Making the National Geographic: The Infrastructure of an Intimate Abstraction, with Arjun Appadurai

A world-renowned anthropologist, Arjun Appadurai has been recognized for decades as one of the most important theorists of modernity, globalization, and the nation-state writing today. Currently a Professor Emeritus of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University’s Steinhardt School, Appadurai is the author of many influential books, including Worship and Conflict under Colonial Rule (1981), Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy (1990), and Fear of Small Numbers (2006). While his scholarship ranges widely across many topics, from global cultural flows to urban design, the structure of political space-and the role of human imagination in creating it-is a theme that cuts across his impressive body of work.
The Clough Center is delighted to welcome Prof. Appadurai as a Clough Distinguished Lecturer of the 2023-24 academic year. Serving as his respondent is Zine Magubane, Professor of Sociology at Boston College, whose work critically examines the legacies of slavery and colonialism to develop new theoretical tools for a truly global sociology. Prof. Appadurai’s lecture is entitled “Making the National Geographic: The Infrastructure of an Intimate Abstraction.” Please join us for what promises to be an exceptionally rich exploration of the nature of “place” in today’s globalized world.
This event is part of the Clough Center's year-long exploration of “Attachment to Place in a World of Nations”