boundaries, and his five scapes as different and disjunctive. He
argues that the traditional anthropological notion of ‘cultural shape will have to alter, as
configurations of people, places, and heritage lose all semblance of isomorphism’ (p. 46).
Lack of order is the analytical theme: in such situations, the ‘configuration of cultural
forms . . . [is] fundamentally fractal’ (p. 46). He suggests that chaos theory might be
appropriate (though it is really just metaphorical in this instance) and rejects systems in
favor of dynamics, as if they were opposites (pp. 46–7). Then, he raises as a potential
Marxist counterargument that there is a ‘pre-given order to the relative determining force
of these global flows’, but he rejects this on the basis of his term ‘pre-given’, favoring
instead a case-by-case, context dependent ordering (p. 47). Of course, ‘pre-given’ shifts
the argument, since even without a teleological bias in doing analysis we may still be
allowed to make the case for certain patterns of causal priority based on assembling a
number of instances, processes, and results, especially within particular historical
periods, such as we face in the present (i.e. the causal power of financial markets). And
finally he denies that his approach implies a ‘random or meaninglessly contingent’
approach to the ‘causal-historical relationship among these various flows’, but our work
is too premature to recognize its patterns (p. 47).
Despite Appadurai’s insights, his infatuation with multiple and unprioritized flows
and his simplistic rendition of history mystifies the actual relationships that lead to
differentiation and polarization, which are important in understanding persistent
(though reformulated) world inequality. In critiquing Appadurai’s formless globalism
that emphasizes chaotic or fractal shapes we examine the strengthening of borders,
explore the limitations of an approach that is highly dependent on relegating the nationstate
to the past, and look at new forms of movement control and unequal rights of
mobility in a world that is seeing new forms of ‘state’ power emerge beyond the bounded
national units of recent history.
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