User:Andre Castro/2.1/annot/appadurai modernityAtLarge
Arjun Appadurai Modernity at Large
Appadurai, Arjun (1996). "Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization". University of Minnesota. Minneapolis.
In Modernity at Large Appadurai investigates the joint effect media and migration in the work of imagination, at the end of the twentieth century. Appadurai argues that both electronic mediation and mass-migration have impelled the work of imagination by providing new resources for us to imagine both ourselves and world. Such new vocabulary for the imagined self and the imagined world, has brought has given imagination a central role in modern subjectivity. (pp. 3-4)
Ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, ideoscapes
Appadurai distinguishes five dimensions of global cultural flows, and terms them ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, ideoscapes. They describe spheres of global flows, that are in a state of constant flux. They form the constituent elements of imagined worlds: "the multiple worlds that are constituted by the historical situated imaginations of persons and groups spread around the world" (p.33)
Mediascapes
Mediascapes, or in other words mass-media, are responsible for the production and distributing of information at a global scale. Their most important feature lies in their capacity to produce a repertoire of images, narratives, and ethnoscapes to viewers around the world. Under such space fiction and reality become blurred to the point that these images and plots take part in the creation of imagined lives. Not only one's life, but also to those living far from us. The further audiences are from metropolitan life, the more likely they are to construct imagined worlds based on these images. They help us to construct narratives for both ourselves and for the Other. (p.35)
And although imagination has been part of every society, it became infused into social lives. Although until recently, social life was not a space open to imagination (one could choose from a finite number of imagined lives), the intensification of the movement of people, images, and ideas, resulted in the intensification of the role of imagination is social life. From being an obstacle to social experience, imagination became part of the construction of the social lives in many societies. Such shift doesn't imply that the world became a better place. It means that even those with the most miserable lives "are now open to the play of imagination". "Many persons on the globe live in such imagine worlds ... and thus are able to contents and sometimes even subvert the imagined worlds of the official mind and of the entrepreneurial mentality that surrounds them" (p.33). (pp.53-54)
Loose but interesting
"The central problem of today's global interactions is the tension between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization"(p.32) . Mass-media has been an important source of this change.