Thursday 25 July 2013
Wk 1: A Longing to Be - The Scapes of Globalisation
Part of what the term globalisation means to me is finding new ways to identify myself – with others, with time and with the world around me.
After misconstruing my nationality, a co-worker asked me the other night what I was. When I answered, “Australian,” he said (and I'm not exaggerating for the purposes of dramatic story-telling), “there’s no such thing”. In following the trend of the majority of the world, the ethnoscape (Appadurai, 1990) of our Land Down Under has become increasingly multicultural over the years as part of the processes of globalisation. As people become increasingly migratory and the ideas traditionally associated with place – national borders, sovereignty, etc – become more arbitrary, issues of identity and belonging become harder to define. We can distinguish ourselves on a regional, state or national level or now even as a ‘global citizen’. All point to where we think we belong. Although many believe we are in a post-colonial stage in Australian history, there may always be an underlying sense that we don’t technically belong here. We weren’t here first.
My great-great grandparents came to Australia from Germany in 1913. Although our name changed during the Second World War to distance ourselves from ‘the homeland’, two generations after immigrating here, my grandpa is still quite German. He wouldn’t identify himself among us Aussies, and although his heritage is German, technically he is not. As seen from my vignette, I hold no such views (Aussie, Aussie, Aussie...). The difference in opinions over the generations exemplifies that:
“...terms with the suffix –scape... are not objectively given relations that look the same from every angle but, rather, they are deeply perspectival constructs” (Apparundai, 1998: 33 in Rantanen, 2005: 13).
The flows of globalisation force us to reflexively analyse the changing world through the frameworks of –scapes, as ideas of identity, community and cultures are “deterritorialized” and instead generated and experienced “translocally” (Rockefeller, 2011: 560). The physical flows of globalisation not only change the ethnoscope of places but also the ideoscapes of what it means to belong to those places and have done so long before we used the word globalisation to describe our increasingly interdependent and interconnected world.
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The expansion of your personal anecdote to include two different perspectives (that of your co-worker and your great-grandparents) was especially significant in underlining the multiple attitudes people have in regards to globalisation and, as a process of that, ethnoscapes. The embedment of the quote was highly appropriate and flowed nicely with your perspective. A definition or explanation about ethnoscapes, possibly at the beginning of your piece, may have been useful in cementing your argument and explaining the concept to someone who is unfamiliar with it. However, from a student’s point of view your blog offered a highly engaging perspective.
ReplyDeleteI found the blog engaging and with how you used the personal anecdote point of view very engaging. i thought the personal reference explained the idea of ethnoscape quite well the image helped me to engage. I found the quotes helped me to understand the issue at hand.
ReplyDeleteHello Claire, I particularly liked the way you discussed ‘globalisation’ using your own personal experiences. You were able to link scholarly readings from Appadurai and Rockefeller quite well which made your post interesting.
ReplyDeleteSome areas that I believed could of helped strengthen your post is possible images/videos to help engage a visual aspect to the readers and links for further readings. Furthermore, A reference list also needed to be included at the end of your post but overall I enjoyed reading this, good work!
Hi Claire,
ReplyDeleteYour easy going and out spoken writing style makes your blog an absolute joy to read! As others have mentioned I particularly enjoyed how you juxtaposed the experiences of your relatives, with a personal and recent anecdote of your own. Your use of Appaduri, and Rockerfeller material demonstrates a sound understanding of the various scapes that you discuss. Your post mentions a vignette which I unfortunately can not find, and I feel that some embedded video, or images would do a lot to increase the connectivity of your post, but it was nonetheless an insightful and well written blog.