Are we global yet? Globalist discourse, cultural formations and the study of Zimbabwean popular music1

Abstract

As a cultural category “global” is at once too all‐encompassing and vague, and too deeply, indexically, tied to the contemporary discourse naturalizing increased capitalist expansion and control throughout the world ‐ a discourse referred to here as “globalism”. The article suggests a different framework for thinking about trans‐state cultural processes involving three ideal‐type social formations: immigrant communities, diasporas and cosmopolitan formations. A discussion of popular music in Zimbabwe forms the final part of the paper and is intended to illustrate the usefulness of this framework. Following the work of many, the author recognizes the imperialist processes of capitalist globalization but suggests that ethnomusicologists avoid naturalizing the processes by eschewing terms and premises embedded in globalist discourse except in cases where the phenomenon in question affects everyone everywhere ‐ that is, where it is actually global in the literal sense.

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