2

Disjuncture and Difference in the

Global Cultural Economy
It only the acquilintance w1th the bets of the modem world
to note that It I'> now an 5ystem in a sense that is st:lking:y new.
Histonam and especially :hose concemed with l'dn;!uldi
processes (Hodgson :974) and che "'orld associated w1th capital.
ism :Abu Lughod 1989; lhauJel 1981-84, Curtin l'::iB4; Wallnc.trin 1974
'i>iolf 1982), have long bee11 awan: that the world has heen a congcrie< of
large-scale fur many centuries Yet worlclmvoivf'c. 1'1-
terKtions of a order and mtcnsity. Cultural tr,;nc.artion' betwel"n c.n-
Cial groups in the p;;st have geneT ally been restricted. hy t
1
'c
facts of geography and ecology, and at other t1mes by active :v
with the Other (as in Chi11a lor much of 1ts 111
)apan before the Meiii Restoration)_ \)?hen: there have been o:ustarneJ cul-
tural acroc;s parts of the globe. they have mually 111-
volved the journey of (and of the
most concerned with them:' and of travelers and explorers of every l}'?t
(Helms 1988, Schafer 1963). The two main forces for sustained c-ultud
rnteraction before this century have been warlare (and the !argc-<;calc po
litical systems sometnnes ge:nerated by it) and rel1g1ons of co1wcrs1or,
which have sometimes, i15 in the case of Islam, taken wariare om: oi tht:
legitimate instn1ments of their expansion Thus, belwttn Lrave:le1s and
rortrc:ha'lts, rilgl"irn> dnd conquerors, the world 1\luLh
tand This muLh o;cems self-evident.
But few w:ll rl<>ny tha: gwen the problems of trme. distance. and lrm-
itl'cf techrologii'."S for :he commond o( arross vast cul-
tural deairng<; between :,ocrally and Sl)dlrally separated group> have, until
thf past few Lenturies, been hrrdged at great cost and susta1ned over time
n:1ly WIth grcu effo1t. The fnrc:es of cultural gravity seemed ai-ways to pull
away (rom the fonnat10n oF large-scale ecumenes, whether rclrgrous.
commerdJ!, 01 towJrd :,mallf'r-sc;le accret1ons of :ntimacy and
inrere'>t
Sorm:trme in the past lew the nature of this grav"rtal1unallidd
seems to have ch<lllged. Partly because of thf spirit of the expan<;ron of
\ii'co:terr: maritime interests ofter 1500, and partly because of the relatively
autonomous of large arHl aggressive social in the
Americas (such a> the Aztecs and the Incas), in Eurasia :such as the ,\1on-
p-o\<; .1rd then descendants, the in South-
ea-;t Asra (such as the Ruginese), dnd m the bngdonr> of precolonial Africa
(such as Dahomey), an overlapprng set of ecur:-rene<; hegan to emerge. m
which longerirs of money. commerce, conquest, and migration began to
dur-abic cross-societal bonds_ This proces> accelerated by the
techr10logy transfers and innovations of the late e1ghteenth and mne-
teenth cenruries (e.g., Bcyly 1 Yi!9) whrch created complex colo mal orders
cenltred on European and spread throughout the non-European
world. Thi> intricate and overlapping set of Eurocolonial worlds (first
Span1<;h and Portuguese, later princrpally F.nglish, french, and Outch; set
the for a pennaneot traffic m rdeas 0f peoplehood and selfhood,
whrch created the rmagined cormnunltle<; (Anderson 1983) of recent na-
tionalisms throughout the world
\Vith what Benedict Ander>on has called '"pnnt capitalism," a new
power un:easht:d rn the world, power of mass litera(.y and its at-
tendant large-scale pruduct1on of project> ot ethnic affinity thal were re-
nlarkably free of the need for facr-to- communication or even ot rndi-
rect communication between rersons and groups The JCt of rcadmg
thnrgs together set the stage for movements based on a paradox-the
paradox of construued pr1mordial sm. There i<:, of course, a grcac deal else
thM is :nvolved rn the story of .'lnd its dialeLtrcally generated
(Chatterjee I 986), but the of construued ethnici ties is
surely a CI1H .. 1al >trand rn th1s tale.
But the revolut1un of rmnt capitali.,rn and the nd rural affmi tics and d ia-
lugues unleashed by rt were nnly modest to the world we live in
D i!] _., ,, Clll '' ,, 1 D If ,.,,c'
now FOI" 111 t
1
'.e pd\l century, th:re been o tcchn:>lng1ul nplo'""'
in the de>nlarn of dlld rnfonnatron, the 111-
tcracrrons prmt-Jommared world seem hard-'>':(w Jnd t',,,ly
as the p11rt revo1ucron nnde t"ar!ie- fcnrno ol c:uiC11nlrrafhc
For wrth the advent of the steam>hip, the autornohrle. the ;;rrpiLIW th(
camera. the computer, and tht' trlc;1hnne. "''e have enter:1 111t0
_r:?;t"ther new conditrun of even woth tho:.e most from
ourse:ves. Mcluhan. ar:-Jong others. to thr!Wzt
world a "p-bhal but theo1ies as uppeJr to
OVf'l"f'S111!hHeci the imp(rCJtiOilS ur the llCW meC:iJ c1dc
(,'vlcluh:tn ilrd Powers 1989)_ W'e are now thdc wrth medrJ
t1me we are templed to of the globe! village, we nust be lt:IJtnCcd
that medra u tate communities w"rth "no of place" Uv1eyr.ow l.: 1 %5 ).
The world we lrvc rn >eems rhizo1liiL (Dcleuze :tnd 1987).
even sdJIZophrenrc:. calling For ot rootlessness, and
psychoiogKal between mdrvJduals and on tire Ollt hand
ar1d farlla>ics (or nightmares) of <:k:Ltrontc prnpinqurty 011 the other Here,
wt arc clnse to the central of culturJi vroLesse<: r'1 tndays
worlci_
Thu<', the curiosity that reccntlv drove p,co lyer co 111
some ways the pioJuc:t of a confusion between mme rneffable J\.',c-
Dnnaldization of the world and the much subtler play o
1
onlligenous
)eC"tories of desire dnd fear with globul of pcoplf and things_ Indeed.
lyer's own irnprc<;sionc; are to the fact rf-.at, 1( a gio!)dl
emergmg, i is Ailed with lronre<: and sometimes cam
ouflageJ pas;;1vity ilnd a bottomlc>'i apretlf<"' rn the :\sia-l world for
things Western
lyen own o; the urlanny Phi"ippme alAn ty !'ur f\.mcrrcan
popular rrch tht: global culture of 1:1e hvperreal fo
<;OMehow Phrlippiue rendrtiom o( .1\nerc:an popular arc- both n1oe
m l'h.J1pp1ncs, drsturbrng\' to rhe1rong
rna!<;, t1ey are in dre Unrtecl today_ An e-ntire na:rnn ro
have learned to llllllliL Kenny Rogers dnd che Lennnn si<:rcrs, vast
Asran Moto.,.,n choru> But ArllmCt111iZ<Jiio'l IS c:cnamly a pii'l1d :crM to ii.pplv
en suc:-r a situallon for not only are there more Fliip1nos qngr1g- :-eriect
of some American songs (uiren irom the> Amerrcdn thJr1
nere are Arnencans dorng- '0. there is oilOUrsc. the> fJct thJt rhe .-est
of their 11\'e:. 10 not rn complete wrth the referential wnrlrl
gave :,in'-1 to oongs.
In a further globJI'zmg twrs: nn what rredrrc )clTT'I;';I)n ha>
:J,,I""fl"'' ,,,,; i} rr, .. ,,,,
ca:led "nostalgia for the present" ( 1989), Lheoe h.ok to
world they have never lmt. Thi-; I" one of the central iron1es of tht: pohtic.s
of global cultural flows, especially in the arena of enkrtainment and
ldsure It plays havoc With the hegemony of EuroLhrunulugy American
nostalgia feeds on Filipino de,lre represented as a hypercompdent repro-
duction Here, we have nostalgia without memory. The par.:tdox, of
coune, has its expl.:tnations. and they are histoncal; unpacked, they lay
b.:tre the stmy of the American anJ pol1lical rape of the
Philippines, one restdt of which has been the creation of a of make-
believe Americans, who tolerated for so long a lcadmg lady who played
the piano while the slums of Manila expanded and decayed. the
most radical postmodernists wnuld argue that tht' i' hardly he-
c;;use in the peculiar chmn1cities nf fate capitali<;m, and nostalgia
are central modes of image pmductinn and reception Americans them-
selves ;;re hardly in the present anymore as they stumble into thf" mf"ga-
technologies of the twenty-first century garbed in the film-nnir 'cenarin'
of sixt1es' chills, fift1es diners, fort1e5' clothing. thirties' houses twenties'
dances, and so on ad mfinitum.
As far a:; the United States is concerned, one might suggest thilt the
''sue no longer one uf but of a SOCial ,:ma_!/nMirc built largely
around reruns Jameson was bold to lmk the poltt1cs of lu the
rnscmodern commodity scns1bil1ty, and surely he was right ( 1983). The
dn1g waro; in Colomh1a recapitulate the tmp1cal of Vietnam, with
Ollie '>Jorth and his succession of masks-Jimmy Stewart concealing John
concealing Spiro Agnew and all nf them transmngrifymg into
Sylvester Stallone, who wins in fulfHI-
ing the secret American envy of Soviet imperialism and the renm
time with a happy ending) of the Vietnam The Rolling Stones, ap-
their fifties, gyrate before eighteen.year-olds who do not ap-
pear to need the machinery of nostalgia to be sold on their parents' heroes
Paul McC;;rtney is selling the Beatles to a new audience hy hitching hie;
obliqm nostalgi;; to their desire fnr the new that smackc; of the nld Drag11tt
is back in nineties' drag, and so is Adllm-1 1, nat to speak nf and MH-
liDI1 In1Possible. all dressed up technologically but remarkably faithhtl to the
atmosphem;s uf thc1r onginals.
The past 1s now not a land to rdum tom a 51mple uf memory.
It hecome a synchromc warchous(; uf (.;Uitural .. kmd of tem-
poral central castmg. to which recourse can be taken ao apprupnate. de-
rendmg on the movie to be made, the Kcnc to be cna(.;tcd, the to
be All is par for the d yuu follow Jean Baudnllard or
D '-'"'1CI"r' nHd o,j],reorrp
Jean-Fran<;:ois Lyotard mtu a world ol sig11s unmoored frr:n' rhe1r
social signifiers (all rhe worlrl's il But I would l1ke to suggest
that the apparent substitutability of whole periods ;;nC: postures
for one another. in the" cultural styles of ddvanced is ti<"d tn
larger global forces, which have done much to show Americ.:tn5 chat the
past s uc;ually another count1y. If your present 1s the1r 1.Jturc [;,<:in trurh
modernization theory and in nuny self.,at:sfied tounst fanta<.!C<:). and
the1r future is vour pao;t (as 1n the case of the F1lipino Vlrt"JO'-OS of Americafl
popula1 music], then your own past can be 111ade to appear <ts sirrvly a I'OI
malized modcthty nf your pre,ent. although some anthropolog,sls
may continue tn relegate the1r Others to tempor<tl that they do net
themselves occupy (Fabian culturdl pruducliull'> !dve
entered a postnostalgic
The point, hnwever. that the U11tcd ,., nc longer che
puppeteer of a world system of imilge" hut i<: only one nod<:: of d complex
transnJtional constnlction of iiT'<tgina-y landscapes. The wur'J we IJVe i1,
today is by a new role fnr the imagmation 1n
grasp n<::w role. we need to bring together the old of 1mage<;, e<-
pec!ally mco;;hanically prc.,Jucec. 1mages (in the School
the ot thl' c.umrnufllty (in Anderson's sense). and he Frrnch
idea of the Imaginary (111wgmaircl a land>e<:pe of collect,ve
aspiratiom, which i<; nn more and no real than the collective
tations of Emile D11rkhfim, now through the p1ism of
modern media.
The 1mage. the 1magined. thf' arc all term:. that J,.
us to something crirical and new in glnhal cultural processe,. rhc
imltio11 as u No longf'r mer<"' fantac;y (opium :or the
whose reJI work is elsewhere), no longer simp't' (from a wuciJ de-
lined principJlly by more concrete purpo.;;es and <;tructurc<'. no lun01er
elite pJstime :rhus not to the l1ves of mdinary peop;el.
longer mere contemplation (irrelevant for new fmm< nf dcs:re and .;;ub,ec
tlvity). the imagination has ar organizrcl field of pnct,ces
a form of work (in the of both bbor and culmrally 01 prac-
tice), a form of negotiatinn between sites of (ind,viduJ:s)
globally defined fields of possibility. This unleashing of the
lmks the play of pastiche (in some settings) to the terr0r anJ lOCtCOI' o;
states and their (.;Oir.petitors. The magi nation is now cenc1alt
1
J al:
of agency, IS a SOCiill fact, and i> the key o: the new
global order. But tu milke this clom 11eaningful, wf mu<t dtkrc>> <.omt:
other
Homogru:zr7t1o1r md Hrterogrttrzr7tirm
The central problem of today<; glohalmtcractron'> is t:1e tension between
cu!tural homogenization and culturd1 heterogenizattoo A vase array ol
empiticJI facts could be brought to bear on the side of the homogcmza-
tion argument, and much of it has come from the left c:-td of the spectrum
ot med1a (Harnelink 1983; Mattelarl 1983; Schiller 1976;,
>omc trom pcrspecttve> (Gans 1985; 1;-er 1938) Most often, the ho-
subspeciates into either <In ahem! Amer
tcanrzallun ur an argument about commoditiz<ltion. and very ofcen the
two crgu1m:nts are closely link\"d \};:'hat thesf' argument<; fail to constder
:hat least as rap1dly as forces fmm metropoltses are brought into
1ew societies they tend to hccomc rndigeniztd in one or <Jnotherway this
1s rnte of music housing styles as mut:h as il i3 true of science and ter-
ronsm, and constitutions The dynamics of such indigenization
begun to be explored systemically (B:?.rber 191l7, Feld 1988; Han-
nerz 1987, 1989, Ivy 1988
1
Ntcoll 1989, Yoshimoto 1989), much more
needs to be done_ Rut it is worth not1cing that for the people of Irian Jaya,
lndonesianization may be more wornsomc than Amtncanization, as
mily be for lndianizat1on for Sn Lankam, Viet-
namtzatton lor the Cambodians. and Russiamzation for the people of So-
viet Armenta and the BaltiC Such a list of alternative fe3rs to
Americamzation (ould he greatly expandeJ, but 1l IS not a shapeless m-
ventoty. for polities of small\"r scale. there,, alway<: a tear ot cultural ab-
sor,:.tion by polities of larger espenallv those that arc nearby. One
man'o unagined community is another man's pol meal pri;;on
Thts scalar dynamic, which h;;ts widespread global mantfestations, i'i
ako :ted :o the relattonsh1p between natiom and st<Jtes, to which 1 shal! re-
:urn later Fm the moment: let us note that the of these many
forces :anci fears; of homogentzactoo can abo be exp'.oited by nation-
st;:tes in rel3tion ro their own minortttcs, by global comnooditiza-
lion :or capitalism, or some nther such external as more teJI than
the threat of 1ts own hegemonic strategies
The new global cultural economy robe c;een a< a complex, ov(:rlap-
ping, disjunctive order that cannot any longer be understood in terms of
ex1sting center periphery models (even thost that might account for mul
centers peripheries) Nor" It suscepttblc to oimple models of
push and pull (m tem1s of mtgration theory), or of surpluses and deficits :as
m tradtttonalmudels of of trade), or of and
(as tn neu-Marxist theories of dev\"lopmenti Even [he most complex
D 1 < 1 1, ,. c I" 1 r "rr d D 1 J j <' < " (
and Aexible d rkvelopmert that come out tl1c
,\1a.rxm tradition :A'llin 1980, Mardel 1978. \X/ulr
1982) arc ma.dcquately (']lllrky to come to terms wha:
Scott Lash and John Uny have ca11.-rl ciimrganized 11937) The
complexity of current global economy has to do Wtth certa111 fwldJ-
mental hctwccn economy culture. o.nJ poli!Kt; that we
ody begun to thconze
1
I that ar elementary irilmewm k lor explonng dtt;JuncrurEs
is to look at the relatio1lship ilmong dimensions ol globJ.' cult;jr21ilow>
thilt ciln be termed (J'I rt!:nosw/m. (b: (ci trriJ""""Pe>, fJ'1 )i-
ll(l!KCSC<lt'r>. and (e) The sufA( allows us to poin: tu ._I.e
trregular of these thdt (.haralltnzc mtfr
national capital as deeply as they do mlerrational dothmg These
with the common suffix -scrjPe alse mdlCate that nul ob):::c.-
tively given relations that look 'he 'amc frum every angle of Vl'iton but,
rather th;;tt they ;;tre dteply penpe<:.:tival construll'i, mAcctcd by the hts-
toric<JI, lingUistic, and poltla;al >ttuatcd:-,c:,s of dillcrcnt sort< of actor<: na-
multmatmnals, dtasponc rommunitif'S,
grouping<> and (whether or and
even mtimate face-to-face groups, such as villages, neighborhooc:s. and
famtlie;;_ lncieed, the mdividual actor is the last locus of this perspectival
set of landscapes, for these landscapes are evenluaily by <>gerl:,
who both experience and constitute latger :n part from thctr
own sense of what these ofier.
These landscapes thus arc the bu:lcimg blocks of what (extending
Benedict Anderson) I wo.dd like lo (.dll rrna_g11d worlds. thac ts, the mu!r1plc
worlds that comtituu:!d by the oltuatcd tmagmatton< of per-
sons and g10ups :,preaJ around the globe ichap 1 ', An Important fact of
the world we :1ve 1n today to that many pc;;ons on the glohe ltve rn
imagined wo1 lds (and not m tmagmcd communllie<:) and thu< are able
to contest and even subvert ihc tmagined of the ofhlla'
mind and of the entrepreneurial mentJilly that c;urrounci them
Ry rtlmMc.Jpe, 1 mean the l<indscJpe of pcrsom who con<;tttute the
wor!d in whrch we l1ve: tourists, exiles gue>t
and other moving groups and constitute an e<<;cnlldl feaCure ol
the world and appear to affect ,:,c politiC<; of hftw.-en' nation:, to a
lmher<o unpn:cedcntcd degree. Tht<; ts :-tot: to <;av rhar there rtu rela-
ti"tly >table t:ommumttcs and network> of kin<;h1r. fnend<;l,lp, work and
as well as of b1rth rc;;idencc, and other form<_ But 1t 10 to 'i\'
the warp of these stabilities is cvcryNhcrc shot rhrough the
,-,f .:urn an motinn as more per<;on<; and groups deal v.1'th che uf
ng to move or the fantas1es of wanting to move_ \Xt'hat i' more, bOLh these
rtnd now funct10n on larger as men and women
from viliage' in lndra think not just of movrng to Poona vr but of
movrng to Dubai and Houston, and refugees from Sn Lanka themselves
ir. South lnd1a as well as in Switzerland,. Jw,t as the Hmong are driven to
Londnn as wt>ll ;,s tn Philadelphia. And as international cap1till its
needs, il5 production and technology generate different needs, as nation
states shift their policies on refugee populat1ons, these movmg groups can
never d!fvrd told the1r too long, even if they w1sh to
Ry !rclmo<capr 1 mean the global<.:onf,guraliOil, <Jlso ever fluid, of technol-
ogy Jnd the fact that terhrology, both hrgh and low, both mechanical and
now moves at high c;peeds across ol pr-eviously
impervious boundaries. Many countncs now are the roots of multinational
enterprise: a huge steel complex in Lrhva may mvulve rnlerests from India,
Chin<!, Russia, and 'apan, providing d1fferer.t of new techno-
logical conAgurations The odd of and thus the
pet:uharities of these cechnosc<Jpes, are increasingly dnven hy any obvi-
ous uf of political control, or of market rationalrty but by
me rea singly complex relanonships among money Aows, po\ttllal poSSlbih-
tles, and the of both un- and highly skilled labor So, wh1k lndra
exports walter:, and -.hauffeurs to Dubai and Sharjah 1t also soft-
ware engineers tu the United States-indentured brieAy to
or the World Bank, then laundered through the State Department to be-
come wealrhy resident al1enc;, who arc m turn obJedo vf
to invest their money and know-how rn federal and slate projects ill India_
The global ecoMmy can _<;till be descnbcd in tenm of traditional irldi-
cators (as the \Vorld Bank to do) and stud1ed in of tradl-
in Project Link at the Umvcrsrty of
but the complicated tcchno5eapes :and the shifting ethnoscapes) that un-
d<"rlie these rnd1camrs and <.:Umpdrisons are further out of th!" reach of the
queen of sc1ences than ever before. 1--low is one to make a meaning-
ful comparison of wages in Japan and the United States or of
costs in .'lew Ynrk and Tokyo. without takmg ted account of the
very complex Ascal and Aows that lmk the two economies
through a global grid of currency and capitol tram+er?
it useful to speak as wf'll of as the drsposttlon of
glob.d cap1t.:tl is now a more rrtpld, and drf-R<.:ult to
follow than \"Ver before, currency nJtrOnal stock exchanges,
3nd commociity speculations move megamonits through national turn-
lJ, '1" tr t I"' r ,, ",! D t_(_( r r,", ,
at blinding speed, W!th absolute ir'1['>1ications for >mclll d Her
ences in percentage po1nls a11d Lime un'ts But th<' cr1tH..dl point is that the
I relationship among techno><.:dpes, <Jnci Fin<rnccscape'
is deeply drsjunctrve and profoundly unpredictable rarh of the-<;e
landscapes rs to its own conscrrtrnts ami ince1ltives I some pohtical
some rnfnrmat1onal, and some technoenv1ronmenrail at the :,arr.c trme a;;
each act<; a conotra1nt and a paramete1 for movements rn c:1e others
Thus, even an elementary model ol global politiCal emnomy m:r;;: takf'
roto at.<.:OU:lt the deeply drsmn<.:t1ve among
ment, technologiral flow, and fmannal :ransfers.
Funhcr rcfra(.lmg these d1sjunc:ures (whrch hard'y form;; me-
chanical global in Jny arc what I oil '"edr.rswpes
which arc rela;ed la<1dscapes of rmage>. ref<"c
both to the dismbutron of the elecrronic lu p--od;Jce and rh-
seminate rnfnrmaton (newspaper;, stations, and
F.lm produetinn stildros), which are now av:l.ilahle to a number of
private and publrc throughout the world, and to tht of t":re
wurld created by these media r:nages involve marrv complicated in
f-lc<.:trun5, depending on therr mode r:Jor.:umentary or enterarrrr.enl\ :heir
hardware ';electronic or preelec:rO'llc), their (local. natrondl, or
transnaliOnai), and the intere<;;;; of those who own and control them.
What rs mo:,l important 3bout theK IS that thrv :t'>-
pecialty rn thetr television, Alm, and forms'r large corr.plcx
reperto1re;; ot images, narriltives and ethnmcapc:, to v1ewers throughout
the world, in wh1ch the world of commoditie<; and the wuriJ of news and
politiCS are profoundly mixed. \X
1
har this means is that 111dllY audience<
around the world expcnem.e the med1a themsl"lve;; as a -.ump!rcated and
mterconnected rf'pertolre of prrnt, celluloiC:, elertronrc st:reerh, bilL
boards The lines between the realistic end rhe Artiof1allanJocapes they
see are blurred, so that the farther away the;;e aud1eoc:e:, are fro!T' the Crreu
experiences ot life, the more lrkcly they are tn conslru-.t
imaf!ined worlds that are chimerical, aeHhetic, even fantastrc n':Jjccts, pM-
ticularly rl by the errteria of some other sorrt' other
1magincd world.
whether produced by nrivate or scate tend to be
image-centered, narrative-based accounts o; of what
they offer to those who expenence and them is a <;ffle<; of cle-
ments as .. plots. and textual forms) out of whiCh
can ::.c fonned ot Imagined their own as well 1hose d others lv1ng
in mhcr places. These can and do gel Li1saggregarerl rn:u cororplex
J),,l""<'"'' ,,,.,j ['ff,,,,,,,
sets l!y whrch peuple live and Johnson 198C) as they
hdr to lllmlrlute of the Other Jnd protonarratives of possib:e
lives, fantasies thJt could become prolegomena to the deme for acqutsr-
tion Jnd rnovemerlt
ldw>wpc> Jre ulso conco:;tenations of images but they are often drrertly
politiCJI and frequently have to do wrth the rdf'ologrcs of states and the
counterrdeologres of movements f'x['llicitly orrented to capturing state
power or a piece of it. These ideoscapes are of elements ot the
Enlrghtenment worldvkw, whiCh conmt> of a chain of ideas. terms, and
magee;, includingjrudom, weljcm. nghis. and the mac;-
tcr teml democrm:y The master narrative of the Enlightenment (and rb
many variant-;; m Hritain, France. and the United States) was eonsrnJCted
with a rrrtarn rnternal logrc anJ a certain rdationshir he-
tween readmg, representatron. dnd the public sphere_ (For the dynamics nf
in the early history of tht: United States, see 'V:'arner 1990_:
l3ut the diaspora of tcnns and rmcgeo across the world. especially
since the nineteenth century, has loosened the mtemal coherence that
held chem together in a Euro-.American ma<:tcr narrative and prov1ded m-
d loosely structured synopticon of rolitics, rn which drfter<:nl nation-
stJtes, as part of their evolution, have organtzed lherr polrticul cultures
dround different keywords (e g., Williams 1 Y76).
<1 re>ult of the differential d1aspora ()f the<:e the polit1cal
that govern communication betv.:een elite<: and follnwers rn dif-
leem part<; ot the world mvolve problems of both <r and prag-
matic nature: semantic to the extent that words (and their lexTCal
lents) reoqurre careful tl<lmlaliorr from context to context rn the1r
movement<:, and to the extent thilt the use of these words by
polttrcal actors their audrences may be to very different sets of
contexrual conventions that mcdrate the1r translatio'1 into public polrtrcs.
Such convent ron> dre not only matters of the '1ature nf pnlitrcal rhctone:
for example, what does the aging leader<:htp mean when rt to
the dangers of dMc; the South Korean meon
when rt >pecikS of dscipline as the ke-y to democratic mdu>tnal growth7
These con,errlions involve the far more suht!c qucstron of what
sets of communrcauve res are vJiued rn what wdy (new<;papcr<:
cinema, for example) and what sorb of genre gov-
ern the collectrve readings of drfferenl kmds of text So. while an Indian
may be attentive to the of a polit1cal speech in terms
of keywords and reminiscent of Hindi cinema, a Korean au-
dtence may to the subtle codings of m neo-Confucian
!J,<JU!Irl'' ,.,.J D.f}rcrn<<
rhetoric encoded r n cl political docww:m The very r.o b11n'1<;h!p PI 1 eaclmg
to he;,rrng and <.cemg may vary rn 1mpurlJnt chc;t dc:ermrne the mor-
phology or these drfferent ideOSUpCS they ti1C'ffiSCIVt:< Ill dfiere1t
national and contexts This glohally
has hardly even been noted, hut 1t Je:-nands urgent ly<is_ ;;,_us drmouacy
has become a term, "''lth flOwcrful from Halt! ami
Poland to the fanner Snvret Uri on ;md Ch11a, but 1t o!l> at the rrntcr of a
variety of
1
deoscapes, compmecl of distinc:rve pragmattL copfiguratron<; ot
rough translation<: ot other cenml terms from the vocabulan' of ti'.e [n
lrghtenmf'nt This creates ever nf'w tennmological d> <;tates
(and the groups tha; seek to caCJture them; o;eck m pcicrly
whose own ethno>capes are in motmn and whose media<>capcs may ueatc
severt" rrohlcm> for the wtth whKf-. they are prc<cmed The
fluidity of idcmLapes rs complicated m particular by rhr growmg
(both voluntary and involunta1y) of rntellt:lluals who contrnuomly rrrJect
new 11:to the discnur-;;e o' denwccacy i'1 clilfcrcn: pdT\5 of
the world_
Tlus extended terTrHnologrc.:;l discussion of the five te-ms lluve corned
the basis for J tentative lormJlation Jbout the conJ,t,ons unrler whrcll
u.:rrent global Aow<: occur. they occrr in and through the gmwirg drs-
junctures among lechnose<rpes. financcocapes,
and ideo>(.apes This formula non. the core of my model of global crltural
tlow, need> explan.'ltron. Ftr><. people, rncney. imagro;,
and rdea<; now follow <ncredsingly nonrsurnorphrc of course. at Jll
periods i1 human h1otory, there been SOITlt disjJncture<; 10 the 'lows
of :hese thin!J:S but tire sheer sreed, <;cale, "and volumf' of nch ul t'1ese
tlows Jre now _<;o great that the di<:juncture., becor1r central to the
politics of glClhal culture. The arc no\orrously ho.;r;t;;bk lo idea;
and are sterrmypcd ao inclmed :o export {alii and impmt goods.
b'.Jt they d'.so notoriouc;',y closed to lrke
1
.:'.(" s .... the
clrld the Saud1s. Yet 1:hc Swro> and the ;;mdis acc..ept populatrons o'
workers, crcatrng ldbor JrasporJs nf Turko. ltai:Jn<, and other
crrcurn Medrrerranean groups. Some such r1ar'ltan>
c..ontinuous wrth their nome nations, like the but nrhcrl>
1
1ke
hrgh-leve] South i\sran te:1d to des:re lrves 111 therr new home>.
anew tht: problem of rcproduclron in a dctemtoialized cnmext.
Deterrrtonalrzation, tn general is one of the cc'ltrcllorces o; the mod
ern world it brings lahonng ;JOpulatrons 1110 lhe <>ec-
tor<: and >paLeS of relatively wealthy soc-et,es, whrle somel1mf'c; creatirg
exaggeraleJ 3nd i,ten<;if\ed senoes of cririci<rr. or atld<.:.hr'lenr ro politics 111
Dis 1""' 1 ,, r r ,, r: .. J) j J.,: r", r
the home state. Dctcrntorralizatron, wheth;:r of Hmdm, Sikhs, Palestini
am, or i> now at the core of a van<:ty of global fundamen-
talisms. including Islamic and Hindu fundamentalism ln the Hindu case,
tor example, it IS dear that th<;: overseao movement of Indians has been ex
plorted by a variety of interests both within and outside India to create a
complicated network of finances and religious identifications, by which
lh<: problem of cultural n::productton for Hmdus abroad hLts become tied
lu the polittcs of Hrndu fundamentalism at home.
At the same time. deterritorialization creates nt:w markets for film com-
panies, art impresarios, and tr:<!vel agencies, which thrive on the need of
the deterritorialiurl porulatton for contact with ito homeland. Naturally,
these invented homelands, which constitute the mcdiao;capes of delernto-
rialtzeci group>, can often become sufficrently fanta<;tic and one-sided that
they provu.le the material for new 1deoscapes in which ethnrc conflicts can
begin to erupt. The creation of Khalistan, an invented homeland of the dc-
termonalizcd Srkh population of England, Gnada, and the United States,
is one example of the bloody potential in such mediascapes as they inter-
act with the internal colonial1sms uf the nation-state :e.g., Hechter 1975).
The West Rank, Namibia, and Entre a are other theaters for the enactment
of blnody negotiation between cxi>tmg nnliO!l-states <tnd various de-
temtanalized grouprngs.
It is in the fertile ground of deterrironalizatron. m whiCh money. <.;Urn-
modities. <tnd persons are involved in chasmg ea<:h ulher
around the world. that the mediascapes and ideoscapes of the modern
world find thei1 and fragmented counterrart For the rdeas and
produced by mass media often are only ranial to the goods
and experiences that deterritorialized transfer to one another.
In .'vka Nair"> l.mll,arrt film Cubmt. we see the multiple loors of th1s
1-racwred deternturidllzation as young women, barely competent in Bom-
bay's metrupul1ldn glit:.::. come to seek their fortunes caharet and
ormtrtuk> 111 Bombay, entertaining men in with dance formats de-
nved whully from the prurient dance sequences of Hmdt films. These
111 turn cater lo ideas <tbout Western <1nd foreign women and their
looseness. wh1le they provide t<twdry career alibis for these women. Some
of these women come from Kerala, where cabaret dubs and the porno-
graphic film industry have blossomed, partly in n:sponse to the purses and
of Keral1tes returned from the Middle East. where therr diasporic
away from women distort their very sense of what the relations be-
\w;:en nren and women might be tragedies of dioplacement could
be repliiyed in a more detailed analysiS of the rddlruns between
Di}J(rtc
tht- japanese and German >ex to Thailard and th<:: trJgcdies o; tht>
sex trade 111 Bangkok, and in othersimiliir loops that l1c together
abour the OtheT, the conveniences and of :he
ics of global trade, the bn-ltal mohil1ty dooll'na:l' gender
politics in many parts of Asia and the wor:d a; large.
Whr1c far more could be sard ahuu\ the po:itics oi deremtonal-
ization and the larg-er sociology of displaLEI1lent thLtt it it IS ap-
propnate at this junlture to bring in the role of the lliltion state in the dio-
junltive global economy ot culture today The relatronshrp states
and is everywhere an embattled one. It is poss1ble to oay that in
the nat10n and the state have become um: dllUther"s p-o-
jects. is. while natmns more properly w1th abou:
nationhood) seek to capture or co-opl states and state power states s:mul-
taneously seek to cdpture and monopohze ideas a boll! nationhood i8aruah
1986, Chatterjee 1986, 19a9a:. In general, transnat1unal
movements, !nduding those that have included terror in their methods,
exemplify natiorlS in search of st:atcs. Srkhs. Tamil Sri l.anka:-rs, Ba>4ues,
of these 1magined communitie<; that
seek to create staks of their own m carve pie<..e> ou: of existing "rates.
States. on the ut}rer are everywhere to monopolize :he
1:wra! resourcrs n: community, eit
1
1er by Aatlv claimmg coevality
between na:ron or by muo;eu"TJIZing and repre-
>f!ltmg al: the w1thm them in il vanety of herrtal'e politiCs thiit
seem> remarkably uniform throughout the world I H;mdlrr 191Hi, Hnzreld
1982; 1\.kQueen i98R)
Here, national and international are exploited by ndl1on
to pacrfy separatist<> or even the putential fissip:uou<>ne<;s ol rdeas
of difference. TypiCally. contemporary nation-states do thio; hy cxtr<..ismg
taxonomK. o;.ontrol over drfierence, by c.reatmg vanou< bnds ol lrter"a
tiona! to domec;ticate and by seducing- smdll groups
wrth the fantasy oi un some sort of glohal or cu;mopolitar.
>\age. One important new feature of global cultural pnlitle>. tied to thr
rebtionsh1ps among the vanous dr<>eus;ed earlier.
that state and natron are at eac.h other's throats, and the hyphen that links
now less an icon of conjuncture than an 111dex of d!S)U'lc.lure. This
disjunctiVe rclatlunship between n;mon and has two lcve':s at L::e
level of any gtven nation-state, it means that there is a hattie of the tmagi-
nation, with st:ate and nation see.{lng to canmbalrze one another. rs
the seedhed of brutal c;rem w ap-
from nowh<:re and microidentities that have become political pru-
o.,,,,,,,.l """. J),jje-"''
JN'ts wi:hn the At another level. 1-eiJtion>hip
!<;deeply entangled w1th the global discussec' throughout thi>
chapter: 1derts of nationhood appeal- to be steadily mcreasrng Ill scale and
regularly nossrng existing stale boundanes, a<; "''ith the Kurds,
previous ider.tities st1etched aLro>s vast natTOnal spaces or, as with
the Tamils Sri l.anka. the dormant tllreads of a transnatiOnal diaspora
hove been to rgnite the milropoiJtiCS of a
In diSCIJSSPng rre cultural politiCS that have ;;uhvertf'd the hyphen that
links the nation to the 1t c<;pecial:y important not to forgd the
moOTmg ol >Ul.:h polmcs in the Irregularities that now chilTKteJPzt J,,orga
mzed cJ.pital (Kothari t989l; Lash and Uny t9H7) labor. finance,
and technology an: now m wtdcly <;eparated. the volatilrt1es that under he
movements for nationhood (a;; large as transnational Islam on the one hand,
or as small as the movemcm of the Gurkhas for a m
Jndra) gnnd against the that c:haractenze lh<: rdationships
he tween States themselves pl-essed to stay by the forces of
media. technology, travel that hJ.ve fueled comumt:nsm throughout
the world have increaseci the craving, m the non-\i/e;;tern world,
for new commodities and On the other hand. very crav-
ings can become caught up in new dhnmcapes. and, eventu-
ally, ideoscapes, such as democracy m C:hma, the state tolerJ.te
as threats to its own control over 1deas of nationhood and peoplehood.
States throughout the world are under siege, especially where contests ov<:r
the ideoscapes of fierce and fundamentol, and where there
are radi\..al disjunctures hetween ideoscapes and technoscapeo (a> m the
case of vt;:ry small lack contemporary technv!oglt:> of pro
duc:tion and mformat10n),- or between ideoscapes and (as m
countnes such Mexico or Brazil, where international lcndmg
nat1onal to very large degree)_, or between rdeoscape<; and
ethnoscapes m Aein1t where diasporic, local, am.l tran>local filiations arc
suicidally at battle), or hetween ideoscapes and (as 111 many
countnes m the Middle and Asia) where the lifestyles on
both national and International TV cinema completely overwhelm and
undermme the rhetrmc of national politics In the lnd1an case, the n:ylh of
the law-breaking hero emerged to mediate this naked struggle between
the pieties and realities of Indian pu[JliD, whJCh grown mcreasingly
brut;;dized and corTupt (Vad1dm 1989).
The transnat'1onal movt:rnent ot the martial part1cu':arly through
as mediated by the Hollywood and Hong Kong industnes
(Z.;rlli t995) IS a rkh illustration olthe ways 111 wh1ch
rJ,')"''''"'"' .1 .. Diff''"''
nal reiorn1ulated to meet tl1c :antam'<; ol cnntemrwca;.
(sometimes lumpen) yrmth popul.;t10il5, create cultu:es nf
and v1olence whrch ;:,re 1'1 turn .he fr..el f01 :ncreased vrolcnce 111
and internatinnal politrcs Such violence is in tum the >pc;r wan
ingly rap1d and amoral lraJc that penetrates :he ent1re work T lt
worldwicle spread of the AK-47 Jnd the LJz,, .n films, in curporatc <Jnd
st<Jte ;;ecurity, in terror and in police ar:d milr:ary aet!vty, 15 J ,-ermndn
:hat apparent!y s1mple technicaiL.-11ilorrrities often conceal an mcreasmglv
complex set olloop>, l:nk1ng 1m age< of to 'orcommu-
nirv in some imJgined world.
Ret.Jrning then ro the ethnoscapes with which I hegan, thf' antrel
paradox of ethnic polr\lc:, m today'' world i<; :hat :whether of
language or sk1r1 color or :-:e1ghborhcod or haw nr-mm:- global
ized That is, sent:mene>, "'hose greatest fnrrf i<: in their <.bi'ity :o ignite
intllnacy mto a puhtJCal state and tL:rn rnto a stag;ng gmund for
identity, have belome spreaci over and irregula- spaces as g1-oups
mov<: )'et stay linked to nnr through soph,sticated med1a
mes. Thr;; io; not to dery that such Drin10rd1a are oltt:n the product olin-
vented traditiom (Hobsbawm and Ra11ge1- 1983;- 01 rt:lro>peltJve
non<:, but to emph:;s,ze that bec:aust: uf the disJunctive and
interplay of commerce, med1a, natiOnal nolicJe<;, and consumer hnras1es
once J. genie lontaincd in the hodr of some sort of locality
(however large), ha, now become a global force. forever slippir'8 1n auJ
through the crack<; hetween states <1nd borders.
But the relat1omh1p bet\veen r".e cultural and econOI'lic levels of tim
new set of global disluncture<: i;; nm one-way street 111 v.:hich
term> of global cultural politics are set wholly by o whully
wid110, the of Rows of Iaber, and li-
nance, dcmandmg only a modeo:t of exJStmg neo-/VL::rxrst
ul unt:ve'l developmem and stdte formation. There IS J deeper
change, itself drwt:'r. by the dsp..1nctures amo11g all the landscapes I
drscussed and constitult:d by thc1r c:on:Jnuously Rurd uncertai; inrer-
p'ay, that concerns the 1elatiun>h1p Jctwr-en and consumption
in today's economy. Here I brgm with Marx's (and often
mi1led! v1<:w u
1
the fct1sh1s:n of thr coiT'mod1ty and sugge>t that tim
his been replaced in tie world Jt !Jrge I now >eemg the world as
ont: mtera((JVe svstem composed of many .:omplex by
two mutually ;;upnmtive descendants. the Arst of wh1ch productr<Jil
fetishism and rhe the fetishism of the consumeT
By jetrsh1sm I an illusion created by contempo1a-y tram-
OisJ""flHrt ,,,J fir((rtllcr
nat1onal production loci that masks capital. earn-
ing Mow'>, global management, and often faraway (engaged in var-
iou> kinds of high-tech putt1ng-out operations) m the idwm specucle
of I on I (sometimes even wurke1) control. natiOnal productivity and tern-
toriai sovereignty. To the extent that various kmds of free-trade zones
have become the models for product1on at large, especially of high-tech
commoditit"S, productiOn itself become a obscuring not
relations as such but the relations of productiOn, whKh are increasingly
The (both in the scme of the local factory or Site of
production and in the 1."Xtended sense olthe becomes <1 fetish
that diSguises the globally di<;peneJ forces that actually dnve the produc-
tion process. Tfm generates alienation (m Marx's sense) twice intensified,
for it<; social is now compounded by a compiJc;l.ted spat1al dynJmic
that 1s mcreasmgly global_
As for the 4 the I mean to here that the con-
sumer been transfoi-rned through commod1cy flows (and the medli!-
espec1ally of advertising, that accompany them) into a c;ign, both
m Baudrillard's senc;e of a that only asymptotically approaches
the fonn of a real _<;oCJal agent, and in the of a for the <;eat
of agency, which is not the consumer but the produLer <lnd the many
forces that constitute production Global is the key technol-
ogy for the worldwide dissemination of a plethora of creative and cultur-
ally well-chosen ideas of consumer agency. These image<; of agency are in-
creasmgly distortions of a world ot merchandising so suhtle that the
consumer iO <..:onsistently he-lped to believe that he or she an a<.:\ or, where
in fact he ur she is at best a chooser.
The globalization of 01lture is nut lhe same as its homogemzal!on, but
glnbalization 1nvolves the use of a vancty of mst1uments of homogenization
:armamcms, advertising techniques, language hegemonie<;, and duthmg
<;tyles) that ilre absorbed intn local polltlo..;a] and cultural only to
be rcpatnoted as heterogeneous d1alogues of national free en-
terpri<:e, anJ in whid1 the St3te play;; an dell-
nte role. too much to global flows, and the 1s threat-
ened by revolt. as in tlle China syndrome, too little. and the statt: exits the
mternational <;\age, as Burma, Alba111a, anJ North Korea in variow. ways
have done_ In general, the state has becnme the arb1trageur of this r1patrUJtlcm
oJ (in che form of goods. s1gns, slogans, and styles)_ But repatn-
ation or export of the and ol Jiffeience commuously
the mtemal politics of and homogenization,
whicC, mmt frequently played out in debates over hentage.
''"3 IJff<''"''
rhus the cencral feature ol glu!JJ] cul:-ure i<; the politiCS ot .ht
mutual effort of sameness and ,o CJilnibalize on<'
thereby procl;um thc1r h1_iJcking of the twm Cn,igPtcnlllent
deas of thf triumphantly L<niversal Jnd the resJITently pJticl,lar -1
mutual cannibalization il> ugly face Tn POt<;, refugee r,QW'i, <,t<ile-
sponsored torture, anci e,hnocide iwith or Without state sup;.Jorti \t.;;
br1ghter srde i<: in the exponomn of many mJ1V1dual hori7on<; of hope and
in the global <;pread uf od rehvdralmn therapy and other low-
tech mstruments of well-being m the susceptibility ever. of So:1th Afr-ca
to tht Ioree of global opm1nn. in the l!l;;J.bility of thr Polish 5(ale to reprcs;;
1\s own working cla<;c;e<;, and m the growth of a widr range of progre>STvc
transnation<ll alliances_ of txJth ourts could be multirlit'd Th,.
cntkal point is that side'> nf chc com ul global cultural pmc:e-<<; toGav
are pruducts of the infinir1."!y varied (..On lest of sJmeness dTHer-
encc on a >\age characterized by radical disJunctures betw-een differen:
<;orts of g[obol flows and the uncertain lands(;apeo created iCJ and rhmugh
these di<juncture>
The Work o} Reprcductro11 in mJ A_4e oF Mechanicd Art
I have inverted the key terms nf the title uf \X
1
alteJ-!len_lamin's
(1969) to return this rather high-Aving dis(..u>sion to a
level. There is <l classic human proh1em that wdl not disappear howt'vrr
murh global cultural processes might change their dynarnKs, aild this is
che problem today typically discussed under the rubnc of reproducr,on
(and traditionally 1eferred to in nf the :ransml>,ICJll oi culture; In ei-
ther ca<e, the question is, how do small woups, eopeually fa:nilies. thr
of ouLial,zation, dedi w1rh these new glubalJeJiities <IS chty
<;f'ek to reproduce tl1tmselves and i""l so rlnmg, hy acc1de11t 1eproduu cul-
tural form> thtmselves: In tradition.:JI anthropologKaltem,s, th1s c0uld be
phraoed as the problem nf enculturatinn in a periuJ of rJp1d culture
change. So the prob!l"m i<; hardly novel Rut it docs takt un some novel di-
mensions under the glohal cnndl!lons solar m th1s cbapter
hrst. t!1e sort of stahil1ty of knowledge that wos pre-
supposed 111 most tl1eories of e:1CU.Illrdtlnn (or, 10 slightly broMkr
of can no longer be assume.-! As famil1es move to new bca
nr as children move before older genrratons, grown and
daughters retur:"l from lime spent in of the wo1id. bnily re-a-
tionships can hecome volatile
1
new comiT'oOity pattern> are
debts 3nd ohligations are recahbrJted, and nimors and about
0iSJ"I1cturr ,,.,1 .') 1,'}rr>rC<'
new setting arc maneuvered into eXJ>llllg nrertom:s of ;llld
pract1ce Often, global labor diaspora' mvoke immense strains on mur-
in general and on women 111 particubr. as marriage<; bt:'-ome the
rnedlllg poim-; of h1storical patterns of socialization and new ideas of
proper behavior. Gennalions easily di'lide. as about property, pro
and collect1ve obligation w1ther under the siege of and
t:m<:. Most important, the work of (;Ultural reproduction in new oett11lgs 15
profoundly complicated by the pol of representmg a famdy as normal
(particularly tor the young) to neighbor.:; and peers in the new locale All
this is, of course, not new tu dw cultural study of ,mmigrat1on.
W'hat 1s new I<; that this is a world in which both point<; of departure
and po1nts of arrival arc m cultural t-lu>., and thu<; the search for stead.y
points nf reference, as critl(;al life are can be very d1 :ficult. It
is in this atmusphere that the invention uf tri!dTt10n (and of ethntcll:y. km-
5hlp, and tdentity markers) can be(;Ome slippery, as the search for
certaintie<; IS regularly frustrated by the flu1dities of tranonational commu-
lliCiltion A' group p3sts hccun1e increasmgly pans of museums,
and both in and tran<;nalionwl spenaclt:s, culture he-
comes less what P1e1re BourdiC'J would have called a hilhitm :d tacit realm
uf 1eproduC1ble j)racticeo; and disposit11'ins) and more arena for con
choice, _1uq1 (ication. and rtpresentat1on, the latter ott en to multiple
and dislo<.;ated
The task of cultural reproduction, even 111 its most intimate arenas, such
3S husband-wife and p<nent-child rdations. becomes both pol1t1'-ized and
exposed to the of deterntonalization as family members pool and
negnt1ate their mutual and asptratwns in frac-
tured arrangemems. At la-rger :evels, sue has community, nctghbor-
hood. and temtory. this puliticization I'> often the emotiOnal fuel for mote
explic1tly Violent rolittcs of identity, these larger politic<; >Omctimes
penetrate and ignil:e domestic politics \X'hen, for exJ.mple, two olfspring
in a household <;p[it w1th the-ir father on key matter of pnlltJ-.ol ldentih-
catlOn Ill a transnational setting, preexisting lo,.;a\ized cany little
force. TITus;; son who has JOined the Hezbollah group in Lebanon may no
longer get along with parents or who are affiliated with Ama1 or
some other branch of Shi'i ethnic identity 111 Lebanon in
particular hear the bnmt of this sort of friction, for they become pawns in
the heritage politics of the househnld and are often subject to the abuse
and violence of men who are themselves torn about the relation hetween
heritage aml opportumty in sh1fting spatii!l anrl pol1tKal
The pa.ins of cultural reproduction 111 a disjunctive global world are, of
f:r)j<rc"c'
course, nut eJ.sed by the effect' of 1llechar1iral 2r: (m my;<; 1 'm
these media afford powertul fo1 co;tntcrnudes of 1dentHV that
youlft Cilll project agatmt or ires. At larger L?vc[, '.!! Ul-
ganlzatlOn. there can be many oi cultural politico; within C1spla<..ed
populations 1: wllether of or of voluntary tm:111grantsl. a
1
1 nf wh;ch
mnecteci in important by media the meC!a,Ldpes
they offer) A centrJIIini: between the fragilitico cultUTal re-
production and the role of the _nass t!l world is thr pol1lics
of ge:1der and v1olenLe. 1\s fant;w;:s of v10ience doniTate the R-
grilde Film that blanket the world, they bolli reneu cl'ld rdnt'
gendcn:U viOlence at home arJ "' the you11g men ( m part1ctilarl
are swayed by '.he macho of self-assertmn tr where tht'y
3re frequently den1ed l-eal agency, and women are forced lO e:nk the 13bm
force in new wcys on the one continuf the 'Tld;TlltloJ.IlCC ,-,f ta.
milia[ hnitage on the other Thu' honor of women not 111q
J.n armature ot :if inhuman;. of cultmal hut d
new for the formation of H.lentity an<l far11iy poln1cs. as men
ar.d ,,omen fKe !lew p1essures at work and new lanrasie<; ot
Hecause both work af'd h'lve lost none of the1r gcndered c.uJll
t1e> in t!".is nr-w global or JeT Lx t have acqum:d ever subtler fct1sh1;;ed rep
the honor of won en becomes \n(.T easi rl cr the
1dent1ty of embrlttled comnwwties of ma\e<;, while the1r ,vomen 1n reJiity
have lo negotiate mcreilsl'lgly hJ.rsh condit1om \if wo-k hor-Tc and in
nondomestic workrlacc. ln ohort, detem:oroJllztd commun t1e<;
displaced pupuli!tions. hnwcvcr mud1 they may enJOY httits oi new
of canung J.nd new di<;pOsltlon, of a1d w
pidy ouc the des1res and fama<1cs ol these new stnving
to reproduce the !emily as-microcosm ul culture As the shapes of
grow bounded and tacrt, more flmd and pol1ticized. wor
1
{ nf cL:l-
tural reproduction bt>comes a haza1-d Far 'llOrc vuld. shnuiJ be
<;aJd about tl->e work of rcproJuu1011 in ar agt' of Mt tht
ced111g discussa1n 'S me am LO nH.lKate tlle contnur.. of tbe prohlc'Tl< thJt a
new, global\y informed \heory of cultural reproduction will to bee
The dcltberatlons of the that 1 have made ;o :M const1.utt :he
bare bones ol- dll i!pproach to a general theory of global cultura'
on diSJUncture<;, 1 have employed a set d term<; c, i-
lom,ce>capr. kclol"cOCaJk med1asr.1p, and iJro;cnf>r) tc ;\Tess dih ..tnt qltillllS or
Di<i""'''''' ,,,,,i D-_lir,,'
flows wh1(;h cultural material may be seen to he moving
tionai boundar1es. I have also sought lo exemplify the way5 m whtch
vanuus (or trom the stahihzmg of any given
imdgined world) are in fundamental di<;Juncture with respect to one an-
other. What further 'iteps can we take toward a theory of global
lultural b<tsed on these propoc;als?
The fir'it 1s to note th"-t our very mndcls of cultural will 'nave to
alter, as configuratiOnS of people pluce, heritage lose all semblanle of
Recent work in anthropology ha<; done much to f1ee us of
the <;halkles of highly localized, holistic, primordial1sl
image<; of cultural form dnd sub'itance (Hannerz 1989; Marlus and F1scher
\986, Thornton 1988; But not very much has heen put m their pl<tce, ex-
cept larger 1f mechanical versions of these images. as in Eric
Vi/olfs wmk on the relationship of Eurupe to the re:.t of the world ( 1981]
\\?hat l would hke to propose is that we begin to thmk of the contiguration
of forms in today's world a> funddmentally fractul, that i>, as pos-
no Fuchdean boundanes, stmctures, or rq..,"llldl"ities Scc..onci, 1
wou
1
d :.uggest chat ,hese cultural forms, wh1Lh we shou'.d otrive tn repre-
<;e-r.t a:. rully fractal, are also in ways that have been
only in pure (in theol)', for example) and in biology (m
the language of polychet.ic clas5ificanons) Thus we need to combine a
f1actal metaphor for the shape of cultures (in the plural; with a polythetic
account of their overlaps and resemhlances. \'.:'ithout this latter step, we
:.hull remam mired in compdrutlve work on the dear separation
of the entme:. Lobe compared before senous can heglTI. How
are we to compare fractally shaped culturul ure al'io
Lally overlapping in their of terrestrial space:?
r1nally in order for the theory of global cultura I pre d1cated
on disj1.mctivc flows to have any force than that of a mechanical
me\<tphor, It will have to move into something like a humJ.n of the
that some are calling c..h<tos theory. That is, we wdl need
to ask not how these complex, overlappmg. fractal const1tute a sim-
ple, :even if but to ask whut its dynamics are:
'IX'hy do ethn1c nots occur when where they Vi/hy do wither
at greater rJtes m some places t1mc'> than in otherlil W'hy do some
co\Jmrie; flout conventions of international debt repaymen1: with much
apparent worry than othcr:-71-low are international arms Aows driving
rthmc b<tttles and \Why are some :.tates exitmg the glohal stage
whde others "'re clamoring to gel1n! Why du key events occur at a certain
pomt in a certam place rather than in others;J These are, of cour.;e, the
r;.,l;'''''"'' ""d Df('''"''
I
I
I
greut traditronal of contlr.gcnLy. itl1d pred1rt1nn Ill rhe
human sc1ences. but n a wmiJ of disjunctive gloha' flows, 1t" perhaps im-
portant to start them in a way that un in;ages of flow and un-
celtainty, hence ch11o1. rather than on older of stab1i1ty, anci
'ystematicness Otherw1se, we will havf gone far towarci a theory of glohal
c..dturJI sysrem<; hut d11own out rrocess in the bargain And that would
these part of :uwo11d the kmd of dluown of order thJ:
we no longer a1torcl to rmpose on a "'Or:d :hat " :.o

volatile
\X'hateveT the directinns in whic;.. we can pu>h these
(fractals, polythetic cla>slh(;atJons, and cham) wr:: need :o one ot11fr
old-fash1m1ed question OlH of the paradigm i:. there son
1
e pre-
g,ven order to the relativf cietcrmrning force of these glubdl ll'..J"'S! Be-
I have _::Jostulated the of global cultural as driven
by the relatwn:.hips ot per:.ons, teciinologies, hnaPLe, Infor-
mation, and ideology, can we speak of some I h nking
these P.ow<; hy analogy to the role of the nomic orclrr in one of
the Marxist paradigm? C,n we of <;orne of these bemg, for a
p110n stn1ctural or h1stonLal reosons. always pnur to and formatwe of
ULher flows7 My own hypo\hesis. whic'l can only be tel'tative a: thio point
is that the relutionship of these vanous flows to one as tlley con-
stellate mto particular and so(;ial forrns will be radKally context-
dependent. Thus, while labor Aows and their loops Wl[h hna1Lial Aows
between Kerala and the Middle b>t may ac(;ount for the of
flows and ideosl;apes in Keral<t. the revcne be tn.1e of SiiJCon Valley n
California, 111tense specalizat1on m <1 single technologiCa' . .,ector
:computer<;) and pal\\C'Jlar P.ows of capital well pro;oundlv
the shape that ideosrapes. and med:<tscapes may toke
This not r.1ean that relat1onsh1p among these
various rilndon or meaning]e<;<;ly c.:ontingent bur thM our cu1-rcnt
theoncs of l.ultural are msu;fiClcnt\y developed to be even pars,mn.
niOU> models at th1s point. much to be p1eciictive theones, the golnen
of one kind of <;Citnc:e W'hatl have sought to prov1de rll th1s
a ecronom1c2l tcchna .. al voc<tbulary a 1Td1m<:n
tary model of disJuncttve from wh1ch He a decel't
might emerge. <;Gme sw.h analysis, it wdl he J,lllculc to
constr.JCt what John l-linkson a "soc,ultheol)' of
1s global (1990. 84j
r;.,,,,.,,:,. '''"d f.<ff,,, .. ,,