Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity

by Anthony D. King

A foundational work in the study of the globalization of culture. First published in 1991, Culture, Globalization and the World-System is one of the inaugural books discussing the increasing tendency of cultural practices to cross national boundaries. Now widely available in the United States for the first time and updated with a new preface, these influential essays by a distinguished group of cultural critics lay the groundwork for a vital new field of inquiry. Culture, Globalization and the World-System views culture through different prisms and categories -- including race, gender, ethnicity, class, and nation. The contributors consider how socially organized systems of meaning are produced and represented. Drawing from sociology, art history, film studies, and anthropology, these essays provide paradigms for understanding cultures and the representation of identity in "the world as a single place".

Genres: Sociology, Cities, Anthropology, History

200 pages, Paperback

First published December 2, 1991

Reviews

[Gözde Bose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kültürün küreselleşmesi ile ilgili çalışan profesörlerin 1989'da kitap ile aynı adı taşıyan bir sempozyumda konuşmaları, Antony- king tarafından kitap haline dönüştürülmüş halidir. Özellikle Stuart Hall ve Wallerstein'ın yazıları oldukça etkileyici ve örnekleri ile güzel bir şekilde konuya yaklaşımlarını aktarmışlar.
Antony King'in makalesindeki küreselleşen toplumdaki benzerleşen mimariye bakış açısı oldukça etkileyiciydi.
Kitabın ilk makalelerinde ulus- devlet, yerellik, evrensellik bağlamında kültürlerin açıklaması yapılmaya çalışırken , ilerleyen makalelerde bir küresel kültürün yeniden inşa edilmesi ve onun nasıl çözümleneceği üzerine değerlendirmeler mevcut. Konuların ele alınış sırası ve makalelerin birbirine atıfta bulunarak ilerlemesi, kitabın bütünüyle bağlam kurmanıza yardımcı oluyor. Ancak makalelerin fazlasıyla kuramsal olarak ilerlemesi, bazen bir kaç kez daha üzerinden geçilmesine sebep oluyor.
Kültürel boyutta, sosyolojik bir inceleme yapmak için oldukça yardımcı olabilecek bir kitap.

[The Awdude · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays that were originally presented at a symposium on globalization theory. Its primary contributers are Stuart Hall, Roland Robertson, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Ulf Hannerz, among others, edited by Anthony King. More than a rigorous or dynamic theoretical inquiry, this anthology amounts to a collective plea for wider interdisciplinary approaches to cultural studies. Each writer seems to be asking the same questions in only slightly different words, and none of them ventures into uncharted territory or attempts to challenge the conventional discourses that have been circulating about globalization for some time now. They all seem to agree: both the local and the global realms of social experience are interconnected in complex ideological, economical, and cultural apparatuses which function through obscure systems of hegemony and defy all previous analytical figurations posed by traditional Western ethnography, anthropology, and sociology. But this is something we already know. What we don't know, and what cultural criticism should strive to figure out, is how to give an account of culture which apprehends the systems of cultural production, narrative trafficking, and representational politics inherent to and precedent of totalizing attempts to reify notions of what we mean when we speak about "culture," "identity," and "modernity." Of course, Lacan, Derrida, Baudrillard, Zizek, Deleuze, and the rest of the poststructuralist gang would have plenty to contribute in this respect, but sadly these advocates of so-called "cultural studies" are too terrified to go near them. The result, in the end, is a premature application of non-theories which are far from ready to take off the training wheels.