Appadurai and the Invented Homelands

I will not deny that the Appadurai reading was a challenging one. At first glance I thought I would be able to tackle the 11 pages with ease, but I learned that few pages do not equal a short reading time. Nevertheless, in the middle of all difficult terms and long words, and with the help of our class discussion, I believe I was able to comprehend some of the author’s big ideas.

His way of contextualizing the subject of the text is extremely helpful. He begins the article with an explanation of the changes that have occurred in the world during the past few centuries. Newer technology, both in communication and transportation systems, has allowed for more durable “cross-societal bonds” and the birth of a global cultural economy.

We extensively discussed his ideas of image, imagined, and imaginary, terms that begin to take shape in this contemporary time and space. Although I am still unsure about the term “imaginary,” I find the idea of the imagined interesting and tangible. The author explains five dimensions of global cultural flows, the ethnoscapes, the mediascapes, the technospcaes, the financescapes, and the ideoscapes. He points out that these “scapes” are fluid, with “irregular shapes” and they constantly interact and influence one another. These landscapes, as I see, can also influence images and interact with the imagined and imaginary.  

An example that stuck to me was the deterritorialization occurring in the modern world and its relation to imagined communities. At first, the latter term seems to reflect virtual communities, communities created by people and lived in the imaginary. However, this term can be applied to much more concrete examples, such as ethnic conflicts and attempts to create new states (some examples are be the Palestinian group and the many states descendant from the former Yugoslavia). As the author explains, “In general, separatist transnational movements, including those that have included terror in their methods, exemplify nations in search of states” (Appadurai 2012, 517).

Coming from a country that encompasses several different ethnicities, groups, and personalities, this idea certainly stuck to me. In fact, my home state (Rio Grande do Sul) declared independence from Brazil in 1835 and it was a self-proclaimed independent country for almost 10 years. I wonder how the "scapes" interactions led the distinct population within Rio Grande do Sul to seek a separatist movement in the 1800s, and what other interactions are leading several nations to seek these movements at our present time. Perhaps Appadurai is correct and these movements are not black and white revolutions, but they are actually reflections of the combined actions of the several landscapes of the contemporary world.

And to conclude my post, a political cartoon about the contemporary world (the critical ones are always funnier).