Lecture 1 – The Anthropology of Globalization
The end of globalization?
This question came with crisis like:
- Credit crunch (2010)
- Trump
- COVID-19
- Ukraine War
These crisis urge people to think it might be time to end globalization
It did not really end globalization
There are two questions you should ask yourself:
1. Why should these crisis trigger the end of globalization?
The crisis has exposed that globalization has effected vulnerability and the
way power is in the world
Crises trigger insecurity -> you feel the urge to do something about this ->
we want to restore
We have to undo the down sights of globalization -> we need to be self
sufficient
Gas from Russia, during COVID
Why do crises stir reflections on globalization?
- Mono-focus of analyses
- The urge to minimize globalization -> disaster protectionism
2. Does globalization really end?
Is the end of globalization near?
- Pretty unlikely -> it is a naïve thing to think -> look at history -> it
just does not happen
o Crises causes for change not end of globalization
- One can put no to stop to glob!
o Globalization is not just economic and politic -> we cannot
stop it because we don’t have the resources, structures to stop
globalization
Definition of globalization
Globalization refers to the intensification of the global interconnectedness,
suggesting a world full of movement and mixture, contacts and linkages,
and persistent cultural interaction and exchange
They later added: it implies a fundamental reordering of time and
space
This reordering of time and space is basically the focus of anthropologists
,Everything influences everything
It is not just about the factual reordering but also about the experience of
people of this reordering. The experience of globalization is effective it
makes people do, feel and think things -> it causes actions
Experience of globalization is very important -> it makes the change, it
causes the actions
Globalization key concepts (according to Eriksen):
- Disembedding: it’s the idea that your social life and connected to
they don’t have to be the people your close to. Your network and
community doesn’t have to be in a specific territory. The lifting out
of the social and the local of physique environment. The lifting out of
actual social and physical location. You become disconnected from
your origin places
- Speed: globalization has a pace, movements are going really fast.
The speed and pace of change. Certain things are happening to us
and people on the other side of the world in the same time.
Overheating is about speed. Things might get out of control because
of the high pace, speed
- Standardization: the spread of English. The presence of global
brands. Its normal that we speak English during a college were 99%
is Dutch
- Connections: is about the fact of intensification of relations,
economic, politics
- Mobility: the mobility of goods and people
- Mixing: blending different cultural forms, ideas, traditions. You are
being inspired by the confrontation of different ideas
- Risk: the start of the lecture -> the vulnerability caused by
globalization -> there are a lot of things we don’t know or/ and can’t
control, pandemics
- Identity politics: the urgency to define yourself, there are more
means to define yourself
o What does it mean to be Christian, Dutch, a farmer
- (Alterglobalization) -> it involves the critical response of the dark
side of globalization, for example disembedding,
counterglobalization -> there are also people who try to fight
globalization
Catalysts of contemporary globalization
Since the 1980s, global transformation and changes in the anthropological
perspective on culture -> common ingredients in definitions of
globalizations:
1. Neoliberalism and economic interdependence
2. Redefined role nation-state: transnational flows -> economic flows
are decreased constrained by boundaries of nation
, 3. Contact and exchange (technological advancement): more
possibilities to connect with each other, mobiles, the internet
4. Intertwinement local and global processes: political movements,
daily lives have changed due to globalization
5. Confrontation with a variety of cultural influences: difference, results
of migration, transport, social media
Globalization creates uncertainty but this is experienced in different ways
The process of culture (Appadurai’s -scapes)
Arjun Appadurai’s: New global cultural economy (look at the
interconnection of these):
- Relation, interconnection culture, politics and economy
o Imagined worlds: in order to understand the connection we
have to think in imagined worlds -> we understand worlds,
love, safety
o These are based on understandings reality that are basically
the product of our existence in the world. We experience
things, dream things, we aspire things and while doing that we
compose the world and we imagine how the world is or should
be
o These imagine worlds are formative and productive, they don’t
just exist in the head of people they relate to practice, actions
o These worlds shape the way we think and act
- 5 scapes, buildings blocks of imagined worlds. These influence each
other and they also develop independent of each other. These
imagined worlds are compositions of imagined scapes (land)scapes
as ‘perspectival constructs’: 5 different scapes:
o Ethnoscape: the impression of people that move across the
world. The mobility of people on fold
o Finance scape: the impression of the capital, financial, market.
Financial risks, job opportunities, stock markets, economies
o scape: the impression of communication and technology, the
idea that technology is bounderless, and that is hard to
understand and follow
o Media scape: about two things:
The spread of possibilities to spread of information
The results of the spread of information
o Ideo- scape: the impression of political ideologies,
countermovements, counter ideologies how you think the
world should look like and how you act upon this
These scapes are perspectival constructs -> the way people
experience these scapes is determined by your position and purpose
in the world (if you’re poor or rich, woman or man)
The framework, structure of new global culture economy is shaped by the
imagined worlds.
, The way these scapes are organized today is different than before
- Increaslingly hard to determine position and role
- Scapes lack a clear and stabile shape -> We know that everything is
connected but how
Today’s world (as time-space) appears dynamic, fluid and chaotic -> we
need to take this into consideration to look at the process of culture
Evolution of anthropological thinking
The modern era: formative anthropology (late 19th century-1900):
- Armchair anthropologists: studies exotic cultures on the basis of the
writing of others (explorers, missionaries colonial officials)
- Peoples and cultures with boundaries and tied to a territory
- Stressing differences between us and them (othering) -> used to
emphasize our own dominance
- Evolutionary perspective on cultures
Modern era: classical (late 1900-1945):
- Malinowski: participant observation
- 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
