COMM 629 Global Culture
Tuesdays 9-12
Professor Josh Kun
jkun@usc.edu
Office hours, ASC 321c, Thursdays 10-12 and by appointment
There is a myth surrounding us and it goes something like this. We live in a borderless world,
where the divisions that once separated nations and cultures are being erased by the daily sweep
of international finance. The myth tells us that we are all interconnected, all of us just a fingertipped click or a wireless download or a Blackberry mobile Twitter message away. The myth likes
words such as “speed” and “instantaneity” and concepts such as “global citizenship.” The myth
even has an image: a once round world that has now been flattened. Blame it on transnational
money, migratory technology, and outsourced labor, or just call it globalization. Either way, the
walls come tumbling down. This seminar explores the myth of a borderless world at a time when
perhaps more than ever before, borders matter, where the future lies not in national capitals or in
corporate boardrooms, but at the borders, those places of conflict and juxtaposition, of meeting
and separation, where flow and interconnection bump up against checkpoints and fingerprint
scans. For every transnational corporation, a car bomb. For every pirated DVD, an outsourced
job. For every wireless chat, a deportation. Are the walls tumbling down? Or are they getting
higher, and getting rigged with electronic sensors?
What does it mean to study culture in the age of globalization? What does it mean, if anything, to
speak of a global culture or of multiple global cultures? This seminar explores these broad and
urgent questions across a wide range of areas, from cool hunting and global branding to the birth
of cultural capitalism to popular music to cultural commons ideas to food activism and
sustainability debates. We then focus on one geopolitical and geocultural figure within the current
global map: the US-Mexico border.
Each week, a different group of students will lead discussion with a series of questions and
commentaries about the weekly readings. Each student will also be responsible for a book review
to be considered for publication in the International Journal of Communication. Finally, students
prepare a proposal for a final research project which they will present in class during the final
weeks.
Recommended Background Reading
J. MacGregor Wise, Cultural Globalization: A User’s Guide
Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference: How To Avoid The Clash of Civilizations
Jeremy Rifkin, The Age of Access
Harm De Blij, The Power of Place
Anthony D. King, Culture, Globalization and the World-System
SCHEDULE OF READINGS
WEEK ONE
Introduction to Seminar
Discussion of
-“Mapping The Global Future”- Report of the National Intelligence Council 2020 Project
-”Vogue’s Fashion Photos Spark debate in India,” New York Times
-Adam Zagajewski, “Praise This Mutilated World”
WEEK TWO
Inroads, Key Debates
-Mike Featherstone, “Global Culture: An Introduction”
-Benjamin Barber, “Jihad vs. McWorld”
-Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations”
-Immanuel Wallerstein, “Culture as the Ideological Battle Ground of the Modern World-System”
-Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”
-Arjun Appadurai, “Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination”
-Raka Shome and Radha S. Hegde, “Culture, Communication, and the Challenge of Globalization”
WEEK THREE
Before the Global: Coloniality
from Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and
Border Thinking
Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place
WEEK FOUR
Before the Global: Modernity
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness
WEEK FIVE
Culture as Global Resource
George Yudice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era
WEEK SIX
Culture as Global Industry
Scott Lash and Celia Lury, Global Culture Industry (excerpts)
William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
WEEK SEVEN
The Music Cultures of Globalization
George Lipsitz, Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism, and the Poetics of Place
Steve Jones, “Music That Moves: Popular Music, Distribution and Network Technologies”
Josh Kun, “Mexico City’s Indie Rock: Now Playing To The World”
WEEK EIGHT
Culture as Global Commons
Larwence Lessig, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
Guest Speaker: Professor Francois Bar
WEEK NINE
Culture as Consumer Citizenship
Inderpal Grewal, Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms
WEEK TEN
Culture as Diplomacy
Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play The Cold War
Joseph S. Nye, “Public Diplomacy and Soft Power”
Bourzou Daragahi, “For Bush-Critiquing L.A. Band, A Surprise Invitation”
Guest Speaker: Amy Blackman, manager, Ozomatli
WEEK ELEVEN
Culture, Food, and Global Sustainability
Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest: How The Largest Social Movement in History is Restoring Grace,
Justice, and Beauty To The World
from Bill McKibben, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future
Michael Pollan, “An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief”
Bryant Terry, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95288271
Anna Lappe, http://www.takeabite.cc/
WEEK TWELVE
The US-Mexico Border I
Guillermo Gomez-Peña, “What If Berlin Was Tijuana?”
Tito Alegria, ed. “World View: Tijuana” Online Dossier
(http://www.worldviewcities.org/tijuana/main.html)
Lawrence Herzog, “Global Tijuana”
Mike Davis, “The Urban Climacteric”
Books/exhibition catalogs on reserve: This is Tijuana, Tijuana Sessions, Strange New World
Screening: Maquilapolis
WEEK THIRTEEN
The US-Mexico Border II
Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Migrant Imaginaries: Latino Cultural Politics in the US-Mexico
Borderlands
Roger Rouse, “Mexican Migration and the Social Space of Postmodernism”
Screening: El Otro Lado
WEEK FOURTEEN
Research Project Presentations Group 1
WEEK FIFTEEN
Research Project Presentations Group 2