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# 3 Sept 30 - Translation and Globalization

#3 “Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy,” in Globalization: Critical Concepts in Sociology, vol. I, pp. 251-264.

7 意見:

Ron 提到...

作者(Appadurai)提出全球互動的核心問題,是文化同質化(homogenization)與異質化(heterogenization)之間的對立。他認為全球的文化經濟從各方面觀察,是離散的、有差異的。有人認為同質化是個大問題,而且同質化基本上就是美國化。作者則指出,南韓可能會更擔心日本化,柬埔寨可能會更擔心越南化(現在越南會不會擔心中國化?)。全球化這個議題複雜流動,作者提出族群、媒體、技術、金融、意識形態這5個景觀作為探討的架構。其中的族群景觀(ethnoscape)使我想到了華僑。華僑的定義(在台灣)恐怕是模糊的,不同類型的華僑對台灣政經文化的參與、對台灣的認同,也隨著全球局勢的改變,有不同的變動。技術與金融方面,我想到了鴻海,鴻海對於發展中國家員工的管理,是不是有另一套標準?在媒體方面,我記得多年前在越南旅行,在旅館中看到「東風衛視」,那時候他們的口號好像是「東方有多大,東風告訴你」,有點全球化的味道。現在看來,台灣的媒體似乎沒有那麼大的胃口(是好是壞不知道),反而是香港的鳳凰衛視有那麼一點野心。

Unknown 提到...

This week’s reading focuses on the effects of ‘disjuncture’ and ‘difference’ in the complex environment of the modern global community. In this week’s article, the author places particular emphasis on the concept of movement within and between local and global communities — movement (and dissemination) of peoples, information, technological capabilities, monies, and ideas. With respect to the present-day increases —both spatially and temporally — in the overall global flow of these varied forms of ‘resource’, the author points out that primordia — of language, skin colour, and so on — in today’s world has become increasingly globalized. He does, however, explain that such globalization should not be confusedly taken to be just another form of homogenization — even although it does involve some ‘instruments of homogenization’ for its manifestation. In fact, the author points out that once these instruments of homogenization are absorbed and assimilated at the local level — indigenized — they become ‘repatriated as heterogeneous dialogues of national sovereignty’. This, as the author explains, is the ‘mutual cannibalization of sameness and difference’ that makes up our modern global culture. The article concludes with the author’s explanation that it is, in fact, ‘disjuncture between different sorts of global flows’ that creates an atmosphere of perpetual, unyielding competition between the universal and the local in the politics and economics of the modern world.
An interesting aspect of the article that is more directly related to the field of translation is the author’s discussion of the semantic and pragmatic problems that are part of the flow of political narratives across the global landscape. The author not only highlights the nature of political rhetoric itself but also, different conventions of dissemination of such rhetoric as they are favoured in different regions of the world. Thinking about the global forum from this perspective it is difficult to imagine how it is that people of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds are able to communicate at all.

oscar 提到...

Appadurai 在本文中提出新的全球文化經濟(global cultural economy)是一個「複雜、重疊、斷離的秩序」,不應再用過去的中心-邊陲模型解釋,而必須從五種「全球文化流動」的面向來探討,分別是族群地景、科技地景、資本地景、媒體地景及意識型態地景(252),各種地景之間的斷離造成文化流動(256),而互為條件和限制。如此一來,全球化的概念便由同質與異質之爭再進一步,以「流動」一詞貫串全文,但再格外強調「速度、規模和量」(256),而且這種流動絕非單向,而是對雙方都有影響。
此外,「去地域化」(Deterritorialization,國族國家的消逝)則是另一重點,Appadurai認為這是現代社會的主要力量之一,打破國家的疆界後,他認為我們現在都活在「想像的世界」(imagined world,由Anderson「想像的共同體」再進一步)之中(252),並強調改變的力量。
然而,畢竟只在幾頁短文之中,對「想像的世界」的論述,似乎並無法超越「想像的共同體」。特別在關於媒體的論述方面,如果有更長的篇幅,本身就是專家的Appadurai應該能發揮得更理想。至於題目的「經濟」也似乎著墨不多,雖然帶入了馬克斯,但全文重點仍然比較像是「全球文化」而已。

Jennifer 提到...

在本文中提到了全球文化流動的五個主要面向:(1) 族裔景觀 (2) 媒體景觀 (3) 科技景觀 (4) 金融景觀 (5) 意識景觀,以及因為這些流動造成的去地域化。
本文中提到因為科技分佈不均,造成了獨特的科技景觀,而造成此種情形的驅動力來自金錢、政治、高/低技術勞工的流動(253)。而在科技景觀的背後,令我不禁思索到底是科技造成了這些因素的流動(如Nokia的無線網路技術造就了Nokia的手機王國、Google的技術帶動了整個相關業務的經濟群,如Google Adsense等),還是反向的,因為背後的政治金錢因素催生了科技(如台積電),抑或是兩者如滾雪球般,相輔相成?當然,這些因素在五種景觀分佈中皆佔有重要的地位,只要牽一髮則動全身,不太可能在某項因素改變的情形下不改變景觀分配。
另一個讓我覺得有趣的問題是「去地域化」的問題。是的,我們今日在世界上各大城市中都可感受到不同的異國文化,甚或產生時空錯置之感,打破了固有「國界」的存在。但是否就是因為這種疆界已不復在,讓人在內心產生對於原本民族國家的鄉愁,於是乎在許多大城裡,「小日本」、「小義大利」、「中國城」等處處林立,反而更鞏固了人們內心對某個國家的民族意識?

Craig 1 of 2 提到...

Situating his discourse in the tension created between homogenization and heterogenization, Arjun Appadurai outlines the dimensions of his theory of the social imaginary. Shifting landscapes of everyday life, resting primarily on a foundation of instantaneous technological revolution, are shaped by economic, political and cultural forms of comodifications, imperialisms and hegemonies. Current examples of Appadurai's homogenization/heterogenization tension could include the transformation of Taiwan's aboriginal cultures and their traditional craft productions into tourist attractions and take-a-way souvenirs (fetishization of commodity following on the heels of objectification of culture); the promotion of global democracies through both soft and hard power by the U.S.; and the erasure of Tibetan social structures and religious forms by the PRC government over the last sixty years (resulting in diaspora, or cultural reproduction in a deterritorialized context). The result of these, and countless other commodifications, imperialisms and hegemonies, has been a fracturing, or disjuncture, of idealized forms of social identification and continuity, creating a lack which, according to Appadurai, is compensated for with the “social imaginary,” a concept which borrows heavily from both Lacan and Benedict Anderson.

Appadurai allows his five dimensions of the social imaginary, ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, finanscapes and ideoscapes, the flexibility of being interpreted and inflected locally (theoretically finding their limits at the level of the individual), that is, while they represent general categories, the primacy of experience or the corporeality of consciousness are integrated into both their use as terms and power to shape realities. The significance here is that his five dimensions, as elements of a Lacanian symbolic order, are used to address the various lacks created by both imposed and welcomed disjunctures, creatively reinventing realities, ideologies and identities in ways that can challenge dysfunctional modes of authority, power and their effects. Fragmentation, gaps and discontinuities have been looked at by countless academics, and from what I understand they do not merely represent challenges or opportunities, but are more fundamental as they drive the construction of individual mindscapes (Lacan) and collective culturescapes (Foucault). The question is, do we have the capacity for constant and instantaneous reinvention? If not, how do individuals address the fracturing resulting from both homogenization and heterogenization?

Craig 2 of 2 提到...

The differential between the social landscapes of 1990 (the cassette era when Appadurai wrote this article) and of 2010 (the online-content era of today) is vast and somewhat frightening (how much change can humans endure?). While technological tools have stepped up their pressure on cultural flows and widened disjunctures in Appadurai's five dimensions, the Internet has also rushed in to smooth over many of these fissures with online social communities, media and content sharing and instantaneous global financial transactions. Furthermore, when Appadurai discussed deterritorialization, it is likely he never imagined the founding of nation-states on a cloud in cyberspace, which is the logical end of online gaming communities and other virtual worlds where human needs for identity, community, employment and even meaning are currently being met. Unfortunately, the Internet still cannot recreate certain sensory phenomenon which are an important, constitutive aspect of both identity and community formation.

Finally, Appadurai's theory is important for translation as it has the potential to structure discourses on ways in which the various lacks in continuity between linguistic communities and therefore cultures can be addressed. It is here that focusing on heterogenization reveals fissures in certain social imaginaries; fissures that need to be creatively filled by the translator with an eye toward local conditions.

惠芬 Eveline 提到...

文中提到的"imagined world"讓我感到興趣。曾經在一門課中讀到:「任何跨連現實各層面而具指示意義主題,我們界定為象徵。具這種超越力的語言形式可稱為象徵語言。從象徵形式的層次觀之,語言的意義化可以達到自『此地、此刻』高度分離的程度,而語言則能提升到各種非生活席常經驗的領域。依此,語言能建構大量超乎生活中的象徵表徵,其似來自另一個世界般。… 正意謂著這些象徵體系不僅高度地脫離生活,同時在生活中扮演關鍵的角色。」(鄒理民譯,《社會實體的建構》(Peter Berger & Thomaas Luckmann, The Sociial Construction of Reality))
以我對這本書很粗淺的印象,每個人所建構出來的所謂的世界,與他每天接觸的語言、選擇強化的知識、以及經驗的留取等等有決定性的關係,因而每個人所建購的世界,都是不同的。但相對的,我們每天接觸的科技、媒體也都一直持續地重新建構我們所建構的世界。而這或許也就是為什麼不論就哪個角度來看全球化議題,都是一個很難講的清楚的complex。

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