Globalization and Transnationalism

• Marshall McLuhan – global village – the diversity of local cultures was radically reshaped and limited through increasingly advanced and universal systems of communications and travel technology.  The message is identical with the medium of transmission.  Hence, societies would inevitably become less hetereogenous, forever conditioned by global orientation and sensibility.
• Roland Robertson = etic compression of the world through technological, economic, and cultural interdependence and emic awareness of transformation stimulated by this interdpendence – intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole
• Threads that comprise global society are stronger in some places and weaker in others
• Question:  how does a growing local awareness of global connections and identity both inspire and lay the foundation for new forms of consciousness, cultural meaning, and social practice?
• Globalization-oriented Anthropologists = local cultures are not passively overwritten by or dissolved by “global steamroller” of Western industrial capitalism, instead peripheral cultures are hegemonizing the hegemonizers….example….Buddhism, reggae music, Japanese sushi cuisine, Native Am Art = bases for global cultural practices…facilitated by eclectronic media, communication, and travel technologies — no longer limited by geopolitical places or homelands
• Can antropological theory shed sufficient ligh on the nature of cultural difference to ferret out the root causes of mistrust and hatred that provoke deadly action on such an enormous scale?
• Paradox of postmodernity = presents self as final answer to “crisis in representation”
• Future relevance of anthro lies in ability to contribute to moral debates about social relations.  The moral implications of human diversity.
• History of theory defined not so much by facts but by proclitivites of different anthropological historians and historians of theory and vagaries and extent of consensus that develops around one perspective.