Can the Global Transmit the Local for Diaspora?

In Modernity at Large, flows of global culture are examined through the neologisms of five various “scapes”: ethnoscapes, mediascapes, ideoscapes, financescapes and technoscapes. According to Appadurai, the cross-cultural nature of these strands informs the imagination of social life among both individuals and the collective. Unlike other area studies scholars, anthropologists, historians, economists, sociologists and the like, Appadurai’s project is to investigate the advent of mass media communication as it relates to cultural aspects of globalization. Specifically, he seeks to demonstrate the ways in which the effects of mass migration and media combine to create a force that ruptures our current understanding of the nation-state. To Appadurai, the inevitable break from the nation-state is made possible through the societal sphere of the imaginary that has been formed through images disseminated by mass media. It is precisely the interpretation and conceptualization of these imaginaries by diaspora communities that produce agency and allow for the construction of imagined and material worlds that cannot be understood through the current spatial center-periphery binary. Early on in his volume, Appadurai provides readers with ample methodological and explanatory framework for his theories and the existing models in which he situates himself. The groundwork for his volume is laid out in an organized and comprehensive manner and directs us towards anticipation of the explicatory cultural intersections of globalization...