Week Seven Readings

Arjun Appadurai’s "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy"
Richard Rorty's "Globalization, The Politics of Identity and Social Hope"

In " Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy," Appadurai identifies five ‘dimensions’ of global cultural flow, namely: ehtnoscapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, mediascapes and ideoscapes. He uses these ‘scapes’ as a way of describing ebbs and flows of the new global cultural economy.

‘Ethnoscape’ refers to the landscape of shifting tourists, workers, immigrants and refugees throughout the world. ‘Technoscape’ refers to the ever-increasing flows of technology across borders. ‘Finascape’ refers to the flow of global capital through currency markets, stock exchanges and commodity markets. ‘Mediascape’ is used to describe the distribution of information through newspapers, magazines, films, television and other forms of media. Finally, ‘ideoscape’ refers to the concatenations of ideas, terms and images into ideologies such as ‘freedom’, sovereignty’, and ‘democracy’.

Appadurai identifies deterritorialization as a major force in the world, where groups of people are no longer defined by political borders and can create invented homelands wherever they go. Deterritorialization is not limited to people, but can be applied to money and commodities as well as they are, in Appadurai’s words, “ceaselessly chasing each other around the world.”

Disjuncture forms the basis of the flow of these ‘scapes’, becoming both the means of their creation and of identification. Flows of global capital occur because of differences in the cost of goods and labour around the world. Mass media of certain types flow from the areas of its creation to areas where it is not being created. Cultural differences help to create identity. Cultural identifiers flow throughout the world, being adopted, internalized and abandoned as people, ideas, money, media and technology shift across the globe.

In "Globalization, The Politics of Identity and Social Hope," Richard Rorty argues against political deliberation using a philosophical discussion of ‘identity’, ‘difference’, ‘subject’, ‘truth’ and ‘reason’. Rorty argues that John Dewey’s view is more appropriate to political discussion - that nothing “can take precedence over the result of agreement freely reached by members of a democratic community.”

Rorty notes that the achievement of a classless utopia was a goal of both the Marxists and the post World War II capitalists who believed that peace and progress would lead to prosperity within the free market, allowing welfare states to ensure equal opportunity for everyone. Many thinkers and politicians have given up on the idea of creating such a society. With the rise of globalization, an overclass of the super-rich has taken over economies all over the world. Because this overclass operates freely across borders, there is little control left in the hands of governments.

Rorty postulates that the egalitarian utopia is still a noble goal and might be achieved through the belief “that there is no source of authority other than the free agreement of human beings.” He believes that this type of discussion can empower people to more fully inhabit their role in democracy.