Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Public Worlds, Vol. 1)

The world is growing smaller. Every day we hear this idea expressed and witness its reality in our lives-through the people we meet, the products we buy, the foods we eat, and the movies we watch. In this bold look at the cultural effects of a shrinking world, leading cultural theorist Arjun Appadurai places these challenges and pleasures of contemporary life in a broad global perspective. Offering a new framework for the cultural study of globalization, Modernity at Large shows how the imagination works as a social force in today's world, providing new resources for identity and energies for creating alternatives to the nation-state, whose era some see as coming to an end. Appadurai examines the current epoch of globalization, which is characterized by the twin forces of mass migration and electronic mediation, and provides fresh ways of looking at popular consumption patterns, debates about multiculturalism, and ethnic violence. He considers the way images-of lifestyles, popular culture, and self-representation-circulate internationally through the media and are often borrowed in surprising (to their originators) and inventive fashions. Appadurai simultaneously explores and explodes boundaries-between how we imagine the world and how that imagination influences our self-understanding, between social institutions and their effects on the people who participate in them, between nations and peoples that seem to be ever more homogeneous and yet ever more filled with differences. Modernity at Large offers a path to move beyond traditional oppositions between culture and power, tradition and modernity, global and local, pointing out the vital role imagination plays in our construction of the world of today-and tomorrow. "Offering a new framework for the cultural study of globalization, Modernity at Large shows how the imagination works as a social force in today's world, providing new resources for identity and energies for creating alternatives to the nation-state, whose era some see as coming to an end. Appadurai examines to current epoch of globalization, which is characterized by the twin forces of mass migration and electronic mediation, and provides fresh ways of looking at popular consumption patterns, debates about multiculturalism, and ethnic violence. He considers the way images--of lifestyles, popular culture, and self-representation--circulate internationally through the media and are often borrowed in surprising (to their originators) and inventive fashions." -- Provided by publisher Frontmatter Acknowledgments (page ix) 1 Here and Now (page 1) Part I Global Flows 2 Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy (page 27) 3 Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology (page 48) 4 Consumption, Duration, and History (page 66) Part II Modern Colonies 5 Playing with Modernity: The Decolonization of Indian Cricket (page 89) 6 Number in the Colonial Imagination (page 114) Part III Postnational Locations 7 Life after Primordialism (page 139) 8 Patriotism and Its Futures (page 158) 9 The Production of Locality (page 178) Notes (page 201) Bibliography (page 205) Index (page 219) Here And Now -- Part I; Global Flows. Disjuncture And Difference In The Global Cultural Economy ; Global Ethnoscapes: Notes And Queries For A Transnational Anthropology ; Consumption, Duration, And History -- Part Ii: Modern Colonies. Playing With Modernity: The Decolonization Of Indian Cricket ; Number In The Colonial Imagination -- Part Iii: Postnational Locations. Life After Primordialism ; Patriotism And Its Futures ; The Production Of Locality. Arjun Appadurai. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 205-217) And Index.