Connectivity, Insistence and Cultural Experience
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Accidental Cosmopolitanism: Connectivity, Insistence and Cultural Experience Gavan Titley BA (TCD), MA (DCU) Thesis presented for the qualification of PhD Dublin City University, School of Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies Supervisor: Professor Michael Cronin Date of submission: 24 May 2005 Declaration of the Candidate I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of PhD, is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent thatlat sucnsuch work hasm s been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. Signed: / (Candidate) ID No.: 98971069 Date: Table of contents Abstract Acknowledgements Introduction 1 1. The Imaginative Geography of Global Interconnectedness 1.1 Imagining globality and ‘the global’ 19 1.2 Globality reconsidered 33 1.3 Limitlessness, limitedness and globality 41 1.4 Imaginative geographies and ‘writing the world’ 72 1.5 Postscript: The dead letter office of globalisation 85 2. Accidental Cosmopolitanism and Connexity 2.1 Imaginative geography and cosmopolitanism 94 2.2 The re-emergence of cosmopolitanism 100 2.3 Cosmopolitanism as discursive fluid and mobilising metaphor 111 2.4 Routes into cosmopolitan practice 118 2.5 Accidental Cosmopolitanism 142 3. Paradise, porousness and panopticism 3.1 Introduction: Negotiating the contours of the Caribbean 165 3.2 All-inclusive resorts as cultural type and lived form 183 3.3 The lightning rod of the all-inclusive 195 3.4 Dwelling, imagining and researching in the Caribbean 199 3.5 The porousness of paradise 210 3.6 The creep of all-inclusivisation 219 3.7 Knowing me, knowing you, knowing me: negotiating St Lucia online 230 Conclusion 250 Bibliography 261 Doctoral thesis abstract Accidental Cosmopolitanism: Connectivity, Insistence and Cultural Experience Processes of globalisation are often associated with a burgeoning consciousness of interconnectedness and interdependence between people in the majority and minority worlds. Areas of everyday life, such as consumption and travel, are held to be increasingly informed by the realisation that micro-practices implicate the person in relation to global Others. It is argued that rhetorical ideas of global awareness - as well as the theoretical assumptions that underpin them - depend heavily on rationalist notions of an unfurling consciousness, and inadequately consider the ambivalences engendered by informational overload, non-linear processes and the unintended consequences of globally significant actions. Thus prevalent ideas of acting ethically in globalised societies are not based on considerations of how people may construct the ‘globe’ as a shifting, imagined and incoherent context. The thesis proposes a new understanding of the idea of imaginative geography to conceptualise the ways in which living in interdependence involves a constant tension between implication and understanding. This is exemplified by the ways in which contemporary tourism - for political, cultural and environmental reasons - has become an experience of accidental cosmopolitanism for many; the experience of becoming unavoidably aware of one’s interconnections in a context where leisure normally guarantees insulation from them. As a case study the thesis analyses the construction of the Caribbean as a particular type of touristic space embedded in western images of the non-modem paradise. Field work in St Lucia reveals a fine-grained picture of the ambiguous ways in which touristic images are mediated, re-accented or contested, and how fantasy spaces can never be insulated from wider socio-political dynamics. It concludes by examining the import of these theoretical innovations and the fieldwork observation for discussions of globalisation and non-formal education. Acknowledgements This thesis examines interconnection and interdependence. It is also proof that without others embracing these conditions nothing would get done. I am indebted to SALIS for its creative interdisciplinary environment, its financial support, and for the intangible benefit of a continued feeling of involvement while living in Helsinki. In Dublin City University I have received generous scholarly and personal support over many years, and I would like to thank Dr. Roddy Flynn, Debbie Ging, Prof. John Horgan, Dr. Dorothy Kenny, Brian Trench, Dr. Bill Richardson and Prof Jenny Williams. I am particularly grateful to Dr. David Denby for initially supervising and supporting this project. In the University of Helsinki, I have been fortunate to end up in the Renvall Institute for Area and Cultural Studies. Thanks are due to the Director, Dr. Lars-Folke Landgren, and members past and present of the pulla kluben. In the Institute and University I would like to recognise the interest and support of Prof. Andrew Chesterman, Yonca Ermetlu, Dr. Maarit Forde, Prof. Arto Happala, Dr. Janne Makela, Dr. Jussi Pakasvirta, Dr. Mark Shackleton and Prof. Esa Valiverronen. From 2001-2 I received funding as a visiting researcher from CIMO, and from 2002-4 from the Finnish- Irish bilateral scholarship. In the Council of Europe I would like to thank Peter Lauritzen and Antje Rothemund for support and involving me in stimulating projects. Yael Ohana and Goran Buldioski have been firm comrades and great friends. My project in St Lucia and interest in Caribbean issues has benefited enormously from the advice of Dr. Sandra Courtman, Dr. Amanda Sives, Dr. Stuart Murray and Dr. Mimi Sheller, and from the resources and advice available in the library of Institute for Commonwealth Studies. In St Lucia I am indebted to Jo Hanlon, Joe Du Bois, Louis Lewis, Berthia Parle and Dr. Tennyson Joseph for advice and participation, and to Jennifer Lutton, Herbert Signorent and Gene Maruaz for companionship and keen insight. Thanks to particular friends whose intelligence and example have made me think and think again; Colm O’Cinneide, Dr. Colin Coulter, Ditta Dolesjiova, Allan Gronbaek, Petr Lebeda, Natalie McDonnell, Peter Merry and Dr. Andrew Newby. My involvement in the British & Irish Studies programme at Renvall is due to the support and interest of Pirkko Hautamaki, and my intense enjoyment of my time there is largely thanks to her friendship, rigour, and commitment to the revitalising power of dark humour. Prof. Michael Cronin has been a committed and challenging supervisor and a source of inspiration. His intellectual creativity and clarity resonate with political purpose and generosity, and the ideas that have ended up here would not have done so without his engagement. ‘Tis not off the street ye licked it’; during the course of this thesis, and in education and life in general, my parents Alan and Mary Titley have always been loving and dedicated, providing a space and atmosphere in which we could find what interested and moved us. This is a small but important opportunity to thank them for that, and to hope that now I can be inspired to create the same conditions for somebody else. Convention dictates that I thank Paivi Lampinen-Titley last, however convention has little to say about how to describe her what she means in my life. Living with you is, as I have told you before, ‘the growing good of the world’. Googlahden Kuningatar, sa oot ihana ja ma rakastan sua. Jonas-Liam, the thesis is finished and it’s time to go and play. The world is a rock/ that’s spinnin ’ so fast / it'// give you jim-jams. Frank Black, “Sir Rockaby”. Introduction In effect, both inside and outside the academy today, we are all asked to do more cultural work. Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash, Spaces of Culture (1999:1) We are all required to ‘do more cultural work today’. The ‘we’ implies rather than identifies, and the demand echoes from the globalised rafters; the planetary world demands nothing less. Yet beyond the certainty of the requirement, the scope of this work and the capacities required to carry it out are far from clear. Featherstone and Lash, in grounding this assertion, acknowledge that the ‘process of globalization’ is integral to this new twist in the cultural turn, and that whereas culture - as interpretative framework or felt collectivity - may have been widely assumed to describe and prescribe fixity, coherence and a shared world of meaning, that which was always less than solid has now melted even further into air. In the words of Asian Dub Foundation, culture moves, and culture as a ‘form of life’ (Hannerz 1996: 69-77) is stretched into new shapes and frameworks. The concept of cultural work is suggestive, and I wish to calibrate it in a slightly different way than its sense in its original context. For Featherstone and Lash, cultural work is increased in scope and complexity by the dilution of stable cultural frameworks in shared cultural worlds, even if this, as they admit, is a less than stable imaginary for basing an analysis of change. What is of more interest here is the by now commonplace assertion that ‘cultural work’ is increased and intensified by ‘the sources of cultural production and dissemination’ increasing (1999:1). To state it somewhat breathlessly, cultural forms, bodies, products and images are increasingly mobile and de- territorialised; migrating, dwelling, combining and re-combining, traversing life-worlds, and requiring new discourses, narratives and metaphors to make sense of them. Cultural work - which varies across overlapping formations of selves, groups, networks, regions, nations, globes - has increased through unevenly dispersed and experienced