Melanie Roth - Post Blog 11/28

            Arjun Appardurai’s reading “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy” offers deep meaning, while exploring communication and ways to connect at a global level. Broadening the material by referencing other theorists, Appardurai introduces us to new ideas. This reading truly exemplifies the connections from one theorist to the other, and demonstrates correlation through this massive web of theory. 

Cuban emigration - 1980's

            Dissecting each of the “five dimensions of global cultural flows” (514) one by one, made it easier for my to organize my thoughts and to overall comprehend the material. One of the most important things that I have learned from this reading is that each of Appardurai’s “-scapes” is constantly changing. Out of the five, I personally find ideoscapes to be the most intriguing. The ever-growing global flow, and the spreading of ideologies throughout the world is what defines ideoscapes. The Mariel Boat Lift, an event that resulted in a mass emigration of Cubans to the United States, is an example of how ideoscapes work. In this specific case, the flood of Cubans to south Florida caused an overwhelming transformation of Miami. Because of the new population of Cuban immigrants, ideologies quickly were dispersed and changed, exemplifying Appardurai’s term ideoscape.  

I enjoyed concluding class with the video from TED talks where Hans Rosling provided us with visual imagery to share global statistics about population and life expectancies. The technology used to display this information provided viewers with a clear visual of how the world is continuously changing.