Migration and Diaspora Cultural Studies Network (MDCSN)
Theory Reading Group
Meeting 1: Wednesday 8 February 2006 4-5.30pm
Text:
Arjun Appadurai, 'Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy' from Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur, Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 25-48 (first published 1990 in Theory, Culture, and Society)
Discussion centred around the terminology of '-scapes' used by A. to describe the accelerated mobility characterising globalised societies, and around globalisation itself as something which can now be studied neutrally as both homogenising and indigenising force. A's emphasis is on transnationalism rather than globalisation, and on the qualitative and quantitative changes to the reproduction of culture brought about by new technologies and capital flows. While there was scepticism about the level of abstraction in the essay, and about the relative neglect of violence, there was interest in the notions of flow and disjuncture for their potential to reconceptualise diaspora.