I particularly like Appadurai’s theories of overlapping, disjunctive “scapes.”
I find this view of global culture both compelling and useful in my own work.
To begin, Appadurai suggests that the more simple models of periphery/center do
not adequately capture the globalized culture of the modern world; instead, he
favors a model the looks at the complexity of disjunctive, overlapping “scapes.”
The idea of “scape” itself implies a reality that is shifting and
historically/politically/spacially/linguistically contingent. I have often
placed my research within one of these “scapes” and have not yet adequately
theorized either the contingency of this scape or the disjunctive/overlapping
nature of the scape with others.
In particular, it is easy to place my work within a framework of the
ethnoscape, which looks at the movement of people across the world: my research
in immigration is very obviously connected here, and I have tried to look at
the influence of historical, economic, etc factors on the particular population
of migrants that I study. However, I can also bring in other scapes for a more
complex understanding.
Appadurai defines technoscapes as the “global configuration, also ever
fluid, of technology, and of the fact that technology, both high and low, both
mechanical and informational, now moves at high speeds across various kinds of
previously impervious boundaries” (8). The technoscape on the Mexican-American
border consists of, first of all, the impervious boundaries between U.S. and
Mexican culture that have been formed through better communication and
transnational contact (informational technology). I think this technoscape
lends itself to the imagination of a world that has not been experienced:
imagination of “America” in particular is proliferated through technology and transcends
the border. At the same time as the technoscape opens the border, it closes it:
mechanical technology in the form of weapons, sensors, and walls create a
barrier within the ethnoscape, albeit an impervious one.
This technoscape is directly tied to the financescape: the movement of
global capital. The technological
barriers to crossing the border create production jobs (someone builds the
wall, programs sensors, etc) but also shifts the ethnoscape by creating demand
for smugglers: even more people that shift between cultures. And, the
financescape in and of itself drives this movement: it drives immigrants in search of jobs and
then creates work for smugglers and for border security.
The mediascape (“the distribution of the electornic capabilities to
produce and disseminate information” (9)) disseminates information about the
boundary between countries, attempting to scare American citizens into action
and Mexican citizens into ceasing movement. In Mexico, the mediascape create
that image of the American Dream (disseminated in the technoscape): the
Hollywood mansion, filled with tall, blonde women, an apparently obtainable
dream with hard work. Simultaneously, images of brown terrorists collude with images
of brown drug dealers and images of brown laborers. In this way, the mediascape
creates images that fuel the ideoscape’s ideologies of terrorism and security.
Yet, the disjunctive nature of the ideoscape results in other ideologies of melting
pots, bootstrap climbs, and human rights narratives. Exclusive citizenship and
fear collide with ideologies of equality.
I think these ideas, although barely developed in this blog, could be
useful for future theories. I wonder if using this in hand with queer theory
would produce an even better theoretical foundation (albeit a quite complex and
“chaotic” one) for my work.
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