Practices of Looking: Chapter 10 - The Global Flow of Visual Culture

The Global Flow of Visual Culture

• Today two primary avenues for circulation, distribution, and consumption of images is satellite and the web
• Communication technologies allow long distance connections propose avenues for world peace
• It actually fosters the growth of multinational corporations and expansion of political influence by powerful nations
• Globalization increased the rich-poor divide
• People living in other countries than where they are born now have a connection to home through TV programs
• The web allows total circulation of products and cultures
• National borders have tightened 
• Visual culture is the key to escalated globalization

The Global Subject and the Global Gaze

• The crossing of imagery has created the idea of "global citizens"
• Space travels during the Cold War; photo's of the world were taken so it is the first time the globe has been seen in space
• NASA landed astronauts on the moon in 1968
• Earth Day was created in 1970
• In 1972, the first image of the world was released by NASA 
• The world became the icon of the peace movement symbolizing global unity and harmony
• Satellites changes our relationship with the world and how we regard ourselves with objectivity and subjectivity
• Objectivity and Subjectivity are now more intertwined with every day experiences 
• Viewing the world from the outside is omniscience and the satisfaction of locating you own small place in the world
• Photography fascination
• Remote sensing technology opened to private industry, to sell satellite imaging programs to consumers for leisure activities
• Can be used for studies like the deterioration of the glaciers
• Now adds to the understanding of mapping - people can locate themselves
• Contemporary surveillance society - for spying, and understanding location
• GPS - being able to locate yourself and more easily navigate to where someone needs to go
• Can help medical field get to where they need to go 

Cultural Imperialism and Beyond

• Cultural Imperialism - how an ideology, a politics, or a way of life is exported into other territories through cultural products
• Television can exploit political and social ideologies of larger countries over one another to promote 
• A visual way of crossing boundaries when those boundaries cannot be physically crossed
• A battle ground for control over the shaping of world news to generate foreign support
• "Facts" can be generated at a faster rate, but are highly monitored, restricted, and generated by countries
• National and global are in constant fluid tension between international opinion and global forces 

Global Brands

• increase of global marketing of american brands gave the idea of being "colonized" by American capitalism
• widely shared meanings that spread across cultural spaces
• Ex. Coca-cola, Nike, Starbucks
• With this also came the counter - resistance of the original brand and the usage of a copy
• Companies trying to promote their "global understanding" when crossing borders
• The portrayal of specific cultural and national identities under the sign of a brand
• Ex. McDonald's and China - symbol of modernity and China's new capitalism

Concepts of Globalization

• Globalization results in increased migration, the rise of multinational corporations, capital and financial networks , the development of global communications and transportation, a consequent sense of the decline of the sovereign nation-state in response to the "shrinking" of the world 
• Diaspora - ethnic communities that are separate from their country of origin
• Hybridity - the mixing of people and cultures
• deterritoralization - a separation of people from their traditional territories, often referring to a forced taking away of territory
• cosmopolitanism - subjectivities that are situated beyond the nation, identified with the global or with traveling the world
• outsourcing - of labor 
• transnationalism
• The global and the local are now interdependent
• Idea that globalization bringing neighbors "too close for comfort"
• Causes a rise in poverty and a separation between the classes
• Ethnoscapes - groups of people of similar ethnicities who move across boarders in roles such as refugees, tourists, exiles, and guest workers
• mediascapes - the movement of media texts and cultural product throughout the world
• technoscapes - the complex technological industries that circulate information
• financescapes - flow of global capital
• ideoscapes - ideologies that circulate
• analyzing this allows for critique of  exchanges between cultures
• post colonial theory - people that are in other cultures but still connected to the past cultures through Web and TV
• take into the account of the viewer and their personal experiences for circumstances of viewing

Visuality and Global Media Flow

• the genres of popular cultures travel across national boundaries
• ex. reality TV shows that are reused among different cultures like American Idol
• Franchising producers pay a fee to release the format to other cultures
• would indicate a commonality of programs, but it also changes how these shows are produced
• ex. The 007 franchise and the idea of James Bond 
• America no longer has film monopoly
• Japan - action films regarding martial arts
• India - Bollywood

Indigenous and Diasporic Media

• Immigration has become a political debate and diasporic communities have continued to grow. with homelessness looming over the US
• The geographic dispersal of people and intensified concerns about national security and autonomy
• Programming of global media environment demonstrates power of cultural products to reaffirm ethnic and local values over homogenizing forces in a communication system
• Helped link people who are geographically dispersed but preserved and reinstate cultural traditions
• "Community"television - diasporic communities - ethnic communities living in concentrations set apart from their homelands, many constitute audiences of narrowcast programing
• The Web can do the same thing television can through an illusion of "place" - a website
• ex. the Zapatista activists used global support effectively

Borders and Franchises

• had a large affect on the distribution and production of art
• The Guggenhiem being created in other countries than the US
• Post-industrialization  creates large economic contexts with economy centered on luxury, new technology and new design and new ways of doing business
• The Arab Emirates, now being a largely powerful force, started buying the luxuries such as hotels and museums for use
• Globalizing economy saw benefits of new governments and new business for cultural capital to gain importance in the world 
• marking the open boarders of trade and exchange but surveillance becomes more heavy as things cross the boarders
• Ownership and national rights still remains crucial - conflicts on legal moral rights for claims of sovereign ownership on both sides are inevitably subject to worlds view
• The material environment is crucial to understanding global view