Deterritorialization

“Deterritorialization” is a hallmark of globalization and a key driver of cultural identities worldwide. As our earlier reading “The Changing Definition of African-American” demonstrates, deterritorialization affects those who stay at home just as much as it does those who immigrate.

Objectives

After completing this assignment, students should be able to

• Explain the importance that Appadurai attributes to the fact that “people, machinery, money, images, and ideas now follow increasingly nonisomorphic paths…” (99).
• Define and offer a new example of “deterritorialization.”
• Summarize “the central paradox of ethnic politics in today’s world” (101-02).
• Define production fetishism and consumption fetishism
• Explain the concept of “agency” as it relates to the fetishisms
  [This is discussed in the lecture slides.]
• Discuss automobile production and consumption as examples of these fetishisms
• Recognize new examples of both fetishisms and offer their own examples
• Explain the meaning of the claim that “States [i.e. governments] throughout the world are under siege…” (101)
• Summarize the role played by states in the “repatriation of difference” (103)

Readings

• “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy” (L&B 100-03)
• Lecture Slides: Deterritorialization
• Sharifi, How Patriotic is Your Car? (rankingsandreviews.com)

Quiz

• Deterritorialization