The essay titled, “Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics,” written by Michael Peter Smith, focuses on two fronts of migration and globalization, regarding characterizing the lived experiences of migrants, exiles, and refugees and moving political imagery beyond the limits of global-local duality in social theory. (Smith, p. 2).
One of the prominent themes came from the subsection titled, “The Globalization of Personal Attention.” Smith essentially discusses the influence of creating an identity through mass media. Smith recognizes that “global mass communications via cable television, film and video distribution networks, faxes, and emails are really ‘annihilating space by time’” (Smith, p. 5). Smith continues by stating a question: “Who is sending and receiving these informational flows? Who is producing their contents… Who consumes these flows, and to what effect?” (Smith, p. 5). Essentially, with the prominence of mass media today, it is only right to critically analyze who is producing these outlets to mass media and for what reason. It is a lot to unpack, but in some way, these questions hold a lot of weight. In today’s society, media influences so much and has become a part of everyday life. As a result, in cooperation with model minorities and how Asian folks are represented in the media, Asians inherit traits on how society views them rather than produce their identity through their lived experiences.
Question: Is the “politics of return” premised primarily on the process of reterritorializing or is there some intent of returning to homeland, but making the best of inherited land in the meantime?
Photo Source: http://dailynexus.com/2017-03-02/the-medias-relationship-with-our-identity-an-asian-american-perspective/
Sources: Smith, Michael Peter. “Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics.” Social Text, no. 39, 1994, p. 15., doi:10.2307/466362.
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