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

by Anthony D. King (Editor)

The ever-increasing trend towards the globalisation of culture presents a major challenge to traditions of social and cultural analysis developed and focussed at the level of the nation state. In this book major theorists from Cultural Studies, Sociology, Art History and Anthropology present and debate a range of paradigms for understanding the production and presentation of cultures, as socially organised systems of meaning, 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.