# An A-Z of theory Arjun Appadurai



## somnambulist (Apr 28, 2011)

By Andrew Robinson

Arjun Appadurai is recognised as a major theorist in globalisation studies. Coming from a theoretical background in Marxist cultural studies, his work operates within a theoretical framework which assumes an increasingly borderless global economy.

Appadurai is highly insightful in seeing the disjunctures or lack of fit, the out-of-joint nature of many of the relations among different global flows today. He also provides an important analysis of the causes of the growing problem of majoritarian bigotry which is affecting so much of the world, not least Britain.

Appadurai’s best-known work is the article ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’. In this work, he claims that the world has now become a single system with a range of complex subsystems. Appadurai is broadly opposed to the account of globalisation as cultural imperialism which fuels much of dependency theory and world-systems analysis.

He believes there is also a ‘scalar dynamic’ in which lower scales are frightened of being absorbed in the imagined communities of higher scales. He is concerned that ideas of homogenisation can be used by local power-holders to distract from their own dominance.

Furthermore, he thinks capitalism has undergone fundamental changes and is now ‘disorganised’ and post-Fordist.

Marxist approaches tend to focus on articulations, connections and similarities. Appadurai’s alternative theory focuses instead on disjunctions, or points at which different logics or processes go in different directions and cause ruptures, tensions or conflicts. 

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