Arun Appadurai describes the current situation of our world in his essay “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”, and uses several new terms in his description. The most interesting I found were the concepts of the ‘ethnoscape’ and the ‘imagined world’.
He describes the ‘ethnoscape’ as “the landscape of persons who constitute the shifting world in which we live: tourists, immigrants … and other moving groups.”(33) He describes the world also as ‘imagined’ in our ways of thinking in particular realms, as media and contemporary (and largely commercial) sources become such an integral tool to our education. In contemplating these two terms together I can see how ethnicity can become part of this ‘imagined world’.
By this I mean that with the increase of moving persons, culture or ethnic identity can become displaced and harder to readily understand by someone that has grown up in a relocated environment. When a family has moved from their place of cultural origin they take their ethnic traditions with them but these traditions are, over time and generations, molded and reinterpreted in their new habitat. As this happens, the younger displaced members of a culture can look to media sources such as movies and magazines to relive their historical past and locate their ethnic identity, as this can be the only place they can experience their culture besides their domestic setting. That is, if a culture or ethnicity has been developed in a displaced community through generational adaptation, stereotypical images of a culture can take hold and these ‘imagined’ cultures can become a source for ethnic identity.
Appadurai sees this as a challenge faced by most people in the modern world, and the ‘imagined’ culture a phenomena not too vastly unreasonable: “how do small groups, especially families … deal with these new global realities as they seek to reproduce themselves and, in doing so, by accident reproduce cultural forms themselves?”(43)
Although this outlook can seem bleak for our cultural identity, as it conjures images and thoughts of an almost a uniformic version of our ethnic diversity, the argument can be made that at least it seems our cultural identities will and can remain intact, even though the form might not stay the same as in our ancestral history. “This does not mean that they will be static entities. There will be an ongoing, dynamic transformation through dialogue and encounter”. A recent essay by Michael Amaladoss “Global Homogenization: Can Local Cultures Survive?” from which this point was made further argued that cultures must survive the onslaught of contemporary culture as “people construct their identities through their cultures, they will defend them, even violently if necessary… Cultural diversities, as expressions of divine and human freedom and creativity, will have to be protected and defended.”
Amaladoss, Michael. “Global Homogenization: Can Local Cultures Survive?” August 2008. http://www.sedos.org/english/amaladoss2.html
Appadurai, Arun. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy”. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press. 1996:22-47.
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2 comments:
The idea that cultural identity can fall in and outof the imagined especially for persons of migration is interesting, would you agree that this is the case with identity in general? Would you agree that an adult having 'moved on' from childhood inpart 'imagines' some childhood details, and these imaginations with time are interpreted as fact? This summer I am returning to my home country for the first time since we moved to NZ 10 years ago.....will be an interesting experience in that respect!
I think you brought this to a nice conclusion. There are some positive aspects of having to hold on strongly so as not to lose one's cultural identity, though I don't mean to sound insensitive. In times of strain, people can be very resourceful and may turn to their cultural traditions for strength and support. It may cause some re-moulding and reinterpretation but the outcome may be a more defined and better adapted culture for the contemporary world, and certainly the aspects of the culture that people value and enjoy the most will endure. It is impossible to discern from the outside what is valuable to a culture, and this is often misread. A stereotype is only damaging if it is hurtful; if it is reclaimed and incorporated back into culture it is no longer closed off, but open again to adaptation. I believe that culture and traditions should be enjoyed, loved and celebrated, and should not be seen to hold people back from progress in the contemporary world.
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