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logies, there nonetheless remain a
given set of disciplinary concepts that have been derived from the British (or,
more recently, British and North American) experience that are then applied
in other national contexts. The problem is akin to that of the concept of
'society' in sociology, where the governing set of principles are taken as
universal, and are then extended outwards to comparative studies of national
societies ('American society', 'French society', 'Chinese society' and so on),
where 'all these national particulars can be specified and described in terms of
the presumably universal concepts and theories of a ... sociological master
narrative' (Stratton and Ang, 1996, p. 364). They argue that the approach
which emphasizes national cultuml studies formations, while partially decentring
'master narratives' derived from the North Atlantic corridor, has the
problem of over-emphasising nationalist preoccupations, and generating 'a
lack of reflexivity concerning the presumed fit between cultural studies and
the nation-state', so that 'the nation-state then becomes ... the taken-forgranted
determining context within which particular versions of cultural
studies develop' (Stratton and Ang, 1996, p. 380).
A capacity to move beyond the confines of the nation-state is particularly
important for cultural studies in relation to media globalization, as media in
their most advanced forms are now clearly operating outside of national
formations in terms of their financing, production, distribution and reception.
At the same time, however, it can be argued that there remain strong localizing
and indigenizing tendencies to practices of cultural consumption, which
act as a brake on the idea of a globalized and hegemonic mass popular culture.
One influential approach to these questions, developed from cultural anthropology
more than cultural studies, has been found in the work of Arjun
Appadurai. Appadurai has provided conceptual underpinnings for theories of
globalization and global culture that point to czrltzrral I~ybridization, rather
than cultural domination, as being its raisoiz d'itre. Appadurai (1990) argued
that the global cultural economy was baskd upon a tension between forces
promoting a common global culture (cultural homogenization) and those
promoting cultural difference (cultural heterogenization). He proposed that
global cultural flows operated across five planes:
1. et1)tloscapes - movements of people across the world, as tourists, immigrants,
refugees, exiles, guest workers, students and so on;
2. tecbtroscapes - the movement of complex technologies around the world,
and associated capital and skilled labour linked to investment projects;
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l1 42 Understanding Global Media
3. fittar~scapes - the dramatic and unprecedented global movements of financial
capital through currency markets, financial institutions, stock
exchanges, and commodity markets;
4. nrediascapes - the global flows of images, narratives, media content and so
on through print, broadcast, film and video and, increasingly, the Internet
and digital media;
5. ideoscapes - the global circulation of ideas, concepts, values and
'keywords', such as democracy, human rights, environmental consciousness
and so on.
For Appadurai, what is distinctive