Globalization and Culture: Global Melange
Cultural change is all too frequently either overlooked entirely in discussions of globalization or dismissed with glib and misleading generalities about homogenization or clashing civilizations. Jan Nederveen Pieterse offers a perspective that is more complex, truer to the ever-shifting realities of twenty first-century life, and far more interesting. With this book, he establishes himself as a world-class thinker about the world. (Anderson, Walter Truett)Critical, creative, and committed, Jan Nederveen Pieterse'sGlobalization and Cultureis a work of highly impressive scholarship and rich imagination. Historically informed and theoretically wide-ranging, this is a reader-friendly 'must-read' for all interested in this immensely topical subject. The author's deep personal engagement with the notion of hybridization makes a substantial contribution to the literature. (Anthony D. King)The discourse on cultural globalization is one of the best examples of itself: it is confusingly globalized. So we urgently need this enlightened unpacking of globalization by one of the pioneers of the debate—Jan Nederveen Pieterse. (Beck, Ulrich)Pieterse takes a historically deep approach, developing the perspective of global melange or hybridization of both territorial culture and translocal culture. (Future Survey)Globalization and Culturelaunches a succinct attack on the 'anti-hybridity backlash' with a withering critique of its paradigmatic exemplar... (Global Media And Communication)Globalization and Cultureis a significant contribution to a debate that is interdisciplinary, heated, and concerned with contemporary issues. Globalization produces cultural interaction, new permutations, and new differences which Nederveen Pieterse persuasively defends as part of the hybridization thesis. Whether one agrees with him or not (and I do), this book is essential reading for those who want an intelligent and lively guide to the debate about the effects of globalization on culture. (Keith Griffin)