Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Public Worlds)
By:
Arjun Appadurai
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Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5
Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Fresh Outlook on Modernity - Offering a new rubric for the cultural study of globalization, Modernity at Large shows how the imagination works as a social force in today's world, providing new sites for identity and energies for creating options vis-à-vis the nation-state, whose era some argue is ending. Appadurai writes, "Implicit in this book is a theory of rupture that takes media and migration as its two major, and interconnected, diacritic and explores their join effect on the work of imagination as a constitutive feature of modern subjectivity" (Appadurai, Modernity at Large 3). Appadurai examines the current epoch of globalization, which is characterized by the win forces of mass migration and electronic mediation, and provides fresh ways of looking at consumption patterns, debates about multiculturalism, and ethnic violence. Appadurai examines and analyzes the way images - of lifestyles, pop-culture, and self-representation - circulate internationally through the media and are often appropriated and negotiated in unexpected (to their creator) and inventive ways. Appadurai argues, "This is not a monocausal fetishization of the electronic. [...] In the chapters that follow, I track some ways in which electronic mediation transforms preexisting worlds of communication and conduct" (Appadurai, Modernity at Large 3).
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Review of Modernity at Large - Excellent condition; Great book! I ordered as a book review assignment for my grad program and loved the book!
Customer Review: 4 out of 5
Inspiring Groundwork - With "Modernity at Large" Appadurai created a widely acknowledged groundwork for a viable perspective on globalization. This little book is a very thorough description about what is going on and changing in the world around us. Additionally, it provides numerous details and examples from all over the world - each of which could be developed even further. It should be read by everyone, who is afraid globalization is erasing the cultural diversity of this world.
Customer Review: 4 out of 5
A thought-provoking discussion of globalization and post-modernity - Appadurai uses a number of powerful metaphors to talk about globalization. His language of -scapes (financescapes, mediascapes, etc) is an interesting way to look at global flows from different perspectives. He suggests that in the postmodern world, the collapse of time and space through technology gives rise to widespread agency as the work of the imagination. He also suggests the collapse of the modern nation-state, or at least the decoupling of those terms through the removal of the hyphen, as identities and allegiences become more transnational.
While this work is very thought provoking and a useful lens on globalization and global flows of people, goods, ideas and such, Appadurai overstates his points a bit. His prediction of the end of the nation-state seems premature in light of post 9/11 developments (which might be termed, to borrow one of his seciton titles "The Empire Strikes Back"). And while his discussion of works of the imagination is stirring and powerful, it does not adequately take into account power dynamics that are, on the one hand incredibly freeing to the haves, and on the other, quite restrictive to the have-nots.
Customer Review: 1 out of 5
too rosy of a picture - I am going to quote Aihwa Ong - Antrhopology Professor from UC Berkeley who criticized "Modernity at Large" since I cannot state it any better than her:
"When an approach to cultural globalization seeks merely to sketch out universalizing trends rather than deal with actually existing structures of power and situated cultural processes, the analysis cries out for a sense of political economy and situated ethnography."
Appadurai is essentially Thomas Friedman in a graduated sense for academia.
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