167
See also: Zygmunt Bauman 136–43 ■ Immanuel Wallerstein 144–45 ■
Roland Robertson 146–47 ■ Manuel Castells 152–55 ■ Jeffrey Alexander 204–09
Arjun Appadurai
Born in Mumbai, India, Arjun
Appadurai went to the US to
study at Brandeis University,
near Boston. He attained
his master’s degree in 1973
and his doctorate from the
University of Chicago in 1976.
Appadurai is currently the
Goddard Professor in Media,
Culture, and Communication
at New York University, where
he is also Senior Fellow at the
Institute for Public Knowledge.
He has served as an advisor
to the Smithsonian Institution,
the National Endowment for
the Humanities, the National
Science Foundation, the
United Nations, and the World
Bank. Appadurai founded and
is president of the nonprofit
group Partners for Urban
Knowledge Action and
Research, based in Mumbai,
and he is one of the founders
of Public Culture, an
interdisciplinary journal
focused on transnationalism.Key works1990 “Disjuncture and
Difference in the Global
Cultural Economy”
1996 Modernity at Large:
Cultural Dimensions of
Globalization
2001 GlobalizationIndian social anthropologist and
sociologist Arjun Appadurai has
taken this debate in a different
direction. He argues that the
conventional view of globalization
as a form of cultural imperialism
fails to reflect the reality of the
changes globalization has set
in motion. Instead, Appadurai
suggests that different societies
appropriate the materials of
modernity differently.
What this means is that one
society, such as China, may take
up one aspect of global change
(such as economic change) very
rapidly, and another aspect (such
as ideological change) very slowly,
while another society will be
different altogether. The result
is that globalization does not
necessarily denote a uniform
and all-encompassing process;
rather, nations are more positively
disposed toward certain facets
of globalization than others,
depending on a range of factors,
such as the state of the economy,
political stability, and strength
of cultural identity. For example,
China has embraced industrial
and information technologies
and global economic expansion,
while retaining a strong sense
of political autonomy.
For Appadurai, the process of
globalization is one that leads to
“disjunctures” where areas such ❯❯LIVING IN A GLOBAL WORLD
Different societies—and the diasporas
comprising them—appropriate the
materials of modernity differently.The human imagination
is key to understanding
globalization.How these dimensions
are experienced
by individuals, groups,
or states is a matter
of perspective.Individuals
conceptualize
globalization through
five fluid dimensions.These dimensions
encompass finance,
technology, ideas, media,
and the mobility
of people.