-
I
1
Here and Now
Modcrnity belongs 10 ha! small fam ily of hcorks hal bolh
declares
-
tvn::veT ln~land ~Udl Me dn: hule dd cae_ ehal cxpl'lIn how
Ll1ijl.lnd l u~t Ihe Emplre in POSlcololllal Bombay
1 did nOI know Ihen Iha! 1 ""as dnftmg lrom one SOrt 01
poslcolonial subjectivity (Anglophone diction, fantasi~ of debat~
in Ihe Oxford Unon, borrowed ~eks al Ellcol/llltr, a patriclan
mtereSI in Ihe humaniti~) 10 another: the harsher, sexier, more
addictive Ne .... World 01 Humphrey Bogart reruos, Harold Robbins,
lJlIII', and social SClence, Amencan,slyle. By the time 11aunched
myself into the pleasur~ 01 cosmopolitamsm in El phinslone College,
I ""as equipped with the Righl Stuff-an Anijlophone educalion, an
up~r.class Bombay address (a1thou8h a middlc:class lamily income),
SOCial connc:clions 10 Ihe big men and .... omen 01 Ihe college, a
famous (no"" dc:ceased) brolher as an alumnUi', a sisler wilh
beauliful gir! . lriends already in Ihe college. But lhe: American
hug had bit me. I found mysell lauoched on Ihe journcy thal took me
10 Brandeis University (in 1967, ""hen SlUdenlS ""ere an unsettling
elhme cale:gory in lhe United Stales) and Ihen on 10 Ihe University
of Chicago . In 1970, I was slill drift ing loward a rendezvous
wilh American social science, area studi~, and Ihat triumphal lorm
01 modernizadon thc:ory Ihat was slill a secure article 01
Amerianism In a bipolar ""orld.
The chaplers Ihat follow can be sc:c:n as an dlort 10 make sense
01 a journey tha! began wlh modernily as embodied sensalion in the
movies in Bomb"y and ended lacelolace ""ith modernity.as thc:ory in
my soci,,1 selence cI"ssc:s al the University 01 Chiogo In Ihe
early 1970s In thc:sc: ch"pters, 1 have soughl to themati~e certain
cultural faeti and use Ihem 10 open up Ihe rc:lationship between
moderni~ation as lacI and as Ihe ory.1 This reversal 01 Ihe process
through which 1 c:xperienced Ihe modo em mighl aecount lor whal
might othef"W"lse seem like an arbltrary dlsci plinary pnvile8ing
of Ihe cultural, a mere profc:sslonal anlhropological bias.
TIH Global NOID All major social forces have prttursors,
precedents, 3nalogs, and ~ources in Ihe pasto It is these: deep and
mulllple gene"logi~ (see chapo 3) that have lrustralc:d the
aspiralions 01 modeml~eT'S In very dllferenl societles to ~yn
chroni~e cheir historieal willch~. 111is book, 100, arguc:s for a
general rup ture in Ihe tenor 01 intersociet"l relallons in Ihe
past lew decades. This view of changc:-indc:c:d, 01 ruplure needs
10 be explicated and distio guishc:d from sorne earlier theori~ of
radic"l transformation.
One 01 Ihe most problemalic legacics of grand W~lem social
science
H ... J No ... 1
\ Au!!U~IC ComlC, "-.u l Marx, I crdmanu Toennles, Max Weber,
tml le Durkhelm) .s thal II has steadlly relnforced the ~nsc: 01
sorne Single mo ment--c"n ji Ihe modern momenl- Ihu by liS
appearance creal~ a dr matlC and unprc:cedenled break betwc:c:n
past and presenl. Reincamated as the break belween Iradlllon and
modcrni ly and Iypologl~ed as Ihe ddler eoce between oslensibly
tradltlon,,1 and modero $OClehes, Ih.s view has bc:c:n shown
repealedly 10 dlstort Ihe me"nlngs of chanlfl!: and lhe poltllcS 01
pastnc:ss. Vel the ""orld in whlch we now Itve-in .... hlch
modernlty 15 dc:cislVc:ly al large, Irregularly selfconsclous, and
unevenly experienced-surely doc:s involve a general break wllh all
SOrt5 01 pas15. What son of bre"k is Ihis, if.t 15 not Ihe one
.denllAed by moderm~ahon theory (and cTllici~ed in chap 7)1
Implicit in Ihis book IS a thcory of ~pture that takes media and
migra -tion as its two majar, and inlerconnecled, dlacrillCS and
explores the.r Join! effect on Ihe IOOr~ o/ tbt IIII
-
,
"-~
-
Mo~ pcople: Ihan e:ver before: scem 10 ImaSlne roullIlC:ly Ihe
po5slbdlly Ihlt Ihcy or Iheir children will Uve and work In place:s
Olher than where
[h~ Wer(: bom: thls is [he wdlspring of Ihe IIlcreascd rates of
mgration at every level of social, nalional, and globallife. Olhers
are dragged into ne:w settinss, as the ~fugee camps of Thailand,
Ethl0pla, Tami ! Nadu, and Palestine remind uso FOT these people,
Ihey move and must drag IheiT imaginalion for new ways of living
along wllh Ihem . And Ihen lhere are those who move in scarch of
worlc: , wealfh, ilnd opponuOlty ohen because their current
circumstances ue: intolerable. Slightly trandorming and ex-tendins
Alben Hirschman's imponanl terms IOY
-
-J Thc third distincllon 15 betwccn Ihe mdlviduill and
collectivc ~nses of Ihe imagina don. It Is important 10 stress here
thal I am spcakmg 01 Ihe imagination no"" as a property of
collectives, and no! mcrc:ly as a faculty 01
I~ gihcd individual (lIS ten ~nsc sincc t~ flowcring of European
Ro-milnlidsm). Pan 01 .,.,hal Ihe mass med,a makc posstblc, becausc
01 Ihe coodilions 01 col1ectivc rcading, critiClsm, and plcasure,
is what 1 have: c1scwhcrc: alkd a community 01 scoliment-
(AppaduA.i 1990);-a group
,
thal begins 10 imagine and fed Ihings logcthcr. As ncdiel
Anclcrsoo ( 1983) has show" so .,.,dl . print capitaltsm can be one
1m 'Lway ln which groups .,.,ho have ncvcr becn in ncc- Io-facc
COnlaCI can begin 10 think 01 tMmsdves as Indonesian or Indian or
Malaysian. BUI olhcT fonns of declronic cilpitalism can nave
similar, and ('ven mo~ powerful effects, for they do nOI work only
,11 the leve! of the nat ion-Slale. Colleclive expe riences of the
mass media, especially Alm and video, can c~ale sodali ties of
wo~hip and charisma, such as Ihose that fonned regionally nound the
Indian remale deity Santoshi Ma in Ihe seventies and eighties and
lromsna 'ionally around Ayatollah Khomeini in roughly the same
periodo Similar sodalilies can fonn around sport and
internationalism, as the tnnsnalional effects of the Olympics so
clearly show. Tenemenls and buildings house vidw clubs in places
Ilke Kathmandu and Bombay. hn clubs and polilical fo llowings
emerge from small-town media cultures, as in South India.
Thesc: sodallties ~semble whal Diana Crome ( 1972) has called
-inVISI -ble collegcs" in reference to Ihe world of science, bul
they a~ mo~ volal ile, Icss professionalizw, less subJecl 10
colleclive!y shared cri leria of
pleasu~ , laste, or mutual re!evance. Thq art: communities in
themsdvc:s but always potentially communilies for themselvc:s
capable, of moving from shared imaginalion 10 collective aclion.
Most importanl, as I will argue in ,he cooclusion 10 this chapter,
thesc sod;.litic:s are ohen lrans nalional, evcn pounational, ami
thcy frt-quently operate beyond ,he bound-mes of the nation. Thesc
mass-mediated sodalities have the addilional complexity that , in
them, diverse local experiences of laste, pleasurt:, and polilia
can crisscross with one another, thus creating the possibility of
convergences m tnnslocal social aClion thal wCH1ld olherwise be
hard 10 imagine.
No single episode captures Ihese realities beller than the now
mmd-numbing Salman Rushdie affair, involving a banned book, a
rehgiously mandated de:ath sentence, and an author committed to
pe~onal voke and aeslhet ic freedom. 1M Salanjc Vmts provoked
Muslims (and olhe~) aeross Ihe world to debate ,he polilics of
reading, the cultura l re!evance of een-sorship, the dlgnity of
rehglon, and Ihe freedom of some groups 10 ;udije
H ... ~ N o ", .8
Jut hors wll houl IIldcpcnclent lnuw lecl.(t" ,,1 dll' Il'\1 IIK
Ku,hJ,c .lH.lII l' about a text-m mOhon, whose commodltlzed
traJcllury broughl 11 outsldc
th~ ~afe haven of W~lem nomlS about arhSllC Ireedom and
acsthetic rights mo the space of rehglous rage and Ihe authoflty 01
rcllglous schol-ars In their own tran~natiooa l spher~ Her~, Ihe
traosnat lO nilll worlds 01 liberal a~lhetics aod radical Islam mel
hcadon, In the very d,ffcrenl set . liogs of Bradford and Karachi,
New York aod New Dclhl In thls episode, we can also se~ how global
proc~ses Involvmg moblle textS and mlgram audlences create
implosive evenls Ihat fo ld global prnsurn Imo smal l, al-ready
polltlcized ilIrcnas (sec chap 7), produclng local lty (chap 9 ) m
new, globalized ways.
This thcory of a. breaJ--or rupturc:-wilh liS slrong emphasis on
elec-trone mcdialion and mass migralion, i5 ncc~sarily a Iheory 01
Ihe recenl pan (or Ihe extended present) because il i5 only in Ihe
pasl two decades or M) Ihal media aod migrarion hav~ become so
massive!y globa lized, Ihat IS 10 say, active: across large and
irregular ransnatlonal terralns Why do J con51der Ihis Iheory 10 be
anylhmg more Ihan an updau: of older SOCial theories of the
rupture5 01 modermzalioni Fm:t, mine i5 nOI a leleological thcory,
wi th a recipe for how modernization wl ll universally Yle!d
ratlon.l . ity, punctualily, democracy, th~ free markel, and a
higher gross nalional produet. Second, the plVOI 01 my Iheo ry 15
nOI any large-scale prOJccl of wclal engineering (whelher orgamz~d
by Sl
- and fa mlly life, obscured the lines betwttn temporary locales
and Imaglo nary nadonal auachments. Modemity now sc:ems more
practical and less pedagogic, more experiential and less
disciplmary than in the hles and sixtics, when it was mostly
experienced (espcclally for those: outslde the national dite)
through the propaganda apparatuscs o, the n~ly indepen-dent na
tion~ tates i1nd thci r grc:at Icadcrs, like lawaharlal Nehru,
Camal Abdd Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah, and Sukamo. Thc megarhetonc of
devd-opmental modemization (
-
Illy (~ chap 7) Th,lI IS, fJlhe r Ih.oo lallmlo; pll:y lu Ihe a
~,ulupII Ull . .. 1 leasl as old as Weber, Ihal ethnlcllY TeSIS on
sorne son of eXlenSlon of Ihe primordial idea of kinship (which is
in furn biologcal and genealogieal), the idea of ethnicily I
propase takes fhe conscious and ima:inative con-muelion and
mobilization of differenccs as lIS eo~. Culture 1, constitut-mg a
virrually opcn-ended archIve of dlffe~nces 15 eonsciously shapcd
into Cultu~ 2, thal subsct of thcsc dlffe~nccs Ihat eonslitulCS lhe
diacrit-ies of group idenli ty.
BU! th is proccss of mobilizlng certJm dlffercnccs and linking
Ihem ro :roup idenlity i5 also unlike ethnicity, at h::aSI in an o
rder understanding, bccause it docs nol depcnd on che extension of
primordial scntimenls 10 larger and largcr units in sorne son of
umdm~elional proccss, nor docs il make Ihe mistake of supposing
Ihat larger social units slmply drilw on the scntiments of fJmily
and kinship 10 glve emocional force 10 large-scale group idenlil
ics. Thus, m chapter j i show IhJt far fmm drilwing on he ex-Islmg
repcrtoi~ of emotions and movlng them inlO a larger a~na , Indian
crickel i5 a largescale form that comes 10 be inscribcd on the body
through a variety of prilClces of inc~asingly smaller scale. This
logie is jusI the rcver5(" of the old primordiallst (or exu:
nSlomsl) Idea of ethnic identity
The idea of cultu~ as involving the nalurahzw organizallon of
eertaln d lfferc nces In Ihe mte~sts of group Idenllly, Ihrough and
In Ihe hlstorieal proccss, and through and in the lensions bctween
agenlS and structures, comes closer to what has been called Ihe
instrumental coneepllon of eth nicity, as opposed 10 Ihe primordial
one [have IWO qualiAcalions about Ihis convergence, qualiAcat ions
that lead 10 my dlscuSSlon of culturalism. One IS tha t Ihe ends 10
whlch Instrumental conceptions of eth mc identity
a~ formed may Ihemselvcs be counterstruelural ~sponses 10
eXlslmg valorizations of dl fference: thcy may Ihus be
value-rillional rlher than instrumental-rational, in Weber's scnsc.
They may have a pu~ly tdentity-oriented inslrumentality rilther
Ihan al1 1l1SIrumentality Ihat, as IS so onen implied, is
eXlraeultural (cconomic or pollllcal o r emoliona!). PUl anOlher
way, the mobiltzalion of markers of group dlfference may ilsclf be
part of a conlcstation of valucs aboolt diffe~nce , as disllOe(
from the conse-quenccs of dlfference lor wealth, 5eCunty, or power.
My second qualifka-Ilon about mOSI IOSlrumental accounl5 IS thal
they do nOI explam Ihe proccss by wh ich cenain e ri teria of
dlfferenee, mobilized fo r group iden-Ilty (in tum inslrumental 10
other goal5) are (~)inscribed intO bodily sub-jecls, thus to be
expcrienced as both natural and profoundly IOcendiary al the same
lime .
We have now moved one step furlher, fmm culture as substance 10
cul-
hll ~ _I~ 111\ .II1I1U""'1I "1.1,11.,, " ., lo ,,,h,,,, .,. ~",
'1' "lo-"lI t ~ b,I .... 1 , .11 diffen:nce , lO cuhure a ~ Ihc
procc)s 01 n il lUraltZlll~ a sub!>Ct 01 dltterem .. ~ Ihat have
becn moblllzed 10 artlculalc group tdenllty We are al IhlS polOt 10
a posillon 10 move 10 Ihe quCSllOn of ~turalt~1l1 .
We rilrely eneounler Ihl:: word (lIhurall!". by tbe1(;IIS
usua!1y hllched as a noun 10 certain preAxes l1ke br, "'111ft , and
,nltr. 10 name Ihe most proml nenl Bul il may be usefullO begll1 10
use OIhurdlrslII 10 desrnale a fealU~ of movcmenlS IIlVolvmg
idenllllCS consciously m Ihe makmg. Thcsc movc-ments, whelher m Ihe
Uniu:d Slatcs or e1sewhere, are usually direcled at modl::rn
natlon-statI::S, whICh dlSlnbUle various enl111erncnlS, SOmellrneS
lOc1uding llfe and death , in accordance wilh c1assihcal lons and
pollcles re-garding group identity Throughout Ihe world, faced wllh
Ihe actlvllles of SlalCS Ihal a~ concemed wllh encompassing thelr
elhmc dlversn,cs lotO AXl::d and closcd sets of cuhurill caleones
10 WhlCh IOdlvlduals a~ oflen assrgned forclbly, many groups are
eonsciously mobrkz:mg Ihemselvcs ac -cordln 10 rdenlitarian cntena.
Cuhuralism, pUl snnply, IS idenllty polll1es mobrllud allhl:: levd
01 the nallon-stale
ThlS SOr! of culturaltsm 15 my pnncipal locu5 m chapter 7, wherc
1 mounl a 5UslalOed Crtllquc of Ihe pnmordlaltst VII::W of the
ethnic vio1cnce of the pasl dc:c:ade What appc:ars 10 be a
worldwlde reblrth of ethmc na Ilonal lsms and scparallsms is nOI
really ""hal Journallsls and pund115 allloo frcqucntly refer 10 as
"trtballsm, lmplying o ld hlsloncs, local nvalncs, and deep
hatreds. Ralher, Ihe clhlllC vlolcnee we ice lO many places 15 pan
of a wder transformatlOn Ihal 15 suggesled by the Icrm cu]urall5ll1
Cullural i5m, as I have al ready 5uggesled, is the COno>ClOUS
mobr1tzal lon of cultural dlffe~nccs lO {he servlce of a larger
nalional o r Iransnatronal polltles h IS
f~quently associated wr th eXlraternlOrial h lslorles and
memOrlCS, sorne -limes wilh rcfug sta tus and extle, and almosl
always w,th slruggles fo r slmnger rc:eognlllon f10m c:xlstmg na
l10n -SlateS or from vanous lransna liooal bodlcs.
Cu!turillisl movemenlS (for Ihey are almosl always efforts 10
moblllze) are the mosl general fo rm of lhe work of Ihe I1nagmallon
aod draw fre-Quently on Ihe fael or posslblllty of mlgrill10n or
seC~Slon . Mosl Imponam, they are scll.eonscrous about Idenllty,
culture , and herilage, al1 of whreh tend \O be part 01 (he
dellbcrilte vocabulary 01 culturallst movemenlS a~ Ihey slruggle
wrth sfateS and olher cu!turallsl focuses and roups h IS Ihrs
deliberate, stra tegic, and popul lsl mobllzatlon of cultural
malerial thal Jusl1Aes calling 5Uch movemenlS culturaltSI, though
they mily vary In many ways. Cu!turillst movemenl5, whelher Ihey
mvolve Afncan-Arnerreans, Paklstanis 10 Bnlain, Algenans m France,
nallve Hawallans, Srkhs, or French
-
s~ake'B in Canada, tend to be coumematlo nal and metacuhural. In
the: broadest scnse, as I .. hall WggC5t in the last part o f this
book, cuhuralism is the fonn that cultural differences tend 10 take
in the era of mass mcdlation, migration , and globali%ation .
How Art'QS Ctl SlwJirJ
The anlhropologieal stress on the cultural, whlch is he mam
InACClion I wish 10 give 10 Ihe debale on globali%atlon , is In my
case funhersuslained by my training and practice as a seholar of
arca 5ludles, specifleally of South Asian "ludies in the Uniled 5
tales The~ has not yel been a sus-tained critical analysis of thc
link, in the United 5tatC5, between thc emcr-gence of the idea of
culture areas in anthropology betwttn the World Wars and Che full
-Acdgcd formation aher World War 11 of arca slUdies as Ihe majar
way tO look at the str.uegically signifkam pans of che dcvdop-ing
world. Yet Iherc is liUle doubt thin bolh ~rspective5 indine one 10
a particular sort o f map in which groups and their ways of Jife
are marked by differenccs of culture, and in Ihe area -studies
fonnation thcsc differ-enees dide into a topography of nalional
cultural differenees. Thus geo-graphical divlsions, cultural
differences, and nalional boundaries lended 10 bccome isomorphic,
and there grew a slrong tendency tO refracl world processes through
this son of nalional-cultural map of the world. Area studies adds
to this spalial imaginary a strong, if sometimes tacit , sense of
the strategic importance o f information gained in Ihis
perspeclive. This is Ihe reason for the o ften nOled links belween
the Cold War, govemment fundmg , and university expansion 111 the
orgam%alion of area-studies ccn-ters aher World War 11 .
Neverthdess, area sludles has provlded the maJor eOllnterpoinl 10
the ddusions 01 Ihe view fmm nowhere Iha! underwntes much canonieal
social seience. II is th is aspccl of my Iralning thal com-pelled
me to situate my genealogy of the global presem in the arca I know
beS!: India.
There is a spccial al1)Clety that now surrounds the struClUres
and ideolo-giC5 of arca sludies 10 the Unit~ Stales Rccognizing
that arca studies IS somehow dttply tied up wlth a straleglzing
world p icture dnven by U 5 . foreign-policy needs bctween 1945 and
1989, leadmg figures in the world 01 uniyersit ies, faundatlOns, th
ink lanks, and even the govemment have made il dear Ihat the old
way of doing arca studies docs not make scnse in the world after
1989. Thus Icfl-wing crilics of arca slUdies, much inAu-coced by
,he important work of Edward $ald on onentalism, have hn joincd by
IT-man..eteers and advocates of liberalization, who are Impa-
H". ~"J N . ... - 16 ...
tlent wlth whal they dende as the n
-
surch and can hardly pr~l~nd 10 be a simpl~ mlrror of Ih~
ClvlhUlIonal Oth~r. What does I)ttd 10 ~ Tei:ogrnze:d, if Ihe:
are:a-studies tradluon IS 10 be r~italized, i5 thu locallty itsdf
is a historlcal product and thal Ihe h is-lories thrOllgh which
localities emer:e ar~ eventually subject to Ihe dy-nam ics of the
global. Thls argument, which culminatcs in a re:minder thal there
is nothing mere about the: local, is the burden of the Anal chapter
of this book.
This mixed rc:v;e:w of are:a StUdles, a tradllion in whlch I
have been 1m -merscd for Ihe paSI twenty-five: yean;, underlies
the: presence: at the cenler of this book of two chaplers about
India , These chaptcn;, on Ihe ce:nsus and on cricket, are: a
cOllnterpoint to those thal mighl otherwise sc:e:m, well , too
global. But I haste:n to picad that India-in thls book-is nO!
10
~ read as a me:re case, examplc, 01' instance of SOmethinglarger
Ihan Ilsdf. It ls, ralher a sirr ror the examination of how
locality emerges in a globaliz-ng world, ofhow coloillal processes
undcrwrite conlemporary pol1IICS, of how his tory and gencalogy
mAecl one: anolher, and of how global facts lake: local form.l In
Ihis sense: these chaptcrs-and the: (rcquent invoca-lions of India
IhroughOllt Ihe book-are: nOI about India (Iaken as a natural fae l
) but about Ihe processes thmugh which eontemporary India has
emerged. I arn aware of Ihe rony (c:ven the eontradletlOn) m havlng
a nation-state be Ihe anehoring referenl of a book de:voted 10
globalizalion and anirnated by a sense of the cnd of Ihe en of the
nauonstate. BUI here my expc:rtise and my limilalions are two sides
of the same coin, and I urge Ihe reader to see: India as an optie,
and nOI as a reified social faet or a enlde nationaliSI reAex.
1 make thls de:IOllr in recognitlon of Ihe {ael thal any book
about glob-alization i5 a mild exert:ise m me:galomana, espc:dally
when Jt is produced in Ihe re:lalivdy privileged crcumstances of
the American ~arch umver-sity. It sc:cms important 10 idemify the
knowledge forms thmugh whlCh any such megalomania comes to articula
le Itsdf. In my case, these forms--anlhropology and area
studlC5--predisposc: me by hahn 10 Ihe fixing of praelices, spaees,
aod eOllntries mIO a map of stallc dlfferences Thls IS,
counterintuillvdy, a danger even in a book such as this, which is
con-sciously shapc:d by a conce:m with diaspora,
detelTitOnalization, and the: in-egularity of the ties between
nations, Ideologics, and social movements
Socild ScinlCf aflfr Patrioli5m The Anal part o, the: here and
now IS a fact about Ihe modem world tha! has exercised sorne of Ihe
besl contemporary thmkers In Ihe: social and
H,,, J No", .. 18 ..
human 5cie:nces, I! 15 Ihe Issue 01 the nallon-5Ia:. It~
hlstory, ItS currCIlI LTI S15, lIS prospcc:ts I dld not begin tO
wrlte: Ihls book wlth Ihe: CTlSIS of the nation-sute as my
principal concern. Bul m Ihe six years ove:r whlch lIS chapters
were: written , I have come 10 be convmced thal the nationslate, as
a complex modern political fonn , 15 on its last legs. The evidenee
is by no means clear, and the relurns are hardly allm I am awa~
lhal all nallon-Slales are not the: same: in respc:ct 10 Ihe:
nalional Imaginary, the appara-luses of lhe slale, 01' lhe
sturdincss of the hyphen between them Yellhere is sorne
justiflcatlon for whal might somellmcs seem Ilke a reified view of
tbe nation-state: in Ihis book. Nation-Slales, for all their
important differ-ences (and only a fool wOllld conAale $ri lanka
with Creal Brila;n ), make sense only as parts of a 5)'1:lem. Thls
system (even when secn as a system of dlfferences) appc:ars peorly
eqUlpped 10 deal wlth the mte:rhnked diaspo-ras of people and mages
that mark Ihe here and now. Nation-states, as units in a complex
inleraelive system, are nOI ve:ry likdy 10 ~ the long-lerm arbiten;
of the: relallonship between globality and modemuy Thal 15 why, in
my title, I imply thal modemity is at large.
The idea thal sorne nal;on-states are in crisis 15 a uaple of
Ihe Acld of eomparative polilia and WilS 111 sorne ~nse Ihe
Jusllfkat ion for much of mode:mizalion Ihe:ory, espe
-
seems plagued by endemlC dlsease_ As 10 altcrnalive social fonm
and passibili lie-;, there are actually exisling social forms and
arrangemenlS that mighl contain the seeds of more dispersed md
diverse forms of trans-nallonal allegiance and affilialion. This is
part of Ihe argument of chapter 8, although l readily admil Ihat
the road from various transnational move-ments 10 suslainable forms
of transnational govemance i5 hardly clear. I prefer, however, the
exerdse of looking for-indeed, imagining-Ihese al-lernalive
passibilities tO the strategy of denning sorne nation-states as
healthier than others and then suggesting various mechanisms of
ideology tTansfer. This lalter strategy replays
modernization-cum-devdopment poi-iey al! over again, with the same
triumphalist underpinnings and the same unhea1thy prospeets.
If the ethieal fronl of my il rgumen! IS neeessarily fuuy, the
imalytic fron t is somewha sharper. Even a cursory inspeclion of
the reliltionships within and ilmong he more than 150 nation-states
thal are now memben of the United Nations shows thal border wars,
culture wars, runaway inHa-tion, massive lmmigrant populalions, or
~rious f1ights of capital IhTeaten sovereignty in many of them.
Even where Slate sovereignty is apPilTently intact, state
legitimacy 15 frequently insecuTe. Even in nation-states as
ap-parently secure as the United States, Japan, and Cermany,
debates aboul Tace and rights , membership and 10ya1ty, cilizenship
and authority are no longer culturally periphera1. While one
argument for Ihe longevity of the nation-Slate foon is based on
these apparently secure and legilimale in-stances, the o ther
argument ii an inverse one and bases itsdl on the new
ethnonationalisms of the world, notably those of Eastern Europe_
Bosnia-Herzegovina is almost always pointed 10 in the Uniled States
as IIx princi-pal symptom of the fael Ihat nationalism Is ave and
siek, while the rich democracies are simultaneously invoked la show
Ihal the nation-slate is alive and wd1.
Civen the freQueney with which Eilslem Europe i~ used 10 show
thal lribaHsm is deeply human, that ot her people's naliona!ism is
tribalism wril large, ~nd thal territorial sovereignty is stilllhe
major go~1 of many large ethnic groups, lel me propase iln
illternative interprelat ion. In my judg-ment, Eastem Europe has
been singularly disloned in popu!ilr arguments ilhaUt nationalism
in Ihe press and in the academy in the Uniled Slate5. Ralher Ihan
being Ihe modal instilnce 01 lhe eomplexilies of al! contempo-rary
elhnonationahsms, EaSlem Europe, and 115 Serblan face 10
panieulilr, has been used as a demonstration 01 Ihe continued vigor
01 nationa[isms 111 which land, Janguage, reHgion, history, and
blood are congruem, a texl-book case of whal nationalism is all
about. 01 course, what is fa~naling
H,,, ~"J No,," .. 20 ..
aboul EaSlern Europe I ~ hat sorne 01115 own ngh-wlOg I
deologue~ have eonvlOced the liberal Western press lhat
nallonillism '1 a polltlcs 01 pn-
mordi~ whereas the real Questlon is how it has been milde to
IIp/>Cllr lhal , way_ This eertainly milkes Eastern Europe a
fa~inilling ~nd urgent case from many points of Vlew, induding the
faellhat we need 10 be skeptieal when experts daim 10 have
elleounlered idea! types in actual cases.
In mos! cases of counternatlonalism, seeession,
s.upranillionalism, or elh-nlc revivill on a large seille, the
common thread is ~1f-detenmnation ralher than teTTitoTlill
sovereignty as sueh. Even 10 Ihose cases where terrilm)' seems 10
be a fundamental issuc, sueh as 10 Palcstine, II eould be argued
thal debates about land and lerritory are in (ael fUllClional
SPIO-Of{S 01 argu-mems Ihat are substantially about powcr, Justice,
and seH-detennination In a world 01 people on the move, 01 global
eommodlllzation and states 111-eilpable of delivering basle righls
('ven 10 thelr majority ethnie populatlon~ (see ehap. 2),
territorial soverelgnty is an inereasingly diffieult Justlficatlon
lor those natlon-s tates that are lOereasingly dependent on lorelgn
I ~bor, expertise, anns, or soldiers For eounternationalist
movements, lerTItorial sovereignty IS ~ plaUSible Idiom for thcir
asplratlOns, bUI II should not be mistaken for Ihei r foundmg logie
or ,helr ul timile eoneem. To do so 15 to commit what 1 would call
Ihe Bosniil Fallaey, an error that involves (a) mis-understand ing
Eastern European ethnie battles as tribahst and primordial , an
error in whieh the Nro' York n", ts is the leader, ilnd (b)
eompounding Ihe mistake by tabng the Eastem Europeiln case 10 be
the modal case 01 all emergent nalionalisms. To move ilwily from
the Bosnia Fallaey requlTes twO diffieult eoncessions: fim , that
the politlcill syslemS of the wealthy northem nations may
themselves be in crisis, and seeond, that the emer-gent nationahsms
of many parts olthe world may be founded on patflo-tisms Ihal are
not either exclusively or fundamentally lerrlloriill. Argu-ments
for making these eoneesslons animate many 01 the ehapters 111 thlS
book. In making thcm, I have not always fOllnd It easy to maintam
lhe dls-tinct ion belween the analYlie and the ethieal perspeetives
on the future of Ihe nationstate, although 1 hlVe tried 10 do
so.
As Ihe niltion-slate enters a temlina! CriSIS ( { my
prognostlcallons prove to be correet ), we can eertainly expect
that the malerials for a post-nalional imaginary muSI be aTOund us
already. Here, I lhink we need 10 pay special atte ntion 10 Ihe
rdallon between mass mcdiation and migra-tion, the two faels {hal
um[erplll my sense of he. cultural politles of .lhe global modern
In particular, we need 10 !ook doscly al the vilnety of what have
emerged ilS ailll~ori( mblic s~hrrrs . Benediet Anderson dld us a
service in identifying Ihe way in whieh cen a in forms of mass
mediation . notably
Hit, ".J N o", ... 21 -
I
- I those involving ncwspapcrs, novds. and Olncr prml media,
playcd a kcy role in imaginmg he natlon and In foacll l lilung Ih('
spn:ad of hi .. fonn 10 he colonl\ world in ASia and c1scwhcrc My
general argumcnt is hal there 15 a similar link 10 be- found Ixtwn
t~ ..... on. of Ihc imagination and he cml."rgcoCf: of iI p
-
PAR T I
Global
F I o w s
I I
-
2
Disjuncture and Difference in the
Global Cultural Economy
It takes only the meres! acquaintancc wlth ,he faCI~ of ,he
modem world 10 note hal jI is now an nleraellve system m a scnse
Ihalls slTlkingly ncw Hlstorians i\nd sociologisls, cspa:ially hose
conccrnecl wnh tranSlocal processcs (Hodgson 1974) ilnd ,he world
systcms assOClaled wllh cap'tal . lsm (Abu-Lughod 1989; SraudelI981
- 84, Cunm 1984 ,' Wal1efStctn 1974, Wolf 1982), havc long ~en
aw,ue ,ha' the world has bttn a congenes of Jarge-scalc
intcractions for !llany ccntum:) Ye! {oclay's world Involves in
-leractions of a ncw order and iotcnSllY CuhuT;ltransaCl10nS
octwecn O -Clal groups In ,he past havc gcnerally bn rrstrictcd,
sometlmcs by ,he fael'> of gcography and ecology, and ,n Olhcr
times by acuve f"eSISlancc: 10 mteractlons with Ihe Olhcr (ilS in
China for much of HS h1s1Ory illld 111 )apall before Ihe MeiJ1
Resloration) . Where nere: nave been sustained cul -tural
tnnsactiolls across large parts of the globe, they have usually
In-volved the long-dislance Journey of commodlllts (and of Ihe
merchanlS mest concemed w1lh them) and of travelers and e:tplorers
of every typc: (Helms 1988; Schaler 1963)_ The twO ma1l1 forces lor
susla1l1ed cultural interaellon before: Inis cemury have: becn
warlare (and the large-scale po-ltiCal systems somelm1es generated
by it) ilnd re:l1glOns of conveTS1on, whlch nave somellmes, as 111
the case 01 Islam, taken warfare as one of tne kgll1mate
1I1strumenlS 01 Ihel f expan~lon Thus, betwc:en travele:rs and
.. 27 '"
I ,
-
m~rdanls , pilgrims and eonquerors, lhe world has Sttn much
long-dlstanc~ (and long.tenn) cultural trafAe. This mueh Sttms
scllevld~nt.
Bul f~w will deny Ihat given Ihe problerns 01 time, dtstance, md
11m tled technologies lor Ihe command 01 resources aeross vaSI
spaees, cul tural dcalings bctween sacially and spatially separated
groups hav~ , unti l the paSI few centunes, ocen brldged al great
COSI and suslained over lime only with sreal effort. The forces 01
cultural gravity seemed always to pull away from Ihe fonnation 01
large.scale ecumenes, whelher rcligious, cornmercial , or
political, toward smallerscale acc~tlOns of mtlmacy and Inlernl
.
Somelime In the pasl few eentuncs, Ihe natu~ 01 this
gravltattonal flcld Sttms 10 have ehanged. Panly bccause 01 Ihe
spirit 01 Ihe expanSlOn 01 Westem marit ime intercsts alter 1500,
and panly bccausc 01 Ihe rclatlvdy autonomous devclopments 01 large
and a88resslve social fonnallOns in the Amerieas (sueh as the
AZlees and the locas), in Eurasia (5ueh as Ihe Mon . 80lS and their
descendants, Ihe MU8hals and Ottomans), in island Seulh east Asia
(5ueh as Ihe Buginesc), and in the klngdoms 01 prccolonial Afnca
(sueh as Dahorney), an overlapping sel 01 :lImenes began 10 emerge,
in whieh eongcnes 01 money, eommerce, conquest, and migrat ion
besan 10 create durable cross-socielal bonds. Thls process was
aeeclefilled by the lcehnology translers and mnovations 01 the late
eishleenth and mne lcenlh cenlurics (c.s ., Bayly 1989), whleh
en:ated complex colonial orders centen:d on European capllals and
spread throughoul Ihe non.European world. Thls mlrleale and
overlapplns set 01 Eurocolonial worlds (tlrst Spanish and
Ponuguese, later princlpally Engltsh, French, and DUleh) set Ihe
basis for a pennanenl lrafflc in td~as 01 peoplehood and selfhood,
which cn:aled the imagined communilie5 (Anderson [983 ) 01 recent
na. tionalisms Ihroughoul Ihe world.
Wilh what Bcnedict Anderson has called ' print capitalism," a
new power was unleashed in the world, the power 01 mass literacy
and IS at lendanl la~scale production 01 proJccts 01 elhnic
afflnity Ihat wen: re mukably frtt 01 the need lor I~elolaee
communicalion or !:Ven 01 indl ' reel eommumcatlon betwttn persons
and groups. The aCI 01 n:admg Ihings logether sel the stage lor
mov~ments based on a paradoX- lhe paradox 01 eonstrueted
primordialtsm. There 15, 01 coursc, a gn:at deal clse Ihat is
nvolved in che story 01 eolonialism and its dia lcrtically
generated nationalisms (Chalterjtt 1986), but Ihe tssue 01
constructed elhn1clties 15 sun:ly a crucial slrand in this
lale.
BUllhe revolution 01 prinl u;pilallsm and Ihe cultural
alflnities and dla logues unle.lsncd by II wel"C" only modesl
precursors 10 Ihe world we live tn
Di'Jw r." ~ D,II".~ 28
now for 111 Ihe pase cenlury, Ihel"C" has bttn a Icchnological
exploslon, largely rn Ihe domam 01 transpon.ltion and II1l0nnalion,
Ihat makes the 111 teractlOns 01 .11 pnnl.dominaled world seem as
hardwon and as easlly erased as Ihe print rcvolulion molde earlier
lorms 01 cultural traffle appear For with the advent of Ihe
sleamship, Ihe aUlomobile, the alrplane, Ihe camera, the compuler,
and Ihe tclephone, we hav~ enlered into an alto gelher new
conditioll 01 ncighborliness, !:Ven wrth those most distanl from
oursdves. Marshal1 Mcluhan, amoog olhers, soughl 10 Iheorize
aboullhis world as a "global vil1a81=: bu! Iheortes 5uch as
McLuhan's appear 10 have ovefC"Stmlaled che eommunitarian
implleatlons 01 the new media o rder (MeLuhan and Powers 1989). We
are now aware Ihal with media, u eh lime we are templed 10 speak 01
Ihe global vlllage, we mUSI be rcmlnded Ihat media cn:ale
communities wllh "no sellsc of place" (MeyrowlI:Z: 1985) The world
we hve m now rtms rhizomlc (Dcleuze and Guallan 1987), even
schizophrenic, calling lor Iheones 01 rool lessness, allenalion,
and psychological distance bctween IIldividua ls and groups on Ihe
one hand, and fanlasies (or nighlmares) of deetrollle proptnquity
00 che other Here, we an: dose 10 the central problematic 01
cultural processcs in loday's world.
Thus, Ihe curioslty lhal recenl'y drove PICO Iyer 10 ASIa (
1988) is In sorne ways the product 01 a confuSlon between sorne
tneffable Me-Donaldlzauon 01 the world and Ihe much subtler play of
tndigenaus Ira cetones 01 desln: and fear wilh global Ro....,; 01
pcoplc and things lndttd, lyCl"s own impn:sslons are teslimony 10
Ihe lael Ihat, il 4 global cul lural syslem is emergtng, it is
filled wlth ronles and reslstances, some:llmes cam ouRaged as
passivity and a boltomless appC:lile 111 Ihe Asian world lor Ihmgs
Westem.
lyCl"s own accounl 01 Ihe: uncanny Phillppine alflnity for
Amenean popular muslc is rich teslimony lO Ihe global culture 01
the hyperrcal , lor somehow Philippinc n:nditions 01 American
popular song5 are bolh more widespread m lhe PhilippillC'i, and
more dlsturbingly la;thful 10 Ihelr oflg nals, than Ihey an: in Ihe
Untted Statcs today. An entin: nallon Sttm5 10 have leamed 10 mimic
Kenny Rogers and Ihe Lennon slslers, Il k~ a vasl Asian MOlown
chorus. BUI AIlttr!r4111U1lroll IS cenall1ly a pallid lenTl 10
apply 10 5uch a sttuation, lor nOI only are Ihere more Flltpinos
smging perlect renditions 01 sorne: American songs (ohen lrom the
American past) Ihan Ihere are Americans doing so, there 1$ also, of
course, the lacI [hal Ihe resl 01 Iheir Hves IS nOI in complete
synehrony wnh Ihe n:lerentlal world Ihal flrst gave binh to hese
songs
In a funher globali:Z:ing twist on whal Frednc Jameson has
reeently
O"J eI ... ~J 0,1/" " - 29 ..
I
1
-
cal!ed "nostalgIa for the p~scnt" ( 1989), thcsc Filipinos look
back to a world they have never lost. Thl$ 1$ one of Ihe
cenlrallronies of the poliucs of global cultural Aows, espcclally
in the arena of entenalOmenl and leisurc. It plays havoc wilh the
hcgcmony of Eurochronology. American nostalgIa fccds on FIlIpino
desirc rcprescmed as a hypercompelem repro. duclion Herc:, we have
nostalgia wllhout mC'mory. Thc paradox, of COUBC', has ils
explanalions, and Ihcy are hislorical unpackC'd, lhcy lay
ba~ lhe SIOry 01 Ihe American missionizalian and polltical rape
af the Philippines, ane resull 01 whlch has bttn the creallon of a
nauan af make beheve Americans, who 101craled for so long a
lC'ading Idy who played the piano while Ihe s1ums 01 Mamla expanded
and dC'cayC'd. Perhaps Ihe mOSI radical postmodemlSls would rgue
lhat this is hardly surprismg be-cause in Ihe peculiar chronicilles
01 lale capltalism, paslIChe and nostalgia are cenlral modes of
malle produclion and rcception. Americans IhC'm . selves are
hilTdly m thc prcscnl anymore as they slumble into Ihe mega.
tcchnologies 01 IhC' Iwenty-Ars t century garbed in the film-noif
seenilrios of sixties' chi lls, Mlies' diners, lonic:s' clolhing,
thirliC's' hooses, twenties' dances, and so on ad infinitum.
As far as the Unlled Stale5 15 concemed, one might suggest thal
the issue i5 no longer one of nostalgia but of a social
illlagillalr( bulh largely around reruns. Jameson was bold 10 link
Ihe politi~ 01 nostalgia 10 the poslmodem commodity scnslblhty, and
surely he was right ( 1983). The drug wars in ColombIa rttapitulale
Ihe tropIcal sweal of Vlelnam wlth
Ollie North and his succession of masks-Jlmmy Stewan concealing
John Wayne conceallng Splro Agnew and all of thcm lransmogrifying
into SylvC'Sler Slallone, wha wloS in Afghanlstan--Ihus
slmuhaneoosly fulAII -inS lhe secrcl American envy 01 Sovie l
imperiallsm and the rc:run (Ihls time wllh a happy ending) of Ihe
VIetnam War. The Rolling Slones, ap-proachmg Ihelr Mties, gyrate
be:fore elghlccn-year-olds who do nOI ap-pear 10 nccd Ihe machlnery
of nostalgia to be: sold on Ihelr parems' heroes Paul McCanney is
sellmg thc Beatles 10 a new udicocc by hllchmg hls oblique
noslalgia tO Iheir deslre lor Ihe new that smacks of the old.
Omglttt is back m ninelies' drag, and 50 is AJalll-ll, nol to spcak
01 Bntlllalt and MII-sjO" llllpouiblt. all dressed up
tcchnologically but remarkably faithful to the almospherics of
Iheir origi nals.
The past is now not a land 10 return 10 in a simple polilic~ of
nlemory. It has bccome a synchronic wa~housc of cultural seenarios,
a kind of temo poral central casting, 10 which fC'(;ourse can be
laken as appropriate, de-pendng on Ihe- movie to be: made, Ihe
seene to be: cnacted, Ihe hostages 10 be rescued. AII this is par
for Ihe course, if yoo follow Jean Budrillard or
D "J ~.ctw" 01 D , j j",. " .. 30 ..
Jean-Frao
-
The eentr.11 problem o f today's g lobal inle rae lio ns is the
le nSlo n bct .... een cultur.11 ho mo ge nizatlo n a nd cultural
hele rogenizatlOn. A vast array of empirieal facts eould be broug
ht 10 bcar o n the side of the homogeniz.. tlon argumenl, and mue h
o f 1I has come from the Id l e nd of the spcclrum of media studlcs
(Hamd m k 1983; Maltdart 1983; $chilb 1976), and some (ro m other
perspcctivcs (Cans 1985; Iyer 1988). M osl ohen , Ihe ho-mogcmnuon
argume nl subspcclales into ci ther an argume nl about
Amer-icanizal ion or an arR\lme nl aboul eommodm zauon, and very
ohen Ihe two argumcnts are doscly linked Whal lhese arR\lmems
faillO eonslde r IS thal al leasl as rapldly as forces from variou5
metropoliSC'> are brooghl m IO nc .... societics Ihey lend to
bccome Ind lge nizcd in one o r anolher .... ay: Ihl5 15 Ime of
musle and housmg sly[es as much as II is tme o f seienee and ter-ro
rism , spcctacles and const1tu lions. The dynamies o f such
indigenization have jusI begun to be explored syslemieally (Baroer
1987; Fd d 1988; H an-nerz 1987, 1989 ; Ivy 1988; N ieo1l 1989,
Yoshimo lo 1989), and mue h mo re needs 10 be done . BUI il is ....
o rth noticing Ihal for the people of trian Jaya , Indo nesianizal
ion may be more worrisome than Americanizallo n, as ) apanlzat lon
may be for Ko reans, Ind ianization for Sri Lankans, Vie
t-namizatlon fo r the Cambodlans, and Russianization fo r Ihe peo
ple o f So-viet Anne nia and the Ba[l ie republies. Suc h a Ilsl o
f altemal ive fea rs 10 Amencani:u.tio n cou[d be greally e
xpanded, bul II is nOI a shapcless in -venlOry: for poll t lC~s of
smalle r seale, Ihere is al .... ays afear o f cultural ab-sorptio
n by poll tics o f larger seale, espccially Ihose thal are nearby.
O ne man's Imainro community IS ano lher man's pol llical pnson
This scalar dy namic, .... h ie h has .... idespread global
manlfeslatio ns, 15 also tied 10 the relatio nsh lp bcl"'ccn nat io
ns and slatcs, to which I shall re-IUro laler. f o r the momenlle l
us note thal the simplifiealion o f IheS!: ma ny forces (and fears)
o f ho mo ge nizalio n can also be exploi ted by nallo n-.. tales
in relalio n 10 Iheir o wn minori tles, by poSlng global
commodltlza-tion (or capiullsm , o r some o lhe r such eXlernal
enemy) as more rea[ than the threat of lIS o .... n hegemo nic
strateg lcs.
The ne'" glo ba[ eultur.11 ccono my has 10 be secn as a com
plex, overlap . ping, d isjuncllve orde r thal ean not Olny lo ngcr
be understood In lenns o f existing eenler-periphery modd s (even
those that might aceounl fo r mul-liple eenlers and pcriphe rics).
Nor is il susceptible 10 simple mo de1s of push and pull (I n lenns
o f migra tion Iheory), o rof surpluscs and de~ci ts (as in tr.1dit
ional mo dc!s o f balance of trade), o r o f eonsumers and
producers (as in most neo -Marxlsll heo ries o f devc!opment) .
Even Ihe mOSt comp[ex
D" J ~o < I ... g.J D,jj"tM~t .. 32 '"
and flexible Iheorics of globa[ devclopmenl that have come OUI
01 the Marxlst trad,t ion (Amln 1980; Mande! 1978,. Wallerslem
1974; Wolf 1982) are inadequately qUlrky and have falled 10 come 10
tenns "'Ith whal Seott Lash and John Urry have called dlsorgalllzed
eapl tallsm ( 1987). The complexlty of he currenl global cconomy
has 10 do wllh eenam funda menlal d lsJunctures bcl",ccn cconomy,
culture, a nd polltlcs th.1I we havc on[y begun 10 Iheorize.I
I propase thal an clementary framework for explonng suc h
dlsJunctu~ IS 10 look 011 Ihe rd a uonship among Ave dlmenslons of
global cultura[ Ro~ Ihat can be tenned (a) tlh"oscQ/Iff. (b )
,"tJ,QS(QpN. (el ttcbttoS(Qpn. (d ) JI. IIIIH,m-Qpn, and (e)
,,uOSCQpn.l The suffix -S(lIpt allows u~ to poml 10 the flUid ,
Irregular shapcs of thesel!.andscapc-s, shapcs thal eharacterl zc:
mler na tlonal capi tal as deep[y as thcy.do mtcrnationil l clolhmg
slyles. These tenns wll h the commo n suffix .o,cQft also mdlcale
thal theS!: are not obJfi: ' IIvely given rd allo ns tha t look the
same from cvcry angle of VISIOn bul, ra lhe r, thal Ihcy_a r.t:.
c.kc:pJx.pcrspectlval conSU\JCIS, Inflected by 111(; h,s torlcal,
[mgu ist ic, and po[\le al situaleuness o'td,fferent sarts 01
actorsl na hon-SI01 teS, mu[l in01 tionals, diasponc commUrllllcs.
as well as subnallOrlal groupmgs and movcments ( .... hclhcr
rdlg'ous, pohl,ea!, or economle). and even Int lmate face ro-face
groups, sueh as vlllaucs. nelgh borhoods, and faml[ies. Indeed ,
Ihe Ind lvldua[ actor 15 Ihe [.151 locus of Ihls perspectlval set
01 landscapcs, fo r Ihcse landscapes are evenlually navIgilled by
agenlS who bolh expcne nce and consti tute larer formallons , m
part fro m thelr own sensc of whal thcsc landscapes oHef
Thcsc landscapcs !hus are Ihe buildIng b[ocks of what (cxlendlng
Bcnedie t Anderson) I wou[d Ike 10 ea11 ImagllltJ worlJs, tha! IS,
Ihe muhlple worlds that aTe consllluted by he hl~ toncally sltualed
Imagmallons of per-sons and groopi spread around he globe (c hal'.
L). An Important facI of the world we IIve m today 15 that milny
pcrsons o n Ihe globc I .... e m such Imaglned .... o rlds (and nOI
Just lO Imagmed eommunltlCS) a nd hu .. are able to contesl and
somellmcs even subvert Ihe Imagmed wor[ds of the ofAe,a! mmd and of
Ihe entrcp reneunal mentallty Ihal surround them
By tlImOSCQ/lt", [ mean Ihe landscape of persan .. who
conSlltute Ihe shlftlng wor[d LO which .... e [ivc: loun SIS,
IfllOllgranb. rdugt:cs , CXI[CS, guest workers, and olher moving
groups and indlvldua[s co nShttlle an csscnt,al feature of the
world and appc:ar \O affeet he polit les of (and belwcen) nallons
to a hilherto unprccedented dq:ree. 111'5 is nOI 10 say thal Ihcrc
are no rela-tlve!y slable communltles and nelworks of kinship ,
frlendshlp, work, and Ictsure, as wel1 as of blrth , residenee, and
o lher flt.iI\ fonns . But It IS 10 !>ay that Ihe warp o f thcse
slabit.ucs 15 evcrywhere shol lh rough wlth the woof
D "J MOct O" .~ J D, jj".o .. - 33 '"
-
of human motion, as mon: ~~ons and groups dcal with the n:ali
ties of hav-ing 10 move o r Ihe fan lasies of wanting to move. Whal
15 mOIl: , bOlh Ihc:sc 1l:i11lities and fanlasics 00 ..... fuoctloo
00 larger scales, as meo aod womeo from villagc:s in India think
nOI jusI of moving 10 Poona or Madras but 01 moving lO Dubai and
HouslOn, and rc:fugecs from Sr; Lanka ~nd themselves in South Ind
ia as wc:ll as 10 S ..... il'zerland, jusI as the Hmong are: dnl/cn
to London as wcll ilS to Philadclphia. And as intemational capital
shlns its nccds, as produclion and tcchnology generate differc:nl
needs, as nation-statcs shin thci r policics on rc:l.Jgee
populalions, thcsc: moving groups can nc:ver afford 10 let thci r
imaglOations rest too long, even if they wish 10
By 1rC1Mosc4/1f, 1 mean the gl~1 cooflguralloo, Iso eve!" fluid
of lechllOl-
ogy ilnd he bel that technology, both hlgh and low, both
mechamCil! and infoTTTliltional , now mOl/es at hlgh speeds across
various kinds of previOllSly impcrvious boundarics. Many counlrics
no ..... arc: the roolS of muhinational cnlerprise: a hugc sttel
complex in libya may IOvolve interc:sls from India
China, Russia, and lapan, providing differe:nt componenlS of
nc:w Icchno-logical conflgurat ions. The odd dist ribution of
te
-
">(' ( ~() I !tlC ( ; p l ll"~ hy wlm h pC OJI,k I'~ " I I
,.I." II .m.l 1 "lm~"" " 11101." Ifln hdp 10 conSlItute narrJIIVe~
01 (he Otlu:: r alJu pro tnarrall VC:S 01 po~slhlc hv~, fantasies
Ihal coold bc1:ome proleijomena lO Ihe dCSlfC for acqulsl-tion and
movement
lJwsc"pn are also concate:nations of Imag~, bUl rhe:y are:
ofte:n dlR~ctly polillcal and f~quently have to do w,th the
Ideologie:s of sta tes and he counterideologi~ of movements exphcl
lly oriented 10 capturing state power 01' a piCCe of it . TheS
-
the home state. Deterritorialization, whether of Hindus, Sikhs,
Paleslini -ans, or Ukrainians, is now at the core of a variety of
global fundamen-talisms, iocluding Islamic and Hiodu fuodamentalism
. lo the Hindu case, forexa mple, il is clear Ihat the overseas
movemenl of Indians has been ex-ploited by a variety of interests
both wilhin and oUlside India 10 create a complicated nelwork of
floancCli and religious identiflcalions, by which the problem of
cultural reproductioo for Hindus abroad has bCi:ome tied 10 Ihe
politics of Hindu fuodamentalism al home.
At Ihe same time, deterritorialization creates new markets for
film com-panies, art impresarios, and travel agencies, which thrive
on the need of the delerritorialized population for contacl wilh
its homeland. Nalurally, Ihesc invented homelaods, which constitute
the mediascapcs of deteTrito-rialized groups, can ohen become
sufflciently f.mtastic and one-sided thal they provide [he material
for new ideoscapes In which ethnic conAicts can begin to crup!. The
creation of Khalistan, an invented homeland of the de-territorial
ized Sikh population of England, Canada, and Ihe United Stales, is
one example of Ihe bloody potential in such mediascapes as they
inter-ael with Ihe internal colonialisms of the nationstate (e.g .,
Hechter 1975). The Wesl Bank, Namibia, and Eritrea are other
theaters for Ihe enactmenl of the bloody negot iat ion between
existing nation-stales and various de-tenitorial ized
groupiogs.
1I is in the fertile ground of deterritorialization , in which
money, com-modilies, and persons are nvolved in cC!aseless!y
chasing each other around the 'Norld, thal Ihe mediascapes and
ideoscapes of the modern world fln d Iheir fractured and fragmented
counterpart. For the ideas and images produced by mass media often
are only partal guides 10 the goods and experiences Ihat
deterritorialized populations trans(er to one anolher_ In Mira
Nair's brillant film /lIdia Ca~,mt, we see the multiple loops of
this fractu red delerritorialization as young women, barely
competent in Bom-bay's metropolitan glitz, come 10 seek their
fortunes as cabaret dancers and prostitutes in Bombay, entertaining
men in clubs with dance fonnats de-riv~d wholly from che prurienl
danc~ sequences of Hindi flIms. TItese scenes in turn cat~r to
ideas aboul Western and foreign women aod their looseness, while
they provide tawd!)' career alibis for these women. Sorne 01 thClie
women come from Kerala, where cabaret clubs and the pomo-graphie
Alm ndust!)' have blossorned, partly in response to the purses and
tastes of Keralites re tumed from the Middle Easl, where their
diasporic Uves away from women distort their ve!)' scnse of what
the relations ~. tween men and women mighl be. These Iragedies of
displacement could certainly be replayed in a more detailed
analysis 01 the rdations between
D"j ."
-
jecls wilhin Ihe nalronSlale. Al anOlher level, th rs disJuneuve
relalionshrp rs deeply entangled wilh the global disJunetures
dlscussed throughoullhrs ehapter: ideas of nationhood appear 10 be
sleadily increasing in scale and rcgularly crossrng exislin: Slale
boundaries, somelrmcs, as wrlh Ihe Kurds, because previous rdenlit
rcs slrelehed across vasl nalional spaecs or, as wrlh Ihe Tamils in
Sri lanka, Ihe dormanl Ihreads of a lransnallOnal d iaospora have
been aet ivil1ed to ignite the mICropolrtrcs of a nalionstate.
In discussrng the cultural porillcs Ihat have subvcrted Ihe
hyphcn that Irnks Ihe nation 10 lhe Stale, il is especial1y
rmportanl nOI to forgel Ihe mooring of such politrcs In Ihe
irregularities Ihal now charaelerize drsorga . nized capital
(Kolhari 1989c, lash and Urry 1987). Becausc labor, Ananee, and
lechnology are now so wtdely separaled, Ihe volalililics thilt unde
rlie movements for nat ionhood (as large as transnalionallslam on
Ihe one hand, or as smaU as Ihe movement of Ihe Curlchas for a
separate Slate m Northe,iISI India) grind agamsl Ihe
vulnerabr!rlres Ihill eharaclel1ze Ihe relationshrps belween SUles.
Stil tes And Ihemsclves pressed 10 slay open by Ihe forces of
media, technology, and travd Ihal have fueled consumensm IhroughooI
Ihe world and ha~ increased the cravmg, even in Ihe non Westem
world, for new commodilies and spectacles. On Ihe other hand, I~e
very crav. ing5 can become caught up in new elhnoscapcs,
mediascapcs, and, eventu. ally, idcoscapes, such as democracy in
Chma, that Ihe Slale cannot lo lerale as thrcats 10 ils own control
over rdeas of nal ronhood and pcoprehood. Stales IhroughooI the
world are under srC'ge, especlal1y wh('re contC)IS Over Ihe
idcoscapes of democracy are /leree and fundamental , and where
Ihere are radical disJurrcturcs belween rdeoscapes and technoscapcs
(as In Ihe case of very smal1 counlrlCS thal lack contemporary
lechnologles of pro. duct ion and mformation), or betwecn ideosca
pes and Ananccscapes (as In counlrles such as Mexlco or Brazrl,
wherc inlema.tional lendmg innuencC"'i nillional politlcs 10 iI
vc:ry large degree); or between id~apes and elhnoscapes (ilS in
Beirut, where diasponc, local , and trans!ocal Alalions are
suicidal1y at banle); or bet .... een Ideoscape5 and mediascape5
(as In many coonlriC"'i in the Mlddle East and ASia) where Ihe
lifcstylC"'i rcprescnted on bolh naliOnill and international"TV and
cinema comp[ele1y overwhe1m and undermine Ihe metorie of na.tlonal
polllres. In the Indran case, Ihe mylh of Ihe law.breaking hero has
emerged 10 mediale Ihl5 naked struggle belWttn the pieties and
realitics of Indian pol ltics, .... hich has grown incrcil~in!!ly
brutalized and COrTUpl (Vachani 1989).
The tr.msnalronill movemenl of Ihe martial arts, partICularly
Ihrough Asiil , as mediat'ed by Ihe Holly .... ood and Hong Kong
111m industries (Zanlli 1995 ) is a rich illustration of the wilys
in which long.standlng mar.
D'I} ~I .U ,J D'fl"tR ~ t .. 40 ..
Ilal arts tradrllons, rdormulated 10 meel the fanlasles of
conlemporary (someUIlICS lumpen) yooth populiltlons, c reale new
cultures of masculrouy and vrolence, .... hich are in tum Ihe fuel
for ine rea.scd violence in nallonal and inlemational polilics Such
violence is in tum Ihe spur 10 an increas ingly raprd and ilmoral
arms lrade thal penetrales the entire .... orld The worldwrde
spread of Ihe AK47 and Ihe Uzr, ro Alms, ro corporatC' and state
security, in lerror, and In police and military a.ctivily, rs a
remmder Ihill apparently srmple technlcal unHormllies ohen coneea!
an rnereasrngly complex set of loops, Irnking rmages of vlolence 10
aSpirallons for com mu nily in some irnagllled world.
Reluming Ihen 10 Ihe elhnoscapes .... ilh wh,ch l be:an, Ihe
cC'nlra! pill"ildox of ethnrc politics in loday's world rs Ihat
prrmordla (whethcr of language or skrn color o r nelghborhood Of
kinshlp) have become global . ized. Thal is, scnlimenls, .... hose
greillest force is in Iheir abrlity 10 Ignlle inlrmacy miO a
pohlical 51ate and lurn locillny 11110 a. Slagrng ground for
ldenllty, have become spread over vas t and Irregular spaces as
groups move yel stay linked 10 one another Ihroogh sophlslicatC'd
media capabil-Ilres Thrs is nOI 10 deny thal such pnmordiil are
often Ihe prodUCI of in vented lraditlons (Hobsbawm and Ranger
1983) or TClrospective affilla-tions, hui 10 emphasize thal bccause
of Ihe dlsJuncllve a.nd unstable inlerplay of commerce, media. ,
natlonal policiC"'i, and consumer fa.nlasres, ethnicrty, once a
genie conlarned in Ihe bonle of sorne SOrt of localuy (however
large), has now become a global force . forever slipprng m a.nd
Ihrough Ihe cracks betwn slatcs and borders.
BUI Ihe re1atlonshlp belween the cultural and economrc lt'Vels
of Ihrs new sel of global drsJuncmres 1~ nOI a SImple oneway street
m which Ihe lerms of global cultural polrtlcs are set wholly by, or
conRned wholly wrlhrn, Ihe vicisSltudes of inlernallonill 110 ....
s of lechnology, labor, and R nance, demilndrng only a modest modl
/lcal ron of C'xisllI1g neo-Manust modcls of uneven development and
Slale form illlon There IS a deepc:r changc, rtse!f dnven by Ihe
drsjunctures among al1lhe landscapes I have dlscussed and
constrluled by Ihclr contrnuously nUld and uncertall1 mler-play,
thal concems Ihe relatlonship belween producllon and consumplion 10
loday's global economy. Here, I begrn with Manc's famous (and often
mined) vre .... of Ihe fe lishrsm of Ihe commoduy and suBges! Ihal
Ihrs fet ish,sllI has been replaced m Ihe world al Jarge (now
seetng Ihe world as one lar8e, inleractive syslern, composed of
many complex subsyslerns) by two mUlually supponive dcscendanls,
Ihe /lrst of which I call producllon fetlshlsrn and Ihe second, Ihe
fetishism of the consumero
By produclicmJtli!hism J mean an il1usion crealed by
conlemporary transo
D " J".er"" J D l fft1
-
national production loci that masks translocal capital,
transnational ~ammg flOWl, global managem~nt , ilnd oft~n faTaway
work~rs (~ngaged in vaT-
i~ kinds of high-tcch puuing-out opcnnlons) In Ihe id iom and
s>eCtilde of IOCill (som~times ev~n work~r) control, nation1I
productivity, and t~ni torial sov~reignty, To the ex t~nt that
various kinds of fTe~ - lrade zones
hav~ bccome the mode\s for production at large, espedally of
high-tcch commodilies, product.on has itse\f become a felish,
obscunng nOI social rdations as such bul th~ relatlons of
produellon, whieh aTe ncreaslngly transnalional. The localily (both
in t h~ scnse of the local faetory or si te of production and In
Ihe exlended sense of Ihe nation-stale) becomes a f~lish Ihal
dlsguises lhe global1y disperseThus the central feature 01 global
eullure today IS lhe politlcs of the mUlual efion of samencss and
dilferenc~ 10 canOlbal.ze one another and thereby prodalm Ihe.r
succesdul hiJackmg of the IWIO Enllghtenment Ideas of the
tnumphantly universal and Ihe resll.ent1y particular. Thls mutual
eannibal,zatlOn shows its ugly face in nots, refugee /lows,
Slate-sponrored torture, and e thnocldc (wHh or wlthout slale
support ). Its bnghter slde IS in the expanslon of many mdivldual
honzons of hope and fantaS)', 10 Ihe global spread of o ral r~hydra
tlOn therapy and other low-lech instrumcnls of well-belOlo:, In the
suseeptibihly even of South Alrica 10 th(' force of global oplOlon,
in the mabtluy 01 Ihe Pollsh slate 10 repTess liS own workmg
dasscs, and m Ihe growth of a wlde range of progresslV~,
Iransnallonal all.ances_ Examples of hoth 50ns could be mulllphed
The critieal point 15 that both sides of th~ eom of global cultural
proc~ss today are producls of the infinuely yaned mutual COntes t
of sameness and dlffer-cnce on a stage characlenzed by rad.cal
dlsJunclur~s between d.fferen! sons of global flows and the uncenam
landscapes c reated 111 and through these dlsJunctures
Tht Work of Rr/l,oJllchol' il! 1/11 Agc af MtcbaHiml Arf I have
1IIvened Ihe key Icrms of the tille o( Wlter Uenamm's lamous essay
( 1969) 10 relum this rather hlgh-flying dlscusslon to a more
managc:able leve! . Theh: 15 a dassle human problem thal Wtl1 not d
isappear however much global cultural processc:s mlghl ehange thelr
dynamlcs, and thlS .5 Ihe problem today Iyplcally dlscussed under
th~ rubric of rc:produclion (and Iradll1onal1y Teferrcd \O m tenn5
of Ihe lransmlssion of culture). In el-ther caS(', Ihe questton 15
, how do small groups, especially famtllC'S, Ihe dasslcalloc; of
social.zal.on, deal w.lh these new global realltlcs as they sc:ek
to reproduce Ihc:mselves and, in so domg, by acclden! reproduce
cul-tural forms themsclves' In Iradlhonal anlhropologleal lerms,
Ihls could be phrased as lhe problem of enculturatlon in a penod of
rapld culture change. So the problem 15 hardly noyel. BUI 11 dces
take on som~ novel di -mensions under the global condlllOns
dlscussed so far in thls chapter
FIT'it , the SOr! of transenerallonal slablllty o/ knowledge
Ihal was pre-supposcd 10 mesl Iheones of encuhuratlOn (or, In
sllghtly broadcr lenns, of sociallzatlon) can no longer be assumcd.
As familles move 10 new loca-tlons, or as chddren moye before older
generatlons, or as grown sons and daughters relurn from time spenl
In strange pans of Ihe world, famlly rela-110nsh.ps can become
yolal.le, new commodity pattems a~ negol.ated, debts and obl
lgalions ar~ recalibrated, and rumors and fantasies .. hout Ihe
D"/~otl.,. .~J D,//,,..Ct .. 43 ..
,
-
n~w ~lting are miln~uv~r~d mIo ~x.s"ng re~nores of knowledg~ and
practc~ . Oft~n, gloha.l lilbar diuporas rnvolv~ Immenst: strains
on milr riages in gen~ral ilnd on wom~n m pilniculilr, as
marrlilges 1xcom~ the meeting points of his toriCill paw:rns of
socialization and n~w id~as 01
pro~r behavior. Cenel"iltons Nsdy dvid~ , as ideas aboul
propcny, pro priety, and colleclive obligalion wither under the
siege 01 distance and time. Most important, Ihe work 01 cultural
~produclion in new ~ttmgs is profoundly complicaled by the polilics
of represc:nting a family as nomal (panicularly lor the young) to
n~,ghbors and pcers in the ~w 10C.11~ All th.$ s, of coursc, nOI
n~w to the cultural sludy of immigration.
What s ncw s that th.s .s a world in whlCh both points of
d~nrtur~ and pornts of ,urival are in cultural Rux, and thus th~
search for sl~ady poinls 01 ref~r~nc~ , as c rilicall ife choices
a~ made, can be v~ry difficull . 11 is in this atmosph ... r ...
that th~ nvenlion 01 lradition (and of elhnicilY, km ship, and
oth~r identity mao:ers) can become slippcry, as the search lor
c~rtainties is regularly frustrat ... d by the Auiditi ... s of
transnational commu-nicallon. As group pasts bccome increasinijly
parts of mus ... ums, ~xhibiIS, and collC"Clions, both in nal.onal
and lransnat,onal spcctac1es, culture be-comes less what Piem:
Bourdieu would have called a habilus (a taCI! ~alm of r~produc.ble
pracI.c~s and djsposiuons) and more an a~na for con sc.ous choice:,
juslification, and rcpresental.on, Ih~ lalter o ften 10 mull.pl ...
and snl.ally dislocau:d aud .... nces
Th ... task of cultural reproducuon, ev~n in its mosl intimat
... arenas, such as husband-wife and parent-child rdations, becomes
both po l iticiz~d and
ex~d lo the traumas of de territonalization as fam ily mernbcrs
pool and negotal~ th~ir mutual understandings and aspirations in
somelimes fra c lured spalial arrangements. Al larg~r levds, such
as community, ndghbor-hood, and temtory, Ihis polit.cizalion is
often the emotional fud ror more explicilly violent polil.cS of
Idemity, JUSt as Ihese larg~r politics som~tim~s
pcnetrat~ and ignit ... domeslic pollllcs Whcn, lor exampl~, IWO
offspnng In a hou~hold spli t wilh the.r lath~r on a key miltter o
f political id~ntifi calion in il transniltional scning,
pre..-xlstmij local.zed norm~ Cilrry liltl~ force . Thus a son who
hasjo.ned Ihe Hezbollah group In ll"banon may no longer g~1 along
.... ith Pilrents o r sibhng5 who ar ... ilfRlial~d with Amal or
sorne oth~r branch of Shn ~Ihn ic pol.tical identity in l.ebanon .
Women in particular bear the brun t of this sort of fricllon, for
they bc:come pawlls in (he heritag~ po!ilics of (he household ilnd
ilre o ften ~ubjecI to the abuse and vioknce of m~n who are
Ihem~lvcs 10m about the relation bet .... een
h~ritilge and opponunity in shifting spatial and political
formations . The paios of cultur.al rcproduclion m a d.s;unctiv ...
global world ue, of
O"j c l." J o. .... c . 44
coursc, not eilst:d by (h ... effccls of mechamcal iln (o r ma~s
m~d.a), ror Ih~~ media afford powerful resourccs for countemodes of
Id~nu!y that youlh can projecl agamst parent il l wIshes or dcsires
At larger levels o f o ro ganiZiltion, Ihere can bt: many forms of
cultural polllics within d.splaced populations (wh ... th~r of
refugees or of voluntary immigrants), al1 of wh.ch are inflccled in
importilnt ways by media (and the rnediascapcs ilnd ideoscapes Ihey
offer). A central link between the lragilit.es 01 cultural re.
production and Ihe rok of th~ milSS media in today's world is the
politics of gender and violence. As filntas,C"S of genden:d
vlolcncc dommate he 8 grade film industries Ihilt blanket he world,
Ihey bolh reAcct and refin~ gcndered violence at home and m th~
Str' ts, as young men (in panicular) are sway~d by the milcho
polilles of ~If- asst:rtion In eontexts where they are fr ...
quently dellled real agency, and women ar~ forc ... d 10 enter the
labor force in n~w ways on the one hilnd, and eont inuc Ihe
maintenance of fa . mllial heri tage on the olher. Thus Ihe honor
of wom ... n becornes nOI Just an armature of slable (if inhuman)
systcrns uf cultural reproduction but a new arenil for Ihe
formation 01 sexual idenlity and lamily polit.es, as men and women
filee new pressures at work and Ilew fantasics 01 le.sure
8c-caus ... both work and le.sure hilV~ lost none of Ihdr
gendcred qualt-t.~s in th,s new global ord~r bul hav~ Kqu.red ev
... r subtler fetlshtz~d rep ' reSent"llOns, the honor uf women
bec.ornes .ncreaslIlgly a surrogate fo r lhe Idenuty of ~mha.ltled
communit. C"S 01 males, wh,le th~.r women In realuy have 10
n~gO\lille increaslIlgly harsh cond.llOns of woo: ill home ilnd In
the nondornest.c workplac~ In sho rt , deterrttonahzed communil les
and displaced populations, however much Ihey may ~njoy he frui ts
of new kinds o f earning and new dispositions of captal and
tcchnology, have 10 play out he desircs and fantas.es of these new
ethnoscapes, whil~ slrivllla 10 reproduc~ Ihe farnily.as
-m.crocosrn of culture As the shapes of cultures gro .... less
bounded and tac,t , more flUid and poliucizcd, thc work 01
cul-tu,...1 r~produc\lon 1xcomes a dally hazard Far mo~ could , and
should be said about Ihe woo: of reproduclion In an age of
mcchalllcal art Ih ... pre. cedilla d.scuss.on .5 meant 10 ind
lCate the contours of the problcm~ Ihal a
n~w, globally infonned theory of cullural reproduction w. 1I
hav~ 10 fac~
Sha/}t and Pro
-
Aows along whlch cultural mat~T1a l may be: secn to be: mov1I1g
across na Ilonal boundarie:s. I have: also soughl lO exemplify Ihe
ways tn wh.ch Ihese various flows (o r tandscapcs, from the
sublltzmg persxctves of any g lven
imagi~d world) are in fundam~ntal dlsJllnclure: w.th respcct 10
onc ano Olhcr. Whal funhe:r steps can we take: toward a ge:ne:ral
theory of globar cultural procc:sscs ba~d on thcse proposals7
The firsl ;5 10 note: Ihal our vcry models of cultural shape
wllI have: 10 alte:r, as configur.1l10ns of people, place:, alld
he:ritage: lose: all semblanc~ of isomolllhism. Rece:nt work in
anlhropoloS)' has done much 10 free: us of the shackles of highly
localized, boundaryonenled, holistlc, prirnordla ltSt images of
cultural form and substance (Ha nnerz 1989; Marcus and Flscher
1986; Thomton 1988 )_ &.11 not v~ry much has been pul in
the:irplacc. ex CCpl som~what large:r if less mhanlcal ve:rslons of
Ihcsc irnag~s, as In Enc Wolf's work on the re:lalionshlp of Europe
10 the: rest of Ihe world ( 1982 ). Wh,iII [ would I,ke: 10 proposc
is that we: bcgin lO Ihtnk 01 Ih~ configurallon of cultural forms
in today's world as fundamemally fractal, that is, as pos SC'Ssing
no Eudidean boundarie:s, slruclurcs, 01' regularit;es. Second, r
would sug~t Ihat Ihesc cullural forms, which w~ should stnvc to
repre: senl as fully frac lal, are: also ovc:rlapping in ways that
have: been dlscusscd only in pure mathematics (in se:t theory, 101'
cxample:) and in bioloS)' (in the language: of polYlh~tlc
dasslficalions). Thus w~ nttd la combmc a fractal metaphor for Ihe
sha~ of cultures (m the plural) with a po ly thctic accounl o ,
Ih~lr overlaps and rescmblanccs. Wtthout thls ta llcr Sl~p , we:
shall rcmam mlre:d m comparallve: woO:. Ihal rcl,es on Ihe
cle:arseparatton of the ~nt;tics 10 be compared before scrious
comparison can begin. How are w~ lo compare: fraclally shapcd
cultural fomlS tha! are .lIso polYlhetl. cally ove:rl .. ppmg m
,he;r coverage o( te:lTCSlrial space7
Finally, in ord~r for the lhe:m)' of global culturalmtcractions
predicaled on disjunctive: Aows 10 have any force g~ater than Ihat
of .. mc:chamcal mctaphor, it wlll have 10 rnove Imo some:thmg Itke
a human ve:rsion of the theory Ihat sorne scle:ntislS are callmg
chaos Iheory. That 15, we: wllI nced to ask nol how these complex,
ove:rlapplng, fraClal shapes conSUlule: a sim pIe, slabl~ (~ven If
large.scal~ ) system, OOt 10 ask whal its dynamics are, Why do
e:thnic nOls occur wh~n and whe:re: Ihe:y d07 Why do states wlther
al grtaler ratcs m sorne: placcs and times Ihan In others? Why do
sorne countries flouI conventio ns of ml'ematlonal de:bt re:payment
wl!h so rnuch lcss .. ppare:nl worry than others' How are
mternallonal anns flows dnvmg e:lhnic bautes and genocides? Why
are: sornc sutcs exiling Ihe global stage while othe:rs art
clarnoring to get m? Why do key ev~nts occur al a cenam poinl in a
cenain place ralhe:r than in o the:rs' The:!iC ar~ , of coursc,
Ihe
D'II.~cr ." ".J D,Jf"t. ~ t .. 46 ..
grcu lradlllonal qu~SlIons of causaluy, conlmgency, and
pr~dl(:llon 10 Ihe human sciences, bUl m a world of disJuncl1V~
global Aows, II IS perhaps im-porta nl 10 Slart asking Ih~m m way
Ihal rd lCS on Imagcs of How and un-ccnainty, he~ CMOS, ralher Ihan
on old~r images of o rder, stabl luy, and syslemalicness Oth~rwise
, we wlll have gone (ar loward a theory of global cultural systems
001 Ihrown out proccss in the bargalO And thal would make thesc
notcs part of a joumc:y IOward Ihe kmd of iIIuSlon of o rder
that
w~ u n no longer afford 10 Impose on a world Ihat i5 so
lransparently volatlle.
Whatc:ver the dlre:clions in whtCh we ciln push thesc
macrometaphors (fractals, polythelic d assincal ions, and chaos),
we need lO ask one olher oldfashio~d qucslion out of th~ Manl1s1
paradigm: i5 Ih~re: sorne pre-glven order to he rdative
dc:terminini! force of thesc global flows? (k. cause I hav~
postul.lIed Ihe dynamics 01 global cultu1
-
3
Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a
Transnational Anthropology
In c hapler 2, I use Ihe lerm dm.oscuPt Thls neologism has
certam amhigui-ties dehbe:ntc:ly built into il . II refers, flrst,
10 Ihe: dilemmas 01 perspc:ctivc and represc:ntallon that all e
lhnographers musI confront, and It admils that (as with landscapes
tn visual aTl) traditions 01 pc:rception and pc:rspc:ctive, as well
as varialions in the sitmtion of the obse:rver, may aUccI the
process and product o( n!presenlatlOn. But l also lntend th is tcml
10 indicale that there are wme brute facls about Ihe world 01 the
twentieth century Ihat any ethnography must confronto Centnl amon!!
thesc: facts is the c hang-ina social, territorial, and cultural
reprorluct,on 01 group identi ty. As groups migrate, regroup in new
locations, reconstruCI thcir histories, and rcconflgure their
ethnic projecls, Ihe rI~ in ethnography takes on a sltp-pc:ry,
nonlocaliled quality, to which the descriptive pnctices of anlh
ll). pology will have 10 r~pond. The landscapes 01 group
Idenlity-the elhnoscapc:s around Ihe world are no longer familiar
anthropol.ogical objects, insofar as ~ps are no longer tighl ly
temlorialiled~ spalially bounded, historically unselfconsclous, or
culturally homogeneous. We have fewe r cultures in the world and
more Intemal cultunl debales (Parktn 1978). ' In this chapter,
Ihrough a series of notes, queries, and vignettes, I sc:ck 10
re:posiuon wme of our disdplinary conventlons, while trying 10 show
that Ihe ethnoscapes 01 IOday's world are profoundly
interactlve.
-
- 48
A c~ntral chalt~n8~ for curren! anthropology is 10 sludy he:
cosmopolitan (Rablnow 1986) cultural ronm of the contemporary world
",hou! log1 ' cally or chronologlCal1y pr~pposmg either (he
aUlhonl)' oi he Westem experiencc: Of he models denved irom tha!
expencnce. 11 sccms 1mpasS1-ble to sludy thcsc I'1CW
cosmopolllanlsms frui!fully withOllI analy'Zlng Ihe IransnallOnal
cultural Oows withln which hey thrivc. compete, ilnd fecd off one
anothcr In ways ha! defea! and confound many vcmks of tht' human
SClcnccs today. One such truth concems ,he link belwcen space,
slilb.lny, ;md cultural reproduction There 15 ;10 urgenl ncc:d 10
focus on Ihe o;ullural dy"namics Df whal.l!.F0w callcd
~~~itOriah'Z:itIOh ThlS ICon applics nOI only 10 obvious cxamplcs
such as mlnilltOnal corporatlons and money markets bul also 10
ethnic groups, sectaria n movemenlS, and politlCilI formatlons ,
whlch mcreasmgly operale in ways Iha! transcend specilk teITiton,!1
boundarJCS and Ideolitles Deterritonal ilatlon (of whlch 1 01lCr
some elhnographlC proAles m chapo 2) aff:ts [he loyalhes of groups
(especially m lhe context of complex diasporas), theLr transna
tlonal mampulatlon of currencies and other forms of weahh and mvest
mem, and the stralegies 01 states The loo~ning of the holds belWttn
people, wealth, and territones fundamentally ahe~ Ihe: haSLS of
cultural rcproducliqn.
Al the same lime, detemtonallzalton creates new mark-ets for fil
m com-panies, impreSilnos, and ravel agencu~'S, which thove: on the
ncc:d of lhe relQCated populallon for contacl with tI!>
home:land. BUI the homdand is partly invemed, existing only in Ihe
imagmation of the de temtorialtled groups, and ti can some:l1mes
be:come so fantasttC and one:-slde:d that It provldes the lud lor
ncw ethnlc confhCIS.
The idea 01 detemtorialllallon mily also be: applled to money
and A-nance, as money managers seek the best markets lor the tr
mvestme:nts, m de:pc:ndent 01 nallonal boundaries. In tum, Ihc:sc
movementS 01 mone:ys are: Ihe: hasls lor new kmds 01 conflict, as
Los Angdenos wony about he Japanesc: buymg up Iheir cily, and
pc:ople m Bombay wony aboul the nch Arahs from Ihe Gulf Slates, who
have not only transformed Ihe: pnce: o( mangoes lO Bombay huI have
also substantially al tered Ihe profl1c: of ho -Ic:lS, res
taurants, and Olher services in Ihe eyes 01 Ihe local
populatloll-Just as Ihc:y have in London . Ve! masl n!Slde:nIS 01
Bombay are ambtvalenl about the Arabs there, lor !he flip side 01
Ihelr prc:sc:nce 15 [he absent Ine:nrls and ktnsfolk earntng blg
moncy in Ihe Mlddle Ea51 and hrlngmH hack holh money and luxury
commodl ltes 10 Bombay iIInd othcr Ct"ti In
(;J I E t .. .. c ottll 41) -
-
I India. Such commodities transfonn consumer taste In these e
itles. T hey ohen end up smuggled through air- and seaports ilnd
peddled in he gray markcts af Bombay's streets. In these gray
markets (a coi nage that allow~ me to capture the quasi-Iegal
characterislic of such settings), sorne memo bc:rs af Bombay's
middle dasses and jls lumpen proletaria! can buy goods, ranging
from canons of Marlboro cigarettes 10 Old Spice shaving cream and
tapes of Madonna. Similar gray routes, often subsidized by
moon-lighting sailors, d iplomats, and airline stcwardesses, who
gel 10 move in and out of the country rcgularly, keep the gray
markets of Bumbay, Madras, and Catculta filled with goods nOI only
from the Wcst, bul also from he Middle East, Hong Kong, and
Singapore. It is also 5uch profes-sional transients who are
increasingly implicated in the transnational spread of disease, not
the least of which i5 AtOS.
TIte visioo of transnational cultural studies sugge5ted by he
discussion so far appears al first sight to involve only model;!
adjustments of anthro. pologists' !ldditional approaches to
culture. In my view, however, a gen uinely cosmopolitan
ethnographic practice requires an interpretation of the tenain of
cultur.ll studies in he United Sta tes today and of the status of
anthropology within such a tenain.
'
Cw/rwml Stwdjrs ill a Global Trrraill As this volume concems
anthropologies of the present, it my be impor. tant to ask about
the status of anthropology in he present and in panicu-lar about
its now embattled monopoly over the study of culture" (from now on,
wilhout quotation marks). The folJowing discussion seIS he stage
for the cri tique of ethnography contained in subsequent
sections.
As a topie, culture has many histories, sorne disciplinary,
sorne that function outside the academy. Within the acaderny, there
are certai n dif. ferences between disciplines in the degree to
which culture has been an explicit topie of investigation and the
degree to which il has been under-stood tacitly. In the social
sciences, anlhropo!ogy (especially in the United States bUl less so
in England) has rnade culture its centr.ll concept, defining il as
sorne son of human substance--even though ideas ahout this sub.
stance have shifted, over the course of a ceotury, roughly from E.
B. Tylor's ideas about custom 10 Clifford Ceenz's ideas about
meaning. Sorne an-thropolog1sts have worried thal the meanings
given to C"whllrt have beeo far 100 diverse for a technical tenn; o
lhers have made vinue of thal diversty. Al he same time, the other
social sdences have not been uncollCerned with culture: in
sociology, Max Weber's seme of urrslrlm! and Ceorge Si m-
c roh.' Et&MOH~~ .. ... 50 ..
mcl's vanous Ideas havc rnedlaled between the Cennan neoKantian
Ideas of the la te nineteenth century and socio!ogy as a social
science discipline. As in many other casts, culture is now a
subfidd within sociology, nd the American Socio[ogical Assocition
has legitimized this segregaton by crealing a subunit in the
sociology of culture, where persons concerned wilh the production
and distrbution 01 cuhure, especiaHy in Westem sel -tings, may
fredy associate wilh one another.
Al Ihe epicenler of current debates in and abou cululre, many
diverse streams Row into a single, rather turbulem river of many
pOstslr\lctural isms (Iargely French) of )acques Lacan, )acques
Derrida , Mlchd Foucault , Pierre Bourdieu, and heir many
subschools. Sorne of these streams are selfconscious about language
as heir rneans and their model , wh!le others are Icss so. The
current multplicity of uses hat surrounds he Ihree words m(aH;H;.
JjsC"oursr. and I()(j should be sufflcienl 10 indicate that we are
not only in n era of blurred genres (as Ceenz [ 19801 said
prescitntly more than a decade ago), but we are in a peculiar state
hat I would like to call poslblurring, in which ecumenism
has-happily, in my opimon- given way to sharp debates about Ihe
word, Ihe world, and Ihe rdationship be. tween them .
In thi5 postb!ur blur, it 15 crucial to note Ihat the hgh round
has been seized by English literature (as a diSCipline) in
particular and by literary studies in geneld!. This i5 Ihe nexus
where Ihe word Imory, a r.llher prosaic lenn in many flelds lor
many cenlmies, suddenfy took on Ihe sexy rng of a Irend For an
anlhropologist in the United States today, wht tS mosl slriking
aboul Ihe pasl decade in the acdemy is the hijack of culture by
!iterary studies-a!though we no longer have a onc -sided Amoldian
gaze . bUI a many-sided hijack (where a hundred Blooms flower) wlth
many in-lernal debales about lexts and antile:
- Iwn Ihe word and Ihe world mIO a producuve ~Ihnograph,c
Slralegy rt:~ quim a new und~nlandmg of the delerTilorial.:z:ed
world Ihal many pcrsons inhabil and Ihe posslbl~ lives that many
pcrsons are today able 10 envision. The temu of the negotiation
between imaglned l""es and dctcrritorialized worlcls are complex,
and Ihey surdy cannot be captured by th~ localizing Slntegies of
lraditional ethnography alon
-
I throughout Ihe .... o rld see Ihdr [,ves through Ihe prism~ a
f Ihe poss.blt: [ves offered by mass media in all thdr forms Tha!
s, fantasy i5 no \\! a so-c ial practicc; il c:nters, in a hosl of
ways, 01O Ihe fabrication af sociallives for many peoplc: 10 maoy
SOClcties.
I should be quid. 10 note thal ,his i5 not a chc:c:rful
observation, in-tended 10 imply thal Ihe wOTld 15 no .... a happier
place: ..... Ih more: choices (in Ihe: utilitarian ~nse) for more
pcople, and wlh more mobiHty and more: happy endings. Instead, what
15 implicd 15 thal c:ven Ihe meanc:st and mas! hopdess of 1ves,
Ihe: mosl brutal and dc:humanizing af cireum-lances Ihe harshesl of
.ved inequalll1c:s are now a peo to Ihe play of Ihe: , imagination.
Prisoncrs af conscic:ncc:, ch.ld laborc:rs, \O/amen who t011 in Ihe
Adds and f;ctories of Ihe world, and others who~ 101 is hilrsh no
lonller SCC Ihcir l1Ves ilS mere outcomes 01 the givenness 01
thing, but often u the ironic compromisc- betwn what Ihey could
imilgine and whal social lile wlll permit, Thus, Ihe biognphles of
ordinary people are conSlructions (or fabric.alions) m wh1Ch Ihe
Im.aginallon plays an impor-tan! role. Nor is Ihis role a simple
malter 01 escape (holding sleady the conventions thal govem Ihe
rest of sociallife), lor in Ihe grinding 01 gt'aJ's between
unfolding lives and their imagined countc:rparts a vant'ty 01
Ima.g-ined communilies (Anderson 1983) is formc:d, communities that
genc:rate new kinds of polilies, new kinds 01 collt'Clive
expression, and new needs lor social diSCIpline and surveillance on
Ihe part 01 eli lcs.
All Ihis has many contexts and impl iClions that cannOI be
pursued here. But wh.at docs il imply lor elhnography 11 Implies
thal elhnogra phers can no longer slmply be conlent wilh Ihe
!hlckness Ihey bring 10 Ihe local and Ihe particular, nor can Ihey
aS5U11le thal as t!ley approach Ihe loca.l, they approach
sornelhing more elementary, more: cOnlingenl, and Ihus more real
than lile secn in largerscale perspcctives. For wh:n is real a},out
oroina.ry IIVes 15 now rc:alm many ways thal range Irom Ihe sheeT
contingency 01 indIVidual Uves a.nd Ihe vaganes 01 compctt'nce and
talenl Iha.t dlslinguish persens in a.11 socielies to Ihe realisms
thal individuals are exposcd 10 ilnd draw on in thdr daily
livcs,
Thesc complex, partly imagined lives musl now lorm Ihe bcdrock
01 elhnography, al leul 01 Ihe son 01 elhnography Ihat wishes to
retain a spccial voiee in a lransnalional , dele!Titonalized world.
For Ihe new power 01 lhe- imaginalion in the fabrication 01 social
IlVes is mcscapably lied up with .mages, ideas, and opportunilles
Iha. come lrom eI~where:, ohen moved around by the vehides of mass
medIa. Thus, Slilndard cultural re produclion (llke standard
English) is now an endangened act ivity thal suco cecds only by
conscious deslgn and polllical w.n, where 1I succecds al all.
GI.~.I EI~ ".~
-
I liv~. Thcn: has beco a general changc in ,he IIloba!
conditions 01 Hle-worlds, pul simply, .,.,here once improvisation
was snatchcd out 01 Ihe glacial unclcnow 01 habilus, habitus no
.... has 10 be painst;kmgly rein-foreed in the: lace 01 lifc-worlds
Ihal are ~ucnlly in RWL
Thrct' cumpl~ will suggest somclhmg 01 what I have in mind. In
Jan-uary 1988. my wfe ( ..... ho is a .... hite American f('male
hislorian 01 India) and I (.11 Tamil Brahman male, broughl up lO
Bombay and lumcd inlo ~(I "c"Jfl/liClIs in the Unit('d Sues). along
.... un our son, Ihrc:c mcmbers 01 rny cldes! brolher's bmity, and
an cntouragc 01 his col1cagues and cmployttS, deciclcd to visil
the: Mccnak.si Temple In Madurai, one 01 the gJl:;Jt pil . grimagc
c..-nters 01 South India. My ..... ife has done ~arc:h Ihere off
and on lor the pasE two decacles.
Our pur-posn in goinS .... trt' various. My bmther and his wile
were wor-ned abollt the mamage 01 Iheir eldest daughler and we~
concemed \O have the good wishes 01 as many powerful deities as
possible in Iheir sc:an::;h lor a good a11iance, For my brother,
Madurai was a spt:cial p lace be cause he spc:nt mast 01 his Arst
twenl)' years Ihere with my mother's ex tended family, He thus had
o ld friends and memories in a l1 the streelS around the temple.
Now he had come to Madurai as a senior rai lway off cial, with
business tO condUCI with severa! private businessmen who wished 10
persuade him 01 Ihe qualily 01 their bids. Ind:d, one 01 Ihese
polential clienls had arranged lor us 10 be accommodated in a
garishly modem hOlel in Madurai, a stone's throw Irom the temple,
and drove h im around in a Mercedes, while Ihe resl 01 us look in
our own Madurai
Our c:lc:ven-yearold son, fresh from Philadc:lphLa, knc:w that
he was in the prescnce 01 the pl'Klkes 01 herilage and dove to Ihe
ground rnanful1y, in Ihe Hindu prac l;ce 01 prOSlration before
dders and dcities, whenever he was asked. He pul up graelously wLlh
the meredLble noisc, erowding, and scnsory rush Ihal a maJor Hmdu
temple lnvolves. For mysell, I was there 10 embclJ.sh my brother's
entourage, to add sorne vague moral force \O Ihcir wishes lor a
happy mamage lor their daughler, 10 reabsorb {he dI)' in which my
mOlher grew up (1 had been Ihere severallimes before), 10 share in
my wile's excilemenl aboul retumlng lo a clty--and a temple Ihal
are pos. sibly the mOSI imponant pans 01 her imaginalion, and \O
fish lor cos mopolitanism in the raw
So we enlered the founeen -acre temple compound as an mponanl en
lourage, a1though one among many, and \o/ere soon approached by one
01 Ihe several priests who officiate then:. This one recognized my
wHe , who asked him where Thangam 8haltar was. Thangam Bhattar was
the priest with whom she had worked most closely. The answer was
"Thangam Bhal
el 1 :I .... c._ .. ... 56 ...
lar 15 m Houston .~ Thls puneh line look us all a whlle 10
absorb, and lhen il all came fOgether in a fbsh . The Indlan
commumty m HouslOn, " ke many eommunuies 01 Asian Indlans m the
United States, had budt a Hmdu lemple, th ls one dcvoted 10
MeenaRsi, the ru lmg deny m Madural Thangam Bhanar had becn
persuaded 10 go there, leaving hls fam lly be. hind. H e leads a
londy life 10 Houston, aSSISIIn 111 Ihe eomple cultural poliucs of
reproductiol1 in an ave~as Indlan commumty, presumably eamms a
moclest income, whlle his wile and chlldren stay on In lheir small
home near the temple T he neXI mommg my wlfe and nlcefe vl~lted
Thangam Bhattar's home, where Ihey were told of hls travalls m
Houston
and they to ld ,he family whal had gane On wlth us m Ihe
mtervenll1g years. There 15 a transnational Lrony here, 01 eou~:
Carol Breckenndge, Amencan hlstonan, amves m Madurai wa i11118 wlth
bated brcalh 10 !iCe her closest infonnam and friend, a priesl, and
d iscoven that he IS In faro away H ouslon, which is far way even
from faraway Philadclphla
Bul thls transnational irony has many Ihreads Ihat ul1wmd
backward and forward in tLme 10 large and fluid Structures o f
mfeaning and conlmUIlL. cal ion. Among these threads are my
brOlher's hOpe5 for hls daughler, who subsc:quenlly mamed a Ph.D .
candidate m physieal chemislry 111 an up. stale New York unlvers
il)' and recendy carne lo Syracuse hersclf; my wlfe's reconte
tua!izm8 of her Madural epenenets in a world that al leasl for
sorne 01 lts cenlral actors , now mdudes HOuston, and my own
realizatlOn Ihat Madural's hlSloTlcal cosmopohtam5m has aequlred
new global di -mension and that sorne xey lives that constttule Ihe
heart of Ihe temple's ntual praetieC'i now have Houston in thelr
nnaginecl b lographles Each af these threads eould and should be
unwound Thcy Icad 10 al1 undentand . mg 01 the globalizalion 01
HindUlsm, the '~l1sfonnallon 01 "natlves" lOto cosmopolll ts o f
,heir awn son, and the laet that ,he temple now nOI only attracts
pc:rsons lrom al! over the world bu, also nseH reaches out. The
Soddess M~naksi has a living presenee m Houston
Meanwhile, our son now has In hls repenOl~ 01 e!X'nellces a
Journey 01 the Rool! variety. H e may remembcr this a~ he 'abncales
his own Ilfe as an American of panly India n descent. BUI he may
remembcr more vlvldly h is sudden need to go 10 Ihe bathroom whlle
we were gomg fmm sanctum 10 sanelum in a visillO anOlher majar
temple 10 January 1989 and the bathroom al Ihe gues,house of a
chanlable found allon In wlllch he lound blissf'ul rclease. BUI
here, too, i5 an unAnished story, whlch mvolves Ih" dy. nam ies 01
lamily, memory, and 10Uflsm, lor al1 elcven-year.old hyphenated
American who has to go pc:riodieally 10 India, whether he Ilkes lt
or nOI, and eneouncer che many webs 01 sh iftmg b lography that he
nnds ,here
G I ~ ~~ r fl.~o !(,,~ .. ... 57
I ,
-
l,s Kcount , I,ke Ihe on~~ that 10110101 nccd, 1101 "nlv tu 1)('
th" .. ~ (;n('d 1'I\1t tO b!: SI1TT~d, but .t muS( serve lor now as
on~ :Iunpsc 01 an ~Ihnography Ihal lacuses on t h~ unyoking 01
Imagmatlo n Irom plac~.
My sccond vign~tt~ com~s lrom a colltttlon of pl~Ces of on~ kmd
01 ma:lcal realism, a book by Julio Cortzar calkd A Ctrk/;" LII'''s
( 1984 ). Be cause t h~ re has bn mueh borruwing 01 l,terary models
and metaphors in
rec~nt anthropology bul relalively li!tle anlhropology 0 1
litera ture , a word aboul th is choice 01 example scems
appropriate. FictlOn , like myth, 15 part of Ihe cooccptual
re~rtore of conlemporary societies. Readers 01 novds and p
-
meditalion on good, eVII, and Islam, and ended up a weapon In
groop vio-lence in many pans of the world.
The vignelle is also about Ihe mlernatlonallzallon of spon and
Ihe splr-itual ..-xhaustion Ihal comcs from Icchmcal obscssion with
small differ-ences in performance. Dlfferenl aclOrs can brinl! Ihdr
imagmallons 10 bear on Ihe problem of sport m various wa~. The
Olympic Games of the past are: full of jncldenlS Ihal meal complex
ways in whlch indviduals sllualC'd wllhin spccific naljonal and
cultural trajcctories imposed Ihelr Imagma-tlOns on gl~1 audiences.
In ScOllI in 1988, for instance , ,he dcfcated Ko-rean boxer who
sal In Ihe flng for several hours to publidy prodaim his shame as a
Korean and he Kore:an offlcials ..... ho swarmed into Ihe rng 10
assault a New Zc:aland I'derc:e for whal thcy thOllght was a blascd
dccision were bringing thdr imagined lives 10 bear on the of~cial
Olympic nalTil-Ilves of fair play, good sportsmanship, and clean
compclition. The whole question of steroids, includmg the case of
Canadian runner Ben lonnson (sce MacAloon 1990), 15 also nOI far
from Ihe lechnieal absurdities of Corthar's SIOry, in wh leh Ihe
body IS manipulaled 10 yield new results in a .... orld of
eompetilive and commodilized spcctade. The vision of 5even
AUSlTallan children's divina 1010 a pool of grlls md dytng also
deservcs to be drawn OUt into Ihe many storics of individual
abnegation and physical abuse Ihal sornelimes po .... er Ihe
spcctacles of global sport.
Cortzar is also meditatlOg on Ihe problems of imitation and
cuhural transfer, suggcstmg Ihal thcy can lead to vlolent and
cullUrally peculiar 10 novations. Thc adJccllve ( MlllmJI appcars
gratullous here and needs sorne jusli!k,tion Th'1 Tokyo ,nd
nbc:rra, Baghdad and Mexico City are all IOvolved in the story docs
nOI mean thal they nave bccome funl!ible preces of an ,rbitranly
shlftlng, dc:locahzed world. E.1ch of these places docs have
complex local re,liIICS, such thal dealh 10 a sWlmming pool has one
kmd of meaning in nberra, as do hasting large spectades in lraq and
malting bizam tcchnical innovatlons 10 Japan. Whalever Cortzar's
idea aboul these differences, they remain cultural, but no longer
in the inenial mode thal Ihe word pmioosly implied. Cul lure docs
imply dfference, bul the differences oow are no