Globalization

Academic demonization of consumption (Miller 2001)

-rooted within historical philosophical tradition that emphasized protestant ideology and idealized asceticism

-attributes consumerism to the ‘common people’ (separating themselves out) while ironically also seeing the world of consumption only within the context of the wealthy, Western upper middle class

-in reality the ails of the majority of society is not that they have too many things but that they do not have enough

Affluenza (Wilk 2001)

-cautions against Miller’s dismissal of the dangers of consumption and hegemony

-asserts that consumption inherently a moral issue that is entangled within issues of class conflict, inter-ethnic strife, environment, inequality, etc

-globalization of consumption practices have preyed upon the most vulnerable of developing nations throughout history, especially in context of cheap alcohol and drugs

‘Authenticity’ and globalization (Miller 1987)

-idea that authentic material culture exists and is somehow under threat by globalizing forces of Western capitalism within anthropology and popular culture

-Japan: many people believe consumer culture an import from America that represents Western hegemony in a way that undermines authentic Japaneseness

-in reality Japan industrialized country, produces many of its own consumer goods, many global brands associated associated with ‘Americanization’ originate in Japan

-view of culture as static and rooted in tradition led to characterization of all cultural change as resulting from acculturation, imposition, or emulation (Wilk 1995)

Consumption as recontextualization (Miller 1987)

-objects are fluid and can be transformed throughout their social lives as they move from context to context

-consumption as work: the way in which objects are translated from an estranged state to an artifact of social meaning

-goods that may be identical at the point of purchase can become recontextualized by different social groups in an infinite number of ways

-consumption of western commodities not a passive process of acculturation and assimilation but an active, dynamic process of constituting one’s own culture in their own way

Tro-tros in Ghana (Beisel and Schneider 2012)

-driver acquired the car from his father who lives in Germany who bought it from Ghanaian car dealer after it was in an accident which made the Red Cross retire it from use

-cars cost up to 1000 euros to ship to Africa, often more than bought for in Germany

-flipped and refurbished with windows and benches into tro-tros, kind of mini bus

-named Dr.JESUS: references past as an ambulance as well as its good work transporting people, providing livelihood for driver as well as danger as an old vehicle prone to accidents that may necessitate religious protection

-transformed from German waste into Ghanaian cultural object

Vietnamese Do La (Kwon 2007)

-US dollar replicas have been increasingly incorporated into ritual as a way to worship and honor the ghosts of those who died in the Vietnam-American War

-the Do La can be bought at spiritual stores, printed with insignia of US authority on one side and insignia of the God of Hell on the other

-offering ritual money to ghosts traditional, act of charity intended to appease the wandering spirits and prevent them from harming people

-relatives whose bodies remain missing fro the war condemned to realm of ghosts, form of ancestor worship

-said to be familiar with Do Las as used in the South during the war

Masculinity and Money in Kerala (Osella and Osella 2000)

Who: Young men

Where: Kerala, India, Persian Gulf

When: 1990s

What: Work in Kerala agricultural or other low pay high labor work, associated with lower class. Young men travel to Persian Gulf to find work outside of the public eye, allowing them to make money/earn status while obscuring labor, become gulfans. Ex: send pictures home of them in an office while in reality doing manual labour. Masculinity achieved through having money and managing it well, need to be generous but not a pushover, spend lavishly but not waste.

Significance: Foreign money has become a means of reinforcing norms of gender and class/caste in Kerala. Global financescapes tied up in upholding tradition rather than simple homogenizing force. New forms of consumption (eg of Western goods) as upholding traditional values.

Art among the Ashanti in Ghana (Silver 1979)

-Tourists arts that cater to foreign audiences often viewed by Western art critics as a cultural tragedy, shunned as inauthentic

-Ashanti carvers absorb Western artistic influence and cater to the Western art market yet are intellectually rich in meaning and social commentary

-carvings of modern market women and Westernized men still respect traditional aesthetic ideals of balance, naturalism, and proportion

Globalization definition (Morris 2010)

a reorganization of time and space in which many movements of people, things, and ideas throughout much of the world have become increasingly faster and effortless

Globalization debates in anthropology (Morris 2010)

-whether globalization names a singular and radical transformation that encompasses the globe

-long criticism of bounded nature of cultures

-cultural imperialism as a force of homogenization

-deterritorialization of culture

Critique of globalization (Cooper 2005)

-a process that is global is everywhere and immeasurable, of little analytic value

-shouldn’t assert that mobilization and exchange are historically global

-rejection of single world-making system in favor of pluralization and inconsistency of agendas, projects, and processes

Appadurai’s 5 global flows (Appadurai 1990)

-ethnoscape: landscape of persons who constitute the shifting world we live in: tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles, etc. moving through space

-technoscape: global figuration of technology

-finanscapes: disposition of global capital more rapid, difficult landscape to follow than ever before

-mediascapes: both distribution of electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information and the images of the world created by these media

-ideoscapes: often directly political and fequently have to do with the ideologies of states and counterideologies of popular movements, eg ‘freedom’, ‘welfare’, etc

Disjunction of global flows (Appadurai 1990)

-occur in and through the growing disjunctures between the 5 ‘scapes’

-deterritorialization one of the central forces of the modern world

-globalization of culture not homogenization: globalization involves use of a variety of instruments of homogenization which are absorbed into local political and cultural economies in heterogenous ways

Critique of Appadurai (1990)

-writing at time when globalization about to get a lot more significant

-doesn’t engage enough with power and colonialism: not one-way flows but also do not evenly flow in all directions

Mixed-status families in the United States (Miranda 2022)

-studied mixed-status and transnational families in Chicago metropolitan area and Mexican state of Zacatecas

-ironically undocumented immigrants cannot go back to Mexico without threat of discovery, have to stay in US

-friends Valeria and Max: came to Chicago from Mexico, send videos of their citizen children to their parents in Mexico

-those who go back feel like outsiders, espec. citizen spouses and children

Mexican-American transnational families: context (Miranda 2022)

-larger political-economic context of restrictive immigration policies and neoliberal globalization

-”revolving door policy” wherein mass removals tend to be followed with migration incentives

-demand for labor without proper legal recognition, Mexican labor seen as a distinctly disposable commodity

-increase in border enforcement has decreased the previously common outflow movement, encouraged migrants to remain in the US for longer periods of time

Imagined communities (Anderson 1983)

-nation: imagined political community that is imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign

-imagined because members of even the smallest nation will never know must of their fellow community members

-imagined as limited because has finite boundaries beyond which lie other nations

-imagined as sovereign because born in an age in which Enlightenment destroying legitimacy of the divinely ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm

-imagined as a community because regardless of actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship

-millions of people willing to die for the nation, beginnings of understanding way lie in the cultural roots of nationalism