CULT 320: GLOBALIZATION AND

CULTURE

Kara Heitz, 09/09/2014

Overview of Today

1) Conceptual Overview (of first 4 weeks of class)

2) Linebaugh and Rediker

3) Cultural object description exercise

Globalization: The Present Moment

• Globalization - the increasing integration of the globe through a set of social, economic, political, and technological processes

• Marks: current global system is defined by:1. Industrial capitalism2. Nation-states3. Gap between rich and poor

• How did we get here?

Globalization and Historical Processes (since 1400)

• Polycentric not Eurocentric perspective

- Contingencies, accidents and conjunctures

• Key historical events/moments/processes/relationships:

- World system at 1400- European exploration & colonization- Industrial Revolution- Development of nation-state, nationalism- Increasing Gap between West and rest of the World- Imperialism, Global Wars (WWI & II)- Welfare State, Keynesianism- Decolonization, Cold War, economic development/modernization- Neoliberal capitalism

How do these historical processes affect current globalization?

• Development and spread of industrial capitalisms- Increasing wealth or inequalities (or both?)- Critiques of neoliberalism

• Colonialism/Imperialism/Decolonization- Post-colonial perspective

• Nation-states and national culture- Issues of identity, hybridity

• Histories of resistance

Linebaugh & Rediker

Why are pirates (or at least romanticized versions of them) so appealing in contemporary American popular culture?

Cultural object – bottle of Fiji water

Production Questions

1. Who produces, under what conditions, with what effects?

2. How are raw, human, and capital resources mobilized to produce?

3. What are the social and environmental effects of production?

4. Where does production take place?

Consumption Questions:

1. What do people do with this product?

2. What kinds of behaviors are associated with its use?

3. What social and environmental impacts does consumption of this product have?

4. Where does consumption take place? Where are the impacts?

Regulation Questions:

1. What are the constraints, norms, laws, guidelines, etc. that influence the production and consumption of this product? These may be governmental, infrastructural, ideological or moral, institutional, etc.

2. Are regulatory regimes local or global? Do they overlap, coincide, compete, etc?

3. Do they impact some areas or groups more than others?

Representation Questions:

1. What meaning is attributed to this product and how?

2. How do representations of the product, its production, its use, or the social relations around the product circulate?

3. Who is representing, to whom, at what time, where, with what effects?

4. What are the historical and geographical specificities of its representation?

Identity Questions:

1. How is the product used to construct group identities?

2. Do the identities of consumers, non-producing non-consumers, and producers/laborers generated around the product overlap or compete?

3. What kinds of subject positions does the product call into existence?

4. What kinds of subjectivities are generated through the social processes surrounding the product?

5. What kinds of differences, “samenesses” (identification), similiarities, or commmon causes (solidarities) are generated, underscored, emphasized, or contested by the production, circulation, and use of this product?