Global Imaginary Research Articles

Conflicting Communities The Global Imaginary in the South Asian Anglophone Novel

The novel, the nation and the family, arising in the age of colonization, are structures deeply imbricated in each other, providing the imaginaries that sustain each other. The contemporary emergence of  world literature therefore requires a model different from the family. This essay argues that the contemporary South Asian novel centers new modes of affiliation and kinship that are enabled by global institutions—the multinational finance company and the university—in order to provide an alternative to the site of the family, the imagined basis for the nation’s community. By looking at three novelswritten by authors of Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi origins respectively—The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), The Lives of Others (2014), and In the Light of What We Know (2014)—I indicate that rather than a unified ‘global imaginary’ that replaces a previous national one, these characters find themselves imbricated in conflicting contracts of affiliation. It is these contradictory communities that the contemporary South Asian Anglophone novel provides as a model of imagining the world through various acts of affiliation.  

Europe in the Global Imaginary, the Globe in the European Imaginary: The Legacy of Sovereignty

Europe in the Global Imaginary, the Globe in the European Imaginary: The Legacy of Sovereignty

“Happy” in Za’atari: Difference and Global Belonging in the Refugee Camp Imaginary

This article analyzes two video remakes of Pharrell Williams’s hit song “Happy” portraying Za’atari refugeechildren. I discuss the role that the “Happy” tribute video trend had in developing a global imaginary that lends itself to current conversations around humanitarian happiness and “deexceptionalizing” migration and humanitarian space. I look at the videos in relationship to this trend and to the media construction of Za’atari camp as “city.” In the context of this debate and reading the videos through the paradigm of global urbanness such as we also see in the “Happy” craze, I argue that in fact the videos show the limits of the ideology of global belonging when it comes to the refugee camp and of the incommensurability of contemporary humanitarian and global imaginaries, even in an age defined by the sway of new media.

Making the World Global: U.S. Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary

Making the World Global: U.S. Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary

Making the World Global: U.S. Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary

Making the World Global: U.S. Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary

Unsettling Subjectivity across Local, National and Global Imaginaries Producing an Unhappy Consciousness

This article analyzes the complex and subtle dynamics involved in producing and representing the global-local nexus in everyday life. Its socio-historical context is the destabilization of the current globalization system – and its associated global imaginary – marked by the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, continuing with the populist explosion in the mid 2010s, and climaxing in the 2020 Global Coronavirus Pandemic. But rather than mischaracterizing the current context as “deglobalization”, we describe it as a contemporary intensification of what we have been calling the “Great Unsettling”. This era of intensifying objective instability is linked to foundational subjective processes. In particular, we examine the production of an “unhappy consciousness” torn between the enjoyment of global digital mobility and the visceral attachment to the familiar limits of local everyday life. In doing so, we rewrite the approach to the sources of ontological security and insecurity.

The Global Imaginary and Contemporary Pakistani Fiction: A Study of Global Capitalist Fundamentalism and Terrorist Ontology in Mohsin Hamid’s “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”

The Global Imaginary and Contemporary Pakistani Fiction: A Study of Global Capitalist Fundamentalism and Terrorist Ontology in Mohsin Hamid’s “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”

Making the World Global: U.S. Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary. By Isaac A. Kamola. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. 304p. $99.95 cloth, $26.95 paper.

Making the World Global: U.S. Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary. By Isaac A. Kamola. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. 304p. $99.95 cloth, $26.95 paper.

Life after People: Zombie Apocalypse and the Structures of the Post-Human Global Imaginary

Life after People: Zombie Apocalypse and the Structures of the Post-Human Global Imaginary

Global Imaginary of Arid Lands: Early Twentieth- Century United States Botanists in Africa

Abstract From the 1890s through the 1930s, arid land scientists drew connections between US and African landscapes. As they studied desert nature at home and abroad, modified agricultural landscapes and collected and described species in the world's deserts, they envisioned a global imaginary. This paper traces these connections and transformations, using the Sonoran Desert and US southwestern botanical scientists who traversed abroad - including William Cannon, Edgar Mearns, Robert Forbes and Homer Shantz - as case studies.

Russia in the German Global Imaginary: Imperial Visions and Utopian Desires, 1905–1941. By James E. Casteel. Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. Edited by Jonathan Harris.Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016. Pp. xii+252. $28.95 (paper).Between Yesterday and Tomorrow: German Visions of Europe, 1926–1950. By Christian Bailey.New York: Berghahn Books, 2013. Pp. xiv+260. $120.00 (cloth); $34.95 (paper).

<i>Russia in the German Global Imaginary: Imperial Visions and Utopian Desires, 1905–1941</i>. By James E. Casteel. Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. Edited by Jonathan Harris.Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016. Pp. xii+252. $28.95 (paper).<i>Between Yesterday and Tomorrow: German Visions of Europe, 1926–1950</i>. By Christian Bailey.New York: Berghahn Books, 2013. Pp. xiv+260. $120.00 (cloth); $34.95 (paper).

James E. Casteel. Russia in the German Global Imaginary: Imperial Visions and Utopian Desires, 1905–1941.

James E. Casteel. Russia in the German Global Imaginary: Imperial Visions and Utopian Desires, 1905–1941.

Service at the Intersection of Journalism, Language, and the Global Imaginary

Drawing on interviews with journalists who work in Indonesia’s locally owned-and-operated English-language press (ELP), we argue English’s status as the language of global and regional imaginaries informs how ELP journalists negotiate their understandings of public service. This study contributes to research on the contextual negotiation of professional ideologies of journalism by considering how publication language—here, English in a country where it is a foreign language—shapes the ways journalists conceive service to their various publics.

The Global Imaginary of International School Communities: a Case Study from Germany

This thesis explores the ‘global imaginary’ of an international school community located in Germany. It examines how globally-oriented social imaginaries are constructed, negotiated and contested within such gated communities comprised of both expatriates and host country nationals. It highlights the role of the international school market and the role of the ‘local’ in the production of these ‘global’ imaginaries that not only impact community membership, but also its members’ residential life in Germany. International schools have developed into a thriving, lucrative educational network –offering an English-medium, ‘international’ education to facilitate internationally-mobile families as they move from country to country. Not only are international schools educational facilities, they are also strong ‘international’ communities comprised of both expats and host country nationals. Where international school literature is typically focused on the educational experience of expats (or ‘Third Culture Kids’) attending international schools, little has been written on the extent to which membership impacts residential life, not only for expats, but also for host country nationals. Moreover, the role of the ‘local’ in the construction of ‘global’ imaginaries and international school community membership has not been thoroughly investigated. It is argued in this thesis that while international schools place a particular emphasis on the distant local to uphold institutional globally-oriented principles and branding, the immediate local is not only eclipsed, but this overshadowing plays a role in the construction of the ‘global’ orientation. There is also a gap in literature concerning large-scale ethnographic projects looking into international schools located in Europe – a gap which this thesis aims to fill through the use of participant observations, semi-structured interviews and focus group sessions that took place in Germany between 2012 and 2015.

Global frictions and the production of locality in Kenya’s music video industry

This article explores the relationship between global imaginaries, frictions, and the production of locality through an examination of the Kenyan music video industry. Localities are constructed, in part, through the constitutive work of the imagination. Friction occurs when divergent constructions of the global imaginary become entangled with each other. Through an examination of the production, distribution, and reception of Kenyan music videos, this study identifies three types of friction that occur in cultural production: collaborative frictions, in which collectivities work across differences toward a common cause; combative frictions, in which collectivities are positioned in direct opposition to each other; and competitive frictions, in which the interests of different collectivities conflict at times and align at others. This study contributes to scholarship on cultural production in non-Western contexts by articulating hybridity as both an antecedent to and outcome of transcultural exchange.

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this issueLiterature and Fine ArtsVinitsky, Ilya. Vasily Zhukovsky's Romanticism and the Emotional History of Russia.Khagi, Sofya. Silence and the Rest: Verbal Skepticism in Russian Poetry.Bagby, Lewis. First Words: On Dostoevsky's Introductions.Harrison, Lonny. Archetypes from Underground: Notes on the Dostoevskian Self.Wyman, Alina. The Gift of Active Empathy: Scheler, Bakhtin, and Dostoevsky.Berman, Anna A. Siblings in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: The Path to Universal Brotherhood.Tolstaya, Katya. Kaleidoscope: F. M. Dostoevsky and the Early Dialectical Theology.Howell, Yvonne, ed. Red Star Tales: A Century of Russian and Soviet Science Fiction.Huseynova, Aida. Music of Azerbaijan: From Mugham to Opera.Chuchvaha, Hanna. Art Periodical Culture in Late Imperial Russia (1898–1917).Fitzsimmons, Lorna, and Michael A. Denner, eds. Tolstoy on Screen.Landa, Marianna S. Maximilian Voloshin's Poetic Legacy and the Post‐Soviet Russian Identity.Carr, Maureen. After the Rite: Stravinsky's Path to Neoclassicism (1914–25).Cross, Jonathan. Igor Stravinsky.Khan‐Magomedov, Selim Omarovich. Georgii Krutikov: The Flying City and Beyond.Levitina, Marina. “Russian Americans” in Soviet Film: Cinematic Dialogues between the US and the USSR.Sherry, Samantha. Discourses of Regulation and Resistance: Censoring Translation in the Stalin and Khrushchev Era Soviet Union.Kind‐Kovács, Friederike. Written Here, Published There: How Underground Literature Crossed the Iron Curtain.Burry, Alexander, and Frederick H. White, eds. Border Crossing: Russian Literature into Film.Sedakova, Olga. In Praise of Poetry.Vashchenko, Alexander, and Claude Clayton Smith, eds. Meditations after the Bear Feast: The Poetic Dialogues of N. Scott Momaday and Yuri Vaella.HistoryMagocsi, Paul Robert. With Their Backs to the Mountains: A History of Carpathian Rus' and Carpatho‐Rusyns.Caridi, Cathy. Making Martyrs East and West: Canonization in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches.Hamburg, Gary M. Russia's Path Toward Enlightenment: Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500–1801.Steinwedel, Charles. Threads of Empire: Loyalty and Tsarist Authority in Bashkiria, 1552–1917.Offord, Derek, Lara Ryazanova‐Clarke, Vladislav Rjéoutski, and Gesine Argent, eds. French and Russian in Imperial Russia, vol. 1: Language Use among the Russian Elite.Offord, Derek, Lara Ryazanova‐Clarke, Vladislav Rjéoutski, and Gesine Argent, eds. French and Russian in Imperial Russia, vol. 2: Language Attitudes and Identity.Davies, Brian L. The Russo‐Turkish War, 1768–1774: Catherine II and the Ottoman Empire.Staliūnas, Darius. Enemies for a Day: Antisemitism and Anti‐Jewish Violence in Lithuania under the Tsars.Kane, Eileen. Russian Hajj: Empire and the Pilgrimage to Mecca.Dahlmann, Dittmar, Klaus Heller, and Iurii A. Petrov, eds. Protestanten und Altgläubige – Juden und Muslime. Die ethno‐konfessional Struktur der russländischen Unternehmerschaft vor 1914.Dale, Robert. Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad: Soldiers to Civilians.Danilevskii, Nikolai Iakovlevich. Woe to the Victors! The Russo‐Turkish War, the Congress of Berlin, and the Future of Slavdom.Matsui, Yasuhiro, ed. Obshchestvennost' and Civic Agency in Late Imperial Russia: Interface between State and Society.Allen, Barbara C. Alexander Shlyapnikov, 1885–1937: Life of an Old Bolshevik.Milne, Lesley. Laughter and War: Humorous‐Satirical Magazines in Britain, France, Germany and Russia: 1914–1918.Makuch, Andrij, and Frank E. Sysyn, eds. Contextualizing the Holodomor: The Impact of Thirty Years of Ukrainian Famine Studies.Mick, Christoph. Lemberg, Lwów, L'viv, 1914–1947: Violence and Ethnicity in a Contested City.Amar, Tarik Cyril. The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv: A Borderland City between Stalinists, Nazis, and Nationalists.Rotfeld, Adam Daniel, and Anatoly V. Torkunov, eds. White Spots – Black Spots: Difficult Matters in Polish‐Russian Relations 1918–2008.Casteel, James E. Russia in the German Global Imaginary: Imperial Visions &amp; Utopian Desires 1905–1941.David‐Fox, Michael. Crossing Borders: Modernity, Ideology and Culture in Russia and the Soviet Union.Kilcher, Andreas, and Gabriella Safran, eds. Writing Jewish Culture: Paradoxes in Ethnography.Harris, James. The Great Fear: Stalin's Terror of the 1930s.Harrison, Mark. One Day We Will Live without Fear: Everyday Lives under the Soviet Police State.Walke, Anika. Pioneers and Partisans: An Oral History of Nazi Genocide in Belorussia.Tsipursky, Gleb. Socialist Fun: Youth, Consumption, &amp; State Sponsored Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1945–1970.Blauvelt, Timothy K., and Jeremy Smith, eds. Georgia after Stalin: Nationalism and Soviet Power.Baldwin, Kate A. The Racial Imaginary of the Cold War Kitchen: From Sokol'niki Park to Chicago's South Side.Social Sciences, Contemporary Russia, and OtherGilbert, George. The Radical Right in Late Imperial Russia: Dreams of a True Fatherland?Laruelle, Marlene, and Johan Engvall, eds. Kyrgyzstan beyond “Democracy Island” and “Failing State.”Satter, David. The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin.Zygar, Mikhail. Vsia kremlevskaia rat’: Kratkaia istoriia sovremennoi Rossii.Gill, Graeme. Building an Authoritarian Polity: Russia in Post‐Soviet Times.Suslov, Mikhail, and Mark Bassin, eds. Eurasia 2.0: Russian Geopolitics in the Age of New Media.Verkhovskii, Aleksandr. Ugolovnoe pravo stran OBSE protiv prestuplenii nenavisti, vozbuzhdeniia nenavisti i iazyka vrazhdy.Østbø, Jardar. The New Third Rome: Readings of a Russian Nationalist Myth.

Higher Education and the Modern/Colonial Global Imaginary

In this article, we complicate common critical narratives about the neoliberalization of higher education by situating more recent trends within the genealogy of a modern/colonial global imaginary. By linking current patterns of “accumulation by dispossession” with histories and enduring architectures of racialized expropriation and exploitation, we consider both the strategic possibilities and inherent limitations of enacting resistance from within this imaginary. In particular, we engage the imperative to contest new configurations of dispossession while grappling with the ways that violent social relations have always subsidized public higher education. We suggest that facing such paradoxes may be instructive and open up new possibilities, and at the same time, this requires examination of existing investments and attachments.

The Global Imaginary of Arab Hip Hop: a case study

Hip Hop is a complex cultural and musical phenomenon resulting from the interactions between globalization and localization processes. Hip Hop artists operating in different locations – and often moving between multiple localities – appropriate and (re)interpret the genre on the basis of local musical and cultural traditions while defining their identities as artists and more often than not as political activists. English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), combined with other languages, is the common code shared by Hip Hop artists throughout the world, while translation, both in its traditional function and in a broad sense, is intrinsic to Hip Hop as a political site allowing local expressions to connect at a global level. Drawing on translation and globalization studies, and applying the notion of prefigurative politics, I will show how Hip Hop music aims to create its own imaginary to give voice to people of all cultures beyond geopolitical boundaries. More specifically, diasporic Arab Hip Hop artists, such as the Syrian- American Omar Offendum and the Iraqi-Canadian Narcycist, among others, aim to subvert the representation of Arabs as terrorists codified in mainstream Western discourses. They construct their identities as global citizens and activists through songs and videos such as Fear of an Arab Planet, a play on the title of legendary Hip Hop group Public Enemy‘s Fear of a Black Planet, and a parody of Western images of Arab people.. Most important of all, they adopt a series of prefigurative strategies to create alternative imaginaries and to put into practice principles of peace and justice in the here and now rather than in an ideal future. An analysis of Hip Hop global imaginary from an interdisciplinary perspective can shed a new light on the role of art activism in challenging mainstream imaginaries and social and political practices.

“The Muslim World” Question during the Interwar Era Global Imaginary, 1924–1945

AbstractAny study of the League of Nations should pay close attention to the minimal representation of the imagined “Muslim world” in this organization during its first decade. While the Eurocentric imperial internationalism of the League was criticized by interwar Pan-Islamic internationalist networks, there were frequent attempts by Muslims to engage the League, make it hear Muslim demands and discontents, and, later on, to make it more inclusive of Muslim polities. The Muslim global imaginary of the world order then lacked any dominant unitary pattern. In this chaotic political space, subaltern Muslim networks tried to revive earlier Pan-Islamic notions of solidarity to empower the demands of weak Muslim populations. When the Axis empires of the Second World War tried to utilize some of these Pan-Islamic networks for propaganda purposes, their failures revealed the illusion of Muslim unity. It was the eventual failure of a global illusion of a Pan-Islamic alliance with an imperial sponsor during the Second World War that made the United Nations the international venue of choice for post-war global Muslim political imaginaries.

The Community College and a Rising Global Imaginary: An Analysis of Practical Reasoning, 1950-2013

Through an analysis of245 issues of the Community College Journal published between 1950 and 2013, we show how three discourses—international understanding and geopolitics, economic competitiveness, and global citizenship—informed practical reasoning about a rising global imaginary and its implications for the community college. By demonstrating shifts in practical reasoning among policy actors, we illuminate at least in part the ideological nature of the policy process. Ultimately, a better knowledge of the normative aspects of the policy process may help policy scholars proactively inform policy.