culture and global diasporas

[Mark A Peterson]

Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson  1997  Culture, Power, Place.  Duke
University Press.

This is a great collection of essays, some theoretical, some ethnographic,
and what to do with the culture concept in a world of transnational
movements in which people-culture-place can no longer be seen as isomorphic.
Their solution seems to be to focus on the concept of "identities"

Appadurai, Arjun.  1996.  Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of
Globalization.  University of Minnesota Press.

This book collects all of Appadurai's important essays on globalization,
transnational "flows" and "ethnoscapes, mediascapes" etc that cross and
transcend borders.  His solution to the problem of culture in an age of
globale diasporas is to focus on "the work of the imagination"

There is also a good overview article of the literature up to 1995:

Kearney, M. 1995. The local and the global: The anthropology of
globalization and transnationalism. Annual Review of Anthropology 24:
547-565.

Please post your results.  I'm scheduled to tach a "special topics" course
on this in the summer of 2001 and I'd be interested to see what you've got.

Best,

Mark

Mark Allen Peterson
Asst. Professor of Anthropology
The American University in Cairo
PO Box 2511, Cairo 11511 EGYPT
peterson at aucegypt.edu

"Laughter overcomes fear, for it knows no inhibitions, no limitations. Its
idiom is never used by violence and authority."
          -- Mikhail Bakhtin
-----Original Message-----
From: Susan Needham <saneedham at earthlink.net>
To: linganth at cc.rochester.edu <linganth at cc.rochester.edu>
Date: Thursday, February 17, 2000 10:45 PM
Subject: culture and global diasporas


>Can anyone recommend sources that re-theorize culture and identity in
>light of global diaspora/transnationalism?  Also, if anyone is aware of
>any work applying these concepts to education and curriculum development
>that would be helpful.  Thanks
>
>Susan Needham
>Assistant Professor
>CSU, Dominguez Hills
>310-243-3485
>
>