Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-03T19:43:02.275Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Locality, the periphery and images of the world

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Jan Blommaert
Affiliation:
Universiteit van Tilburg, The Netherlands
Get access

Summary

The world has become a complex place – that was the main line of argument in the previous chapter. In order to understand that place, we need to inquire into the way in which that place is imagined, represented and enacted by its inhabitants. This chapter will explore the conceptual complex that is central in globalization studies and hinges on notions such as centre and periphery, locality, flows, scales, networks, global economy and so forth. All of these notions refer to space and movements in/through space, and in particular the notion of ‘flow’ has already been productively adopted in sociolinguistics, as we saw earlier (Pennycook 2007). Theoretically, as we have seen, the main challenge for disciplines such as anthropology, sociology or sociolinguistics consists in loosening the connection between culture and a particular territory. Whereas more traditional approaches appeared to tacitly assume that societies and their features ‘belonged’ to one particular geographical area (think of our discussion of the linguistic rights paradigm in the previous chapter), and thus attributed an absolute spatiality to culture, the emphasis on situatedness emphasizes flows, trajectories, movements and thus the relative spatiality of culture. Hannerz (1991: 116–117) summarizes this as follows:

The connection between cultural process and territory, we should remind ourselves, is only contingent. As socially organized meaning, culture is primarily a phenomenon of interaction, and only if interactions are tied to particular spaces is culture likewise so.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×