Globalization

A special issue of PUBLIC CULTURE, this volume of essays explores the experiences and political economies of globalization in various locales. Edited by one of the most prominent scholars in the field and including a distinguished group of contributors, this collection of essays makes a striking intervention in the increasingly heated debates surrounding the cultural dimensions of globalization. While including discussions about what globalization is and whether it is a meaningful term, the volume focuses in particular on the way that changing sites—local, regional, diasporic—are the scenes of emergent forms of sovereignty in which matters of style, sensibility, and ethos articulate new legalities and new kinds of violence. Seeking an alternative to the dead-end debate between those who see globalization as a phenomenon wholly without precedent and those who see it simply as modernization, imperialism, or global capitalism with a new face, the contributors seek to illuminate how space and time are transforming each other in special ways in the present era. They examine how this complex transformation involves changes in the situation of the nation, the state, and the city. While exploring distinct regions—China, Africa, South America, Europe—and representing different disciplines and genres—anthropology, literature, political science, sociology, music, cinema, photography—the contributors are concerned with both the political economy of location and the locations in which political economies are produced and transformed. A special strength of the collection is its concern with emergent styles of subjectivity, citizenship, and mobilization and with the transformations of state power through which market rationalities are distributed and embodied locally. Contributors. Arjun Appadurai, Jean François Bayart, Jérôme Bindé, Néstor García Canclini, Leo Ching, Steven Feld, Ralf D. Hotchkiss, Wu Hung, Andreas Huyssen, Boubacar Touré Mandémory, Achille Mbembe, Philipe Rekacewicz, Saskia Sassen, Fatu Kande Senghor, Seteney Shami, Anna Tsing, Zhang Zhen This collection of essays makes a striking intervention in the increasingly heated debates surrounding the cultural dimensions of globalization. While including discussions about what globalization is and whether it is a meaningful term, the volume focuses in particular on the way that changing sites -- local, regional, diasporic -- are the scenes of emergent forms of sovereignty in which matters of style, sensibility, and ethos articulate new legalities and new kinds of violence. Seeking an alternative to the dead-end debate between those who see globalization as a phenomenon wholly without precedent and those who see it simply as modernization, imperialism, or global capitalism with a new face, the contributors seek to illuminate how space and time are transforming each other in special ways in the present era. They examine how this complex transformation involves changes in the situation of the nation, the state, and the city. While exploring distinct regions -- China, Africa, South America, Europe -- and representing different disciplines and genres -- anthropology, literature, political science, sociology, music, cinema, photography -- the contributors are concerned with both the political economy of location and the locations in which political economies are produced and transformed Grassroots globalization and the research imagination / Arjun Appadurai -- At the edge of the world: boundaries, territoriality, and sovereignty in Africa / Archille Mbembe -- Mapping concepts / Philippe Rekacewicz -- Present pasts: media, politics, amnesia / Andreas Huyssen -- On foot / Boubacar Touré Mandémory -- On wheels / Ralf D. Hotchkiss -- Toward an ethics of the future / Jérôme Bindé -- A Chinese dream by Wang Jin / Wu Hung -- Mediating time: the "rice bowl of youth" in fin de siècle urban China / Zhang Zhen -- Inside the economy of appearances / Anna Tsing -- A sweet lullaby for world music / Steven Feld -- On the uddered breast -- Prehistories of globalization: Circassian identity in motion / Seteney Shami -- On the predicament of the sign: the modern African woman's claim to locality / Fatu Kande Senghor -- From national capital to global capital: urban change in Mexico City / Néstor García Canclini -- Spatialities and temporalities of the global: elements for a theorization / Saskia Sassen -- Globalizing the regional, regionalizing the global: mass culture and Asianism in the age of late capital / Leo Ching -- The paradoxical invention of economic modernity / Jean-François Bayart.