CMNS1234 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Transculturation, Arjun Appadurai, Manuel Castells
28 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
International and/or Global Communication
Digital Diasporas
• the convergence of two parallel developments: global migration and the flow of
symbolic forms and digital interactive media, are having profound consequences for
our transnational world.
• there are many ways of constructing a notion of the world. These include seeing it
as:
- an economic world
- a cultural world, or
- a political world.
• the political world concerns itself with the continuing erosion of the nation state’s
powers
• The nation state has been attacked from one end by various localized political
movements and subverted from the other end by supra-national institutions
Conclusions drawn by Allen and Massey]
• these economic, cultural and political worlds are not necessarily mutually exclusive
worlds.
• key components must include:
- the internationalisation of activities
- a concentration of ownership and control
- technological advances
• Various technologies have overridden geographical boundaries and national borders
as these multiple worlds have come together in a process of convergence.
International Communication
• The study of international communication is seen as “communication that occurs
across international borders”
• Daya Kishan Thussu suggests that there have been two broad and often interrelated
approaches to theorizing international communication.
• Political economy which is concerned with ‘the underlying structures of economic and
political power relations’
• the cultural studies approach: its initial concerns were with social hegemony and
inequality and the role mass and popular culture played in reproducing these
inequalities. It then moved on to an analysis of how texts create meaning and ‘how
culturally situated individuals work to gather meaning from texts’
Globalisation – Three Perspectives
• The liberal interpretation of the term globalisation is that it fosters “international
economic integration and as a mechanism for promoting global liberal capitalism.
• Critical theorists see globalisation as “a new version of Western cultural imperialism.
This process has produced a fear of ‘McDolandisation’ or ‘Americanization’ within a
largely homogenised world.
• Those who take a largely poststructuralist position question the assumptions made
by the preceding theorists, arguing that there is a contraflow from the periphery to the
centre. The forces of fragmentation and hybridity are equally strong and they affect
all societies” (ibid). In this case it would be more correct to use the term
transculturation.
Free Flow of Information hypothesis
• the primary function of international communication was to promote democracy,
freedom of expression and markets
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Document Summary
Digital diasporas the convergence of two parallel developments: global migration and the flow of symbolic forms and digital interactive media, are having profound consequences for our transnational world. there are many ways of constructing a notion of the world. Conclusions drawn by allen and massey] these economic, cultural and political worlds are not necessarily mutually exclusive worlds: key components must include: the internationalisation of activities. A concentration of ownership and control technological advances: various technologies have overridden geographical boundaries and national borders as these multiple worlds have come together in a process of convergence. It then moved on to an analysis of how texts create meaning and how culturally situated individuals work to gather meaning from texts". The forces of fragmentation and hybridity are equally strong and they affect all societies (ibid). In this case it would be more correct to use the term transculturation.
