Tracking Global Flows

Tracking Global Flows is an introduction to the theroetical text The Anthropology of Globalization by Jonathon Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo. This extensive introduction provided me with the relevant material for this particular post.

Introduction

This essay opens with the presentation of five scenarios, or five examples, of globalization. Globalization refers to the intensification of global interconnectedness, suggesting a world full of movement and mixture, contact and linkages, and persistent cultural interaction and exchange. (Inda, J. X. and Rosaldo, R., 2008: 4). According to the text, these stories speak of an intensely interconnected world- one where the rapid flows of capital, people, goods, images and ideologies draw more and more of the globe into webs of interconnection, compressing our sense of time and space, and making the world feel smaller and distances shorter.

At the same time Inda and Rosaldo argue that globalization is an awkward and uneven process. For the very processes that produce movement and linkages also promote immobility, exclusion, and disconnection. (Inda, J. X. and Rosaldo, R., 2008: 6).
This essay aims to examine a more comprehensive view of globalization, that is, an anthropologist's view on the subject.

The essay is divided into three main arguments:

1. The defintion of globalization (an issue of space and time)
2. Cultural dynamics of globalization
3. Limits of global mobility and connection

The Spaces and Times of Globalization

Globalization suggests something much more profound about the modern world than the simple fact of growing global interconnectedness. It implies a fundamental reordering of time and space. (Inda, J. X. and Rosaldo, R., 2008: 8)
For the subject of space and time, Inda and Rosaldo have chosen to examine the work of David Harvey and Anthony Giddens. Thus the following paragraphs will make reference to their ideologies.

Speeding It Up
In 1989, Harvey coined the term 'time-space compression'. This is the manner in which the speeding up of economic and social processes has experientially shrunk the globe, so that distance and time no longer appear to be major constraints on the organization of human activity. The process of time-space compression (and hence of globalization), Harvey argues, is not a gradual or continuous occurrence. Rather, it takes place in discrete phases of short and concentrated bursts. (Inda, J. X. and Rosaldo, R., 2008: 8). For example, the Fordist to post-Fordist society. Or in general terms, the speed-up in the turnover time of capital is rapidly shrinking the world.

Stretching It Out
Anthony Giddens, like Harvey, considers globalization to involve a profound reorganization of time and space in social and cultural life. However, while Harvey focuses on the general speed-up of economic and social processes, Giddens is more preoccupied with the stretching of social life across time and space. (Inda, J. X. and Rosaldo, R., 2008: 10)
Giddens' notion of 'time-space' distanciation' refers to 'the conditions under which time and space are organized so as to connect presence and absence.
For Giddens, then, globalization points to the interlocking of the local and the global; that is, it "concerns the intersection of presence and absence, the interlacing of social events and social relations 'at a distance' with local contextualities". (Inda, J. X. and Rosaldo, R., 2008: 11)

Culture Imperialism and The Homogenization of the World

One of the important issues that the de/territorialization of culture raises concerns the organization of the flow of menaing in the world, or what might be called the cultural economy of globalization. To summarise, this is the sharing of cultures through globalization. The discourse of cultural imperialism offers a highly critical stance towards the globalization of culture. Its primary argument is the dominance of Western culture and the ever-increasing movement towards 'sameness'. The movement is overwhelming.

The discourse of cultural imperialism presents us with at least two specific, albeit interrelated, visions of global cultural uniformity:

1. A new empire, that of America, has come to replace the western European colonial system that had ensnared much of the world since the nineteenth century. This new imperial regime owes its ascendance to economic might, which germinates principally from the actions of US-based transnational corporations, and communications know-how, which has permitted American business and military interests to largely monopolize the development of electronically based systems of communication. (Inda, J. X. and Rosaldo, R., 2008: 16). As a result, the American broadcasting system has extended its reaches to the remainder of the globe, particularly the Third World. This sudden surge of American culture is a continuous threat to peripheral cultures.

2. The second vision of global uniformity attributes the synchronization of the world to the spread of western culture more generally. John Tomlinson simplifies this notion in the text: 'the continuous spread of the West's epistemological and ontological theories, its values, ethnical systems, approaches to rationality, technical-scientific worldview, political culture, and so on.'
In other words, globalization entails the dissemination of all facets of the West's way of being: from musical forms, architecture, and modes of dress to eating habits. (Inda, J. X. and Rosaldo, R., 2008: 16)

Limits of Global Mobility and Connection

Jonanthan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo describe globalization in “a world full of movement and mixture, contact and linkages, and persistent cultural interaction and exchange” (2008:4). However they also make refernce to the fact that while movement and connections are vital characteristics of globalization, disconnection and exclusion also shape globalization (Inda and Rosaldo 2008:30). Global flows of economic and social structures are not fluid and constant; they have the power to exclude and immobilize as well as enhance movement and include certain beings.

Conclusion

Tracking Global Flows is a shining example on the study of the effects globalization has on the people living in specific localities. This anthropological text is primarily concerned with the articulation of the global and the local, that is, with how globalizing processes exist in the contxt of, and must come to terms with, the realities of particular societies, with their acummulated - that is to say, historical - cultures and ways of life. (Inda and Rosaldo, 2008: page 7)

List of References:

1. Inda, J. X. and Rosaldo, R. (2008) 'Tracking Global Flows' in Inda and Rosaldo (eds.) (2008, 2nd Ed.) The Anthropology of Globalisation: 3-46.