Globalization, Media and Culture

William Mazarella takes us through a short genealogy of anthropology after the introduction of the concept of globalization and he show how anthropology of media has been impacted and forced to reconstruct notions about culture and “authenticity”. He discusses mediation in relation to globalization and how the anthropology of media has changed with globalization. As well as, the process of mediation in regards to the construction of culture, the way we are now able to imagine it and then represent it to ourselves. Mazarella notes the way different form of media can limit or facilitate the spread of information, ideas and culture. He addresses in more detail the way in which media is flexible depending on the type duration (eg. Difference between and ad and a full length film) medium (tv, radio, census, press ect…).

Mazarella also notes the way that anthropological studies of media and globalization have been portrayed as stripping away the  “authenticity of culture”. Media is thus implicated in the creation of homogeneity via. globalization. When in fact globalization has increased emphasis on the “local” and thus the conservation of heterogeneity. Mazarella and Appaduri both address the reason for anthropologist’s fear of “Mc. World-style homogenization” stems from colonialism and “cultural imperialism”. I really like Mazarella’s image of a“Mc.World” and that this hasn’t come to pass in the wake of globalization. I wish Mazarella had focused a bit more on the adaptive strategies and appropriations of characteristics and aspects of mediation and globalization among cultures. His argument reminds me of the book, “Materializing the nation : commodities, consumption, and media in Papua New Guinea” by Robert Foster. Foster analyzes the way the media has been a large part of the contemporary notions of the “nation” in Papua New Guinea, in which there are so many separate cultures. It is also reminiscent of Benedict Anderson's concept of "Imagined communities" which are largely created and reinforced through media. An  example of an "imagined community" created by the media, is the "nation" and is the most directly related to media in relation to the Olympics' emphasis on unity apparent in most forms of media in 2010.

I agree with Mazarella that media and globalization go hand in hand and together are responsible for the high rate of cultural hybridity and change that has become the norm. I also agree with his deduction that cultural change and globalization has not yet led to homogenization and has on the contrary been utilized as a self-reflection. I think that his points would have been stronger had he given more examples in his article of the way in which cultures have  appropriated aspects of each other and adapted/changed without losing their “authenticity”.

Bibliography

Mazarella, William

         2004. Culture, Globalization, Mediation. Annual Review of Anthropology 33:345-367.

        Anderson, Benedict 

         1983. Imagined Communities, Pp. 9-46. London, New York: Verso.