Students Mediate Culture in the Context of Globalization

 In his Annual Review of Anthropology article “Culture, Globalization, Mediation” William Mazzarella argues that processes of mediation are especially fertile ground for anthropological study in the context of globalization.  What sorts of mediation especially interest Mazzarella?  How is globalization affecting our cultural understandings and those of other groups around the world through processes of mediation?  

[Dr Patrick Moore, 2011]

Remote and ‘primitive’ communities were the subjects of study for the scholars who first developed the anthropological discipline.  As anthropologists soon found out, there were a limited number of communities that could be found without having been looked upon by the anthropological gaze.  William Mazzarella reminds us that, in the context of globalization, topics of anthropological interest are not dwindling but rather they are expanding infinitely as technology continues to provide us more processes of mediation.  Within the context of globalization Dr. Moore asked the students of Anthropology 378 to consider Mazzarella’s insights into processes of mediation and to provide examples of the impacts of globalization.  If my readers will recall I considered the impact of YouTube and the Internet, coupled with an advertising campaign titled "I am Canadian" , in constructing a sense of national identity among Canadian diasporas[1].  When I reviewed the responses of my fellow students I realized that even within a directed framework (a response to one article) students saw the possibility for very different directions of ethnographic interest, confirming Mazzarella’s idea that processes of mediation are especially fertile ground for anthropological study.  To illustrate this point I will engage the insights made by two of my classmates, Amanda Kay[2] and Gloria Wong[3]. 

             

Wong identified some of Mazzarella’s insights in regards to media, that it is both “reflexive and reifying” in nature (346) and that processes of mediation allow for both “self-distancing and self-recognition” (357).  Following these insights on the contributions of media and processes of mediation toward identity-making, Wong provided the example of the widely used social network, Facebook.  Wong is certainly not the first scholar to observe the interesting processes of mediation that occur via facebook (Lahlou 2008[4]; Licoppe and Smoreda 2005[5]) and she will surely not be the last.  She aptly applies Mazzarella’s notions of reflexivity and self-distancing vs. self-recognition to the mediation sphere of facebook, “this social network has percolated into the lives many and affected the way many people see themselves and individuals around them”.  Kay considers the relevance of scholastic concerns toward processes of mediation in the context of increased technological exchange.  Kay, using a Mazzarellian framework, concludes that “media is at its basic level, a more complex form of communication and its ability to convey ideas universally has increased the amount of information which is circulated immensely however, it still produces the same effect: information exchange”.  Kay, too, brings Facebook into her discussion, but for a different purpose.  While Wong uses Facebook to discuss individual identity making, Kay considers the ability of Facebook as a forum to mediate and facilitate discussions on these issues.  In the context of globalization Kay reminds her readers of a quote that circulated on Facebook:

Your car is German, your vodka is Russian, your pizza is Italian, your kebab is Turkish, your democracy is Greek, your coffee is Brazilian, your movies are American, your tea is Tamil, your shirt is Indian, your oil is Saudi, your electronics are Chinese, your numbers are Arabic , your letters are Latin, and you complain that your neighbour is…an immigrant?

This quote and Kay’s observation of it, remind us of the complex flows of identity, culture and technology in the context of increasing globalization.  Even within the frame of a response to an article, students are able to consider the diverse opportunities for anthropological research.  Processes of mediation continue to become more visible and more fascinating grounds for ethnographic interest.

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[1] http://ethnoblography2011.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-name-is-joe-and-i-am-canadian.html

[2] http://mediaculture-amandak1.blogspot.com/2011/02/globalization-and-cultural-relativism.html

[3] http://wgloria.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/exchange-and-circulation-representing-and-reflecting-on-ourselves-through-media/

[4] Lahlou, Saadi   2008   Identity, Social Status, Privacy and Face-Keeping in Digital Society. Social Science Information 47(3):299-330.

[5] Licoppe, Christian, and Zbigniew Smoreda  2005  Are Social Networks Technologically Embedded? How Networks are Changing Today with Changes in Communication Technology. Social Networks 27(4):317-335.