Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Anthropological Theory
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Heyman, J. McC.
Right arrow Articles by Campbell, H.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

The anthropology of global flows

A critical reading of Appadurai's `Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy'

Josiah McC. Heyman

University of Texas at El Paso, USA, jmheyman{at}utep.edu

Howard Campbell

University of Texas at El Paso, USA, hcampbell{at}utep.edu

Arjun Appadurai's essay `Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy' popularized the idea of `global flows'. He argues that these flows are `disjunctive' and `chaotic' in character and that they supersede standard geographical thinking in social-cultural analysis. Appadurai's emphasis on disjuncture prioritizes ephemeral and shifting flows, thereby underestimating the relative power of capital and the interactions between different kinds of flows. Likewise, Appadurai's view of geography assumes that static units are the opposite of flows, whereas a processual geography understands how flows can create, reproduce, and transform geographic spaces. This alternative helps us understand global inequalities and boundaries better than Appadurai's does, and enables us to broach the topic of differentiated rights and treatments of mobile populations. The goal of a critical reading of this essay is not destructive; rather, we seek to construct a more powerful social-cultural anthropology of dynamic flows and mobilities.

Key Words: Arjun Appadurai • borders • flows • geography and anthropology • globalization • mobilities • transnationalism • world system

Anthropological Theory, Vol. 9, No. 2, 131-148 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1463499609105474
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?