Imagined Globalization

Néstor García Canclini

Mar 2014 · Duke University Press

About this ebook

A leading figure in cultural studies worldwide, Néstor García Canclini is a Latin American thinker who has consistently sought to understand the impact of globalization on the relations between Latin America, Europe, and the United States, and among Latin American countries. In this book, newly available in English, he considers how globalization is imagined by artists, academics, migrants, and entrepreneurs, all of whom traverse boundaries and, at times, engage in conflicted or negotiated multicultural interactions.

García Canclini contrasts the imaginaries of previous migrants to the Americas with those who live in transnational circuits today. He integrates metaphor and narrative, working through philosophical, anthropological, and socioeconomically grounded interpretations of art, literature, crafts, media, and other forms of expression toward his conclusion that globalization is, in important ways, a collection of heterogeneous narratives. García Canclini advocates global imaginaries that generate new strategies for dealing with contingency and produce new forms of citizenship oriented toward multiple social configurations rather than homogenization. This edition of Imagined Globalization includes a significant new introduction by George Yúdice and an interview in which the cultural theorist Toby Miller and García Canclini touch on events including the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street.

About the author

Néstor García Canclini is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City. Born in Argentina, he has lived in Mexico for many years. He is an anthropologist and cultural critic originally trained as a philosopher. Among the many books that he has written, those available in English are Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflict, Transforming Modernity: Popular Culture in Mexico, and Art beyond Itself: Anthropology for a Society without a Story Line, which is published by Duke University Press.