Are we global yet? Globalist discourse, cultural formations and the study of Zimbabwean popular music 1

Abstract

This chapter suggests a different framework for thinking about trans-state cultural processes involving three ideal-type social formations: immigrant communities, diasporas and cosmopolitan formations. It summarizes problems with globalism as a discourse and as an analytical approach. The chapter provides an alternative to the concept of global culture for studying trans-state cultural and musical processes. In contrast to approaches that emphasize trans-local cultural flows and Appadurai's celebrated notion of scapes , the approach advocated here is an old-fashioned one fundamentally grounded in individual and group subjectivities and socialization. The chapter finds the concepts of flows and scapes too abstract, and suggests that the actual site of social and cultural dynamism resides in specific people's lives and experiences. It devotes to a specific case study of popular music in Zimbabwean, especially as it involves middle-class artists and audience members who are part of the capitalist-cosmopolitan cultural formation.

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