After reading Appadurai's criticism of nation-states, what do you predict will happen to these bodies of government in the future? And if their time is limited, what will replace them?

James
How and why has modernity and multiculturalism hurt nationalism?

Ian
In a global society where there is a 'rapid flow of mass-mediated images, scripts, and sensations' is the idea of a nation-state even necessary since that institution has historically been the only communicator of social change? What are the implications of this paradigm shift?

Amanda P.
The author proposes an elemtary framwork for explaining disjunctures between economy, culture, and politics. He uses five terms to do so. Out of ethnoscape, financescape, technoscape, mediascape, and ideoscape...which do you think has the biggest influence in how cultural material can be transmitted. Which happens most rapid? Can these even be viewed seperately at all?

Gavin
In the beginning of The Global Now, Arjun claims that "one of the most poblematic legacies of grand Western social science is that it has steadily reinforced the sense of some single moment - call it the modern moment - that by its appearance creates a dramatic and unprecedented break between past and present."  What do you think this moment is?  How do you think this moment transformed the world? Do you believe that there is two different moments: a science/technology backed moment and a religion based moment?  Is it possible that this moment is the same whether your consider science/technology or religion? How do you think the media has influenced this flow between traditional and modern societies?

Hannah
In Here and Now, Appadurai states that globalization has shrunk the distance between elites, shifted key relations between producers and consumers, broken many links between labor and family life, obscured the lines between temporary locales and imaginary national attachment. Yet with the use of overseas workers that require lower wages, isnt this in fact enlarging the gap between the upper class and the working class? while globalization is important, is the americanization of other countries at the expense of other cultures worth a cheaper blouse?

Alex
What does Appadurai mean when he says that the imagination plays a key role in globalization and modernization? How is this tied to physical changes in local communities around the world?

Amanda P.
Throughout the assigned chapters, Arjun Appadurai employs different uses of the word, IMAGINE. There is the "work of the imagination," "the imagination of the postelectronic," the imagination as a "property of the collective," and the "imagined world." To what extent to you think that globalization had been or will be imagined in the future? Is globalization a direct result of imagination, or is it a technological byproduct of other concepts like Appadurai's "mass media"?

Liz
What do "ordinary people" imagine? And why do people imagine?

Stephanie
Throughout Chapter 2, the author touches upon the idea that "the media creates community with "no sense of place (29)." After reading about the positives and negatives that come with such technological advances and the sharing of ideas through such a source, do you think that this can be avoided while still moving forward with modernity through the media?

Natalie
How do you think the tone of the article would have been different if it was written by someone who was born and raised in the USA versus someone who just went there for college?

LB
"The United States is no longer the puppeteer of a world system of images but is only one node of a complex transnational construction of imaginary landscapes" (p. 31). How strongly do you agree/disagree with this statement and how would you argue your position?

Amanda B.
on page 35, I was really interested in his explanation of mediascapes and ideascapes. The section on mediascapes was the most appealing to me, and easier to understand. Do mediascapes really have that major an impact on people who are given a large message in any varying form?

Shannon
Is mediascapes a new concept? How has it evolved with the development of new technologies? Have these changes made it more effective?

Zach N.
Is it possible that our new dominant media driven society is a bad thing? Is imagination taking over for the worse?

Gavin
How do you think that the media has impacted the cultural homogenization and the cultural heterogenization throughout the world?

James
What can Pico Iyer's experiences in Asia tell us about globalization? Do you feel that a global culture will emerge in the near future, or ever?