Arjun Appadurai

1. Introduction

Arjun Appadurai (b. 1949) is an Indian‑born anthropologist whose work has become central to contemporary thinking about globalization, culture, and modernity across the social sciences and philosophy. Writing from the late twentieth century onward, he challenges nation‑centered and territorially fixed understandings of culture by emphasizing the mobility of people, images, capital, and ideas, and the ways these flows reshape everyday life.

His best‑known contribution is the family of concepts he calls “scapes”—ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes—which portray globalization as a set of overlapping, disjunctive landscapes rather than a single integrated system. Closely linked is his notion of the imagination as social practice, a collective capacity through which individuals and groups envision possible futures, form identities, and contest structures of power.

Appadurai’s writings have been influential well beyond anthropology, particularly in political theory, postcolonial studies, media and communication, and urban studies. They have provided conceptual tools for analyzing migration and diaspora, mass mediation, urban poverty and violence, and the cultural dimensions of finance and risk. His work is often cited in debates about cultural homogenization versus heterogenization, the fate of the nation‑state, and the ethics of global interdependence.

While not a philosopher by training, Appadurai’s analyses of modernity, sovereignty, and the future have been taken up as key resources for rethinking social ontology and political responsibility in a world characterized by uncertainty, mobility, and deep inequality.

2. Life and Historical Context

2.1 Biographical Outline

Born on 4 February 1949 in Bombay (now Mumbai), then part of British India, Appadurai grew up in a newly independent state marked by linguistic, religious, and regional diversity and by ambitious projects of state‑led development. This environment exposed him early to questions of nationalism, secularism, and social difference that later informed his scholarship.

He left India to study in the United States, receiving a B.A. from Brandeis University (1970) and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago (1976). Chicago’s strong tradition in interpretive and historical anthropology shaped his early work on ritual, performance, and kingship in South India. Over subsequent decades he held academic positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, the University of Chicago, and, from 2000, New York University, where he became Goddard Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication. He has also been affiliated with European institutions, including in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

2.2 Historical and Intellectual Milieu

Appadurai’s career unfolded alongside major global and disciplinary shifts:

These transformations provided the backdrop for Appadurai’s move from regional South Asian studies to broader analyses of global cultural flows, media, finance, and the politics of fear, situating his work within debates about late twentieth‑ and early twenty‑first‑century modernity.

3. Intellectual Development

3.1 Early Formation: Ritual, Kingship, and Colonialism

In the 1970s, Appadurai’s research centered on South India, culminating in Worship and Conflict under Colonial Rule. Influenced by Chicago‑style interpretive anthropology, he examined ritual and kingship as historically embedded practices rather than timeless traditions. This phase trained him to treat culture as processual and contested, a stance that would later underpin his critiques of fixed notions of “local culture.”

3.2 Material Culture and Value (1980s)

During the 1980s, Appadurai turned to material culture and economic anthropology. As editor of The Social Life of Things (1986), he proposed that commodities be analyzed through their “social lives,” emphasizing circulation, exchange, and regimes of value. Drawing on Marx, Mauss, and Simmel, he argued that objects become meaningful at particular points in their trajectories. This work marked a shift from symbol and ritual to flows and value, prefiguring his later interest in global circulation.

3.3 Globalization and the Imagination (late 1980s–1990s)

From the late 1980s, Appadurai developed his most influential ideas on globalization. His 1990 essay “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” later expanded in Modernity at Large (1996), introduced the scapes framework and redefined imagination as a collective social practice. Here he moved decisively beyond area‑studies regionalism toward a theorization of global modernity that emphasized disjunctive flows and diasporic subjectivities.

3.4 Risk, Violence, and the Future (2000s–present)

In the 2000s, Appadurai extended his focus to ethnic violence, urban poverty, and financial risk, particularly in works like Fear of Small Numbers (2006), The Future as Cultural Fact (2013), and Banking on Words (2015). He increasingly analyzed how majorities perceive minorities, how the future becomes a terrain of cultural struggle, and how language and derivatives intertwine in global finance. More recent work integrates digital media, urban governance, and planetary vulnerability, consolidating his role as a theorist of late‑modern risk and aspiration.

4. Major Works and Key Texts

4.1 Monographs and Major Collections

4.2 Influential Essays

Several essays have had disproportionate impact:

• “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy” (1990): Introduces ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes; reframes globalization as disjunctive flows.
• “The Production of Locality” (mid‑1990s): Argues that locality is actively produced through social practices, not given by geography.
• Essays on diaspora and public culture: Contribute to understanding transnational media, translocal publics, and the role of imagination in migration.

These writings are frequently excerpted in readers on globalization, media studies, and postcolonial theory, and provide the conceptual backbone for subsequent debates about culture and global modernity.

5. Core Ideas: Scapes, Imagination, and Locality

5.1 Global Cultural “Scapes”

Appadurai’s concept of scapes depicts globalization as multiple, partially overlapping landscapes of flow:

These scapes are disjunctive: they do not move in sync, producing uneven, unpredictable global formations.

5.2 Imagination as Social Practice

In Modernity at Large, Appadurai contends that the imagination has become a “staging ground for action.” Rather than a private, escapist faculty, it is a socially organized capacity, shaped by media and migration, that allows people to envision and pursue alternative lives. Proponents of this view emphasize its usefulness for understanding migrant aspirations, social movements, and new forms of political subjectivity. Some commentators note affinities with Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities” while stressing Appadurai’s focus on future‑oriented projects rather than national pasts.

5.3 The Production of Locality

Appadurai’s notion of locality rejects the idea of the “local” as primordial or naturally bounded. He describes locality as a relational achievement—produced, maintained, and sometimes transformed through everyday social practices, such as neighborhood organization, ritual, and violence. This constructivist view has been used to analyze how “local cultures” are assembled under conditions of global flow, and how communities negotiate the tension between deterritorializing forces and the desire for stable place‑based identities.

6. Methodology and Theoretical Influences

6.1 Methodological Orientation

Appadurai’s methodology combines ethnography, historical analysis, and wide‑ranging theoretical synthesis. He favors contextual, case‑based studies (e.g., South Indian temple politics, Mumbai slums, global finance) while extrapolating conceptual frameworks of broad applicability, such as scapes and the social life of things. He often works with multi‑sited and transnational ethnography, tracing flows of people, media, and capital across locations.

He also advocates reflexivity about the global position of social science, urging scholars to recognize how theory and method are shaped by Euro‑American institutional contexts and to cultivate “global ethnoscapes of knowledge.”

6.2 Theoretical Lineages

Appadurai draws on and reworks a range of intellectual traditions:

Commentators note that Appadurai’s style is synthetic rather than systematic; he combines these influences pragmatically to address empirical and normative questions about global modernity.

7. Contributions to Political and Social Philosophy

7.1 Rethinking Sovereignty and the Nation‑State

Appadurai’s scapes framework has been influential in debates about the changing role of the nation‑state. By showing how ethnoscapes, mediascapes, and financescapes cross borders in disjunctive ways, he suggests that states no longer monopolize cultural reproduction or political imagination. Political theorists use his work to argue that sovereignty has become decentered and fragmented, while some critics maintain that he underestimates enduring forms of state coercion and control.

7.2 Democracy, Minorities, and Violence

In Fear of Small Numbers, Appadurai examines why small minorities can become focal points of majority anxiety and violence in globalizing democracies. He links this to perceived mismatches between numerical majorities and imagined national purity, contributing to philosophical discussions of recognition, exclusion, and the “dark side” of democratic nationhood. Proponents find this helpful for understanding ethnic cleansing and pogroms; others argue that material and strategic factors require stronger emphasis.

7.3 Imagination, Agency, and Aspiration

The notion of imagination as social practice has informed social and political philosophy concerned with agency, subjectivity, and hope. It supports accounts of subaltern and migrant actors as imaginative planners of their futures rather than passive bearers of structure. Development theorists have used his ideas on aspiration to discuss capabilities and freedom, sometimes aligning them with, and sometimes contrasting them to, Amartya Sen’s and Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approaches.

7.4 Global Justice and Cultural Pluralism

Appadurai’s reflections on cultural homogenization and heterogenization, and on the future as cultural fact, have been incorporated into debates on global justice and multiculturalism. Some philosophers draw on his work to argue for more flexible, non‑territorial models of political community; others question whether his emphasis on fluidity provides adequate grounds for robust institutional proposals.

8. Globalization, Risk, and the Future

8.1 Disjunctive Globalization

Appadurai characterizes globalization as a set of disjunctive relationships among scapes rather than as a coherent, teleological process. This view challenges older center–periphery and world‑systems models. Scholars of global governance and political economy use his analysis to highlight unpredictability and non‑linearity in global change, though some world‑systems theorists argue that structural inequalities remain more systematic than his model suggests.

8.2 The Future as Cultural Fact

In The Future as Cultural Fact, Appadurai argues that orientations toward the future—expectations, fears, plans—have become central to social life and must be understood as culturally organized:

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“The future is now a cultural fact. It is a social field and a cultural horizon that is populated by ideas, images, and projects.”

— Arjun Appadurai, The Future as Cultural Fact

He emphasizes practices of aspiration, planning, and risk management, contending that access to the means of imagining and pursuing futures is unequally distributed. This has informed research on youth, migration, and development, as well as philosophical work on temporality and responsibility.

8.3 Risk, Finance, and Derivatives

In Banking on Words, Appadurai links derivative finance to a broader culture of risk. He suggests that derivatives exemplify a new regime in which language—promises, contracts, expectations—becomes central to financial value. Proponents of this view see it as complementing sociological accounts of financialization by highlighting discursive and cultural dimensions. Economic sociologists and some critical theorists, however, question whether his emphasis on language adequately captures technical and institutional aspects of financial markets.

Collectively, these analyses position risk and the future as key domains through which globalization is experienced and contested.

9. Impact on Anthropology, Media, and Urban Studies

9.1 Anthropology and Globalization Studies

Appadurai has been a major figure in reshaping anthropology’s approach to globalization. His insistence on flows and disjunctures encouraged moves away from studying isolated “local cultures” toward multi‑sited, transnational ethnography. Courses and readers on globalization regularly include his work, and his concepts of scapes and social imagination have been widely used in analyses of migration, diaspora, and transnationalism.

9.2 Media and Communication Studies

The notions of mediascapes and imagination have been especially influential in media and communication. Scholars employ these ideas to examine how film, television, and digital platforms enable audiences to construct “imagined worlds” and alternative identities. His work underpins research on global media flows, fan cultures, and transnational public spheres. Some media theorists adapt his approach to digital platforms and social media, debating how far his 1990s framework can be extended to algorithmic environments.

9.3 Urban Studies and Informal Settlements

Appadurai’s collaborations with NGOs and grassroots organizations, particularly in Mumbai, have shaped urban studies and planning debates. He analyzes slums and informal settlements as sites of innovative locality production and democratic experimentation rather than simply zones of deprivation. Urbanists draw on his ideas to understand how residents of megacities mobilize data, savings groups, and federations to claim citizenship and infrastructure.

9.4 Interdisciplinary Reach

His concepts travel across disciplines:

This interdisciplinary uptake has made Appadurai one of the most cited anthropological theorists in late twentieth‑ and early twenty‑first‑century scholarship on globalization.

10. Critiques and Debates

10.1 Overemphasis on Flow and Novelty

Critics argue that Appadurai’s stress on mobility and disjuncture can underplay continuities in global power. World‑systems and dependency theorists contend that his scapes framework gives insufficient attention to structural economic hierarchies and capitalist exploitation. Others suggest that by foregrounding novelty, he risks overstating the distinctiveness of contemporary globalization compared with earlier imperial and colonial formations.

10.2 The Role of the State

Some scholars maintain that Appadurai’s analysis underestimates state power, especially in security, border control, and welfare. They argue that while flows cross borders, states remain central in organizing labor markets, surveillance, and violence. In response, proponents of Appadurai’s perspective emphasize that he portrays states as reconfigured rather than irrelevant, and that his work on ethnic violence foregrounds state complicity.

10.3 Abstraction and Empirical Grounding

Appadurai’s conceptual innovations have also been criticized for high abstraction. Some anthropologists question whether categories like scapes or imagination as social practice are too broad to guide concrete ethnography. Others reply that his own case studies—of South Indian ritual, Mumbai slums, or global finance—demonstrate how the concepts can be empirically operationalized.

10.4 Normative Ambiguity

In debates within political theory and ethics, commentators note a certain normative ambiguity. While Appadurai often expresses sympathy for marginalized groups and democratic aspirations, he rarely offers explicit criteria for justice or detailed institutional proposals. Some philosophers see this as a limitation for normative theory; others regard his role as primarily diagnostic, providing conceptual resources that can be combined with more explicitly normative frameworks.

11. Legacy and Historical Significance

Appadurai’s legacy lies in reframing how scholars conceptualize culture, globalization, and modernity. His vocabulary of scapes and disjuncture has become standard in academic and pedagogical discussions, offering a widely adopted alternative to linear modernization and center–periphery models. Many undergraduate and graduate syllabi in anthropology, sociology, media studies, and international relations feature Modernity at Large and related essays as core readings.

Within anthropology, he is often grouped with other theorists of transnationalism and late modernity, marking a shift from the study of bounded societies to networks, flows, and imaginaries. In the broader humanities and social sciences, his articulation of imagination as social practice and locality as produced has informed long‑running debates about identity, place, and diaspora.

Historically, Appadurai is frequently positioned alongside figures such as Benedict Anderson, Homi K. Bhabha, and Saskia Sassen as part of a generation that responded to the end of the Cold War, intensified migration, and digital media by proposing new conceptual tools for understanding globalization. Some commentators view his emphasis on fluidity and heterogeneity as emblematic of post–Cold War optimism and poststructuralist sensibilities; others read his later work on fear, violence, and risk as capturing a more unsettled, crisis‑ridden phase of global modernity.

His influence continues in emerging discussions of digital globalization, planetary urbanization, and climate vulnerability, where scholars adapt his focus on disjunctive flows and future‑oriented imaginaries to new empirical domains, ensuring ongoing relevance for his ideas in twenty‑first‑century social thought.