Arjun Appadurai
Born in Bombay,India in 1949 and educated in the United States, Arjun Appadurai is a contemporary social-cultural anthropologist focusing on modernity and globalization. He was formerly a professor at the University of Chicago where he recieved his MA and PhD, and some of his most important works include Worship and Conflict under Colonial Rule (1981), "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy" (1990) found in Modernity at Large (1996), and Fear of Small Numbers (2006).
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Imaginary
Appadurai articulated a view of cultural activity known as the imaginary (sociology), or the social imaginary. For Appadurai the imaginary is composed of five dimensions of global cultural flow: 1) ethnoscapes; 2) mediascapes;3) technoscapes;4) finanscapes;5) ideoscapes.
He describes the imaginary as:"The image, the imagined, the imaginary - these are all terms that direct us to something critical and new in global cultural processes: the imagination as a social practice. No longer mere fantasy (opium for the masses whose real work is somewhere else), no longer simple escape (from a world defined principally by more concrete purposes and structures), no longer elite pastime (thus not relevant to the lives of ordinary people), and no longer mere contemplation (irrelevant for new forms of desire and subjectivity), the imagination has become an organized field of social practices, a form of work (in the sense of both labor and culturally organized practice), and a form of negotiation between sites of agency (individuals) and globally defined fields of possibillity. This unleasing of the imagination links the play of pastiche (in some settings) to the terror and coercion of states and their competitors. The imagination is now central to all forms of agency, is itself a social fact, and is the key component of the new global order" ("Disjuncture and Difference", Modernity at Large, 31).
Appadurai credits Benedict Anderson with developing notions of collective imagination. Some key figures in the development of this concept are Cornelius Castoriadis, Charles Taylor (philosopher), Jacques Lacan, and Dilip Gaonkar.
The New School
In 2004, after a brief time as administrator at Yale University, Appadurai became Provost of New School University. Appadurai's resignation from the Provost's office was announced January 30, 2006 by New School President Bob Kerrey.
Public Culture
Appadurai is a cofounder of the journal Public Culture; founder of the nonprofit PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action, and Research) in Mumbai; cofounder and codirector of ING (Interdisciplinary Network on Globalization); and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as a consultant or advisor to a wide range of public and private organizations, including the Ford, Rockefeller, and MacArthur foundations; UNESCO; the World Bank; and the National Science Foundation.
Doctoral Work
His doctoral work was based on the car festival held in the Parthasarathi temple in Triplicane, Madras.
External links
- Fear of Small Numbers by Arjun Appadurai (Duke University Press, 2006)
- Globalization edited by Arjun Appadurai (Duke University Press, 2001)
- Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy
Categories
American academics | Living people | Tamil scholars