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Summary Lectures CA3 (now CA4)
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Globalization & sociocultural complexity: Anthropological perspectivesLecture 1:
The anthropology of globalization
Today:
Definition of globalization
Catalysts of contemporary globalization
The process of culture
Evolution of anthropological thinking
Baby shark:
Culture with an open end
Local and global
Fluid
Culture is changeable and it is going fast
Today’s leading questions:
1. What should we keep in mind about contemporary cultural conditions?
2. What should we know about the state of our discipline (CA)?
“Globalization refers to the intensification of global interconnectedness, suggesting a world
full of movement and mixture, contacts and linkages, and persistent cultural interaction and
exchange”
“It (globalization) implies a fundamental reordering of time and space”
Aware of the changing world in high pace
Globalization: Key concepts (eriksen):
Disembedding → disconnection. Social context and local context. It is not physical
anymore. Disconnection of cultural forms and physical location. An experience that
helps you define globalization
Speed → the acceleration of change.
Standardization → languages, human rights
Connections → the intensification of global networks and organizations.
Mobility → migration, tourism
Mixing → occurs at a scale and speed and intensity that we have never seen before
Risk → increasing inability to protect yourselves from threats from outside.
identity politics → the urgency of identifying yourself, where do you identify with.
Increasing diversity in the world makes this more important.
(afterglobalization) → critical view/ responses to globalisation and disembedding
Eriksen:
Globalization is long existing. It is not something new. It has been around for a very long
time. Only that it is different today than in the past.
Since the 1980s, global transformation and changes in the anthropological perspective on
culture.
Common ingredients in definitions of globalization:
1. Neoliberalism and economic interdependence
2. Redefined role nation-state: transnational flows
3. Contact and exchange (technological advancement)
4. Intertwinement local and global processes
,Confrontation with a variety of cultural influences
New global cultural economy:
The relationship between culture, politics and economy, these need to be seen
together to understand the whole of a culture.
Imagined worlds, based upon an understanding of reality that has a clear social
context, cumulated experiences of people. Shape our thinking and practices. Consist
of different parts that influence each other.
5 scapes, buildings bricks of imagined worlds
The ethnoscape → impressions of people that move across the world.
Tourists, migrants, refugees etc. How people experience their presence.
Finance scape → the landscape of the kapital market, stock shares.
Techno scape → the world defined by information and technology which is
happening at a very high pace and how it influences the people.
Media scape → it consers the output of media, possibilities to produce
images.
Ideol scape → political ideologies. Concerning multiculturalism. Defining the
world and its people.
(land)scapes as ‘perspectival constructs’
These landscapes are very different today than in the past.
Imagined worlds (as framework of the new global cultural economy):
Landscapes lack a clear and stable shape, are fluid
Landscapes are no longer arranged in an orderly fashion, evolve independently
Result: the world appears to be highly dynamic, fluid and chaotic.
, The modern era: formative anthropology (late 19th century, 1900):
Armchair anthropologist → studies exotic cultures on the basis of the writings of
others (explorers, missionaries, colonial officials)
Peoples and cultures with boundaries with their own instinct culture. Tied to a
territory.
How are these people different from each other?
Stressing differences between us and them (othering)
Evolutionary perspective on culture
Legitimize our dominance, we are superior. The people who were studied are
barbaric.
Neglecting the similarities, focusing on the differences
Modern era: classical (late 1900-19450):
Malinowski → participant observation, ethnographic fieldwork
Cultural relativism → opposition to ethnocentrism
World divided into separate groups with distinct cultures, world as a mosaic, culture is
territorialized
essentialist/culturalist perspective on culture:
Culture is a thing, essence, is reified
Culture is static
Culture is homogeneous
Cultures are clearly bounded units with a stable territory
Culture explains behavior; powerful force
The late modern era: modern anthropology (1945-1980):
Interest in intergroup interaction and influence
Frederic Barth: processes of bordering are more important that the ‘cultural stuff’
inside.
Modernization paradigm: continuation of evolutionary perspective on development,
but also dependency theory & world systems: criticizing global distribution of power
Postmodernity: transitional anthropology (1980-1990):
Self-reflection within the discipline
Optimism (from the modern days) had faded after two world wars, the cold war and
modernization did not result in the expected rise in wealth.
Critical perspective on the ‘modernity project’ and the conceptualization of progress
Postmodernism in social sciences:
Rejecting grand theories/meta-narratives. Rejecting assumptions that imply
generalization, e.g. modernism, liberalism.
Meta-narratives reflect western hegemony rather that a universal human
development
Rejecting the claim of objectivity: reality is relative, constructed, situational
Rejecting essentialism
Constructionism:
Revised perspective on culture:
Culture is not a thing, but an abstract concept
Culture does not have agency (people do: emphasis on power)
Culture is dynamic
Cultures have never been cleary bounded
Culture is heterogeneous
Culture doesn’t explain behavior, culture itself should be explained
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