Kayla Salyer -- Appadurai

Rereading Appadurai today was a completely new experience than before. When first touching on this piece, I was more than confused throughout the entire thing, and frustrated with each sentence I read. Now, I find myself far more comfortable with the material I read, and able to understand far more than I did in the past.
That being said, I want to talk about one specific thing Appadurai writes about: Cultural expansion. As mentioned early on in his essay, Appadurai shows the various restrictions and barriers cultures had to face in order to spread to other parts of the world. From geography to religious and political laws, culture was sectioned to certain parts of the world. This changed very quickly and very drastically in modern times. One of the most prominent ways it spread was due to the fact that we do not have to communicate face to face. We have telephones, internet, television and countless others that connect us with the world around. A stream of benefits and consequences have stemmed from this cultural change. Mentioning Jameson, Appadurai talks about this "nostalgia we have for the present"(Appadurai 512), this feeling of a loss of something. We constantly look back and think we are missing something in our present day lives, which causes us to search for something in the present that can be from the past. He is putting forth the idea that we are not living in the present anymore because we are always longingly looking into the past.
Relating these ideas to another class, I have been looking at the modernization of Japan. Japan was closed off from the rest of the world for a long period of time, until the west forced themselves onto their borders.  Japan did their best to keep their culture, yet westernization was inevitable. Reading a book from the early 1920's, it is evident that westernization was taking a toll on the Japanese culture. A writer expressed his fears and longings towards a western girl, while wanting her to have a basis of Japanese culture. The woman in the book turned into the exact opposite of the writers dream because although she was western to an extent, she had no Japanese cultural background. The author expresses how detrimental this can be. The woman looses herself to a false, idealized western culture of lies, cheat and hatred. According to the book, the lack of a core culture, and the influence of a foreign culture had detrimental effects. This correlates with Appadurai's ideas of the consequences of the spread of culture, as well as the nostalgia for the present.