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Modern Social Imaginaries

Memory has been figured as an important process of placing and locating people and communities, both geographically and socially. Memory has also been significant in research on people who are not part of a formal record of history. This memory work includes a focus on black identity, especially in the work of Toni Morrison and Paul Gilroy. This paper seeks to examine the relevance of memory and re‐memory for the social geographies of the South Asian population in Britain. In the first section I examine visual and material cultures as mechanisms for memory, especially their role in figuring diasporic positioning, and identity politics. These memories are in the form of testimonies and biographical narratives. In the paper I have argued for the relevance and value of re‐memory in understanding the narratives of British Asian heritage in the everyday domestic environment. Re‐memory is an alternative social narrative to memory as it is a form of memory that is not an individual linear, biographical narrative. Re‐memory is a conceptualization of encounters with memories, stimulated through scents, sounds and textures in the everyday. ‘Home possessions’ constitute precipitates of re‐memories and narrated histories. These are souvenirs from the traversed landscapes of the journey, signifiers of ‘other’ narrations of the past not directly experienced but which incorporate narrations of other's oral histories or social histories that are part of the diasporic community's re‐memories. Collectively, visual and material cultures are identified as precipitates of these re‐memories in the form of historical artefacts of heritage and tradition.

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Locating processes of identification: studying the precipitates of re‐memory through artefacts in the British Asian home

In this article, we make two important contributions to the literature on clusters. First, we provide a broader theory of cluster connectivity that has hitherto focused on organization-based pipelines and MNE subsidiaries, by including linkages in the form of personal relationships. Second, we use the lens of social network theory to derive a number of testable propositions. We propose that global linkages with decentralized network structures have the highest potential for local spillovers. In the emerging economy context, our theory implies that clusters linked to the global economy by decentralized pipelines have potential for in-depth catch-up, focused in industry and technology scope. In contrast, clusters linked through decentralized personal relationships have potential for in-breadth catch-up over a range of related industries and technologies. We illustrate our theoretical propositions by contrasting two emerging economy case studies: Bollywood, the Indian filmed entertainment cluster in Mumbai and the Indian software cluster in Bangalore.

Clusters, connectivity and catch-up: Bollywood and Bangalore in the Global Economy

Focusing on the resilience of distinctive local consumption cultures, this paper challenges some of the more sweeping claims that have been advanced in the name of ‘globalization’. Thinking about a ‘globalizing’ rather than a fully ‘globalized’ world encourages us to examine the deeply contested nature of the concept and to explore the geographically uneven nature of recent economic, political and cultural transformations. This paper approaches globalization as a site of struggle rather than as an established fact, emphasizing the need for empirically grounded studies of the impact of ‘globalization’ on consumer cultures in different geographical contexts. The paper examines the way that producers have ‘customized’ their products for different markets (drawing on evidence from China and South Africa). It then reviews case study evidence from three contrasting consumption cultures: consumption and ‘public culture’ in India, ‘consumer nationalism’ in China, and ‘artful consumption’ in Russia. The paper concludes by identifying some current debates and outlining some directions for future research, including a re-emphasis on consumption and material culture; an exploration of consumption as social practice; the delineation of commodityspecific consumption cultures; and some reflections on the political, ethical and methodological issues that are being raised in contemporary consumption research.

http://www1.geo.ntnu.edu.tw/~moise/Data/Books/Economical/03%20retail%20geography/r11.pdf

Local consumption cultures in a globalizing world

Beyond Bollywood is the first comprehensive look at the emergence, development, and significance of contemporary South Asian diasporic cinema From a feminist and queer perspective, Jigna Desai explores the hybrid cinema of the "Brown Atlantic" through a close look at films in English from and about South Asian diasporas in the United States, Canada, and Britain, including such popular films as My Beautiful Laundrette, Fire, Monsoon Wedding, and Bend it Like Beckham

Beyond Bollywood: The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film

This is the first book to concentrate on the visual culture of Indian cinema, specifically Bombay-based cinema since 1913. Cinema is one of India's most vibrant cultural products, as well as a major industry, producing the largest number of films in the world. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Dwyer and Patel examine Bombay cinema's unique styles, genres and themes, tracing its roots in early photography, theatre and chromolithography and its development as a visual regime that dominates Indian popular culture. The authors consider mise-en-scene, looking at sets, locations and costumes crucial to understanding Indian fashion, lifestyle and consumption. They examine the use of hairstyles and make-up in the context of representations of the body in order to explore changing ideas of beauty and sexuality. Other crucial elements that are discussed include ethnicity and Westernization, thus highlighting issues of class, caste, regional variation and religion. Finally the authors look at publicity materials and examine the development of the imagery employed in film-advertising.

Cinema India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Film

Filming the Gods examines the role and depiction of religion in Indian cinema, showing that the relationship between the modern and the traditional in contemporary India is not exotic, but part of everyday life. Concentrating mainly on the Hindi cinema of Mumbai, Bollywood, it also discusses India's other cinemas. Rachel Dwyer's lively discussion encompasses the mythological genre which continues India's long tradition of retelling Hindu myths and legends, drawing on sources such as the national epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana; the devotional genre, which flourished at the height of the nationalist movement in the 1930s and 40s; and the films made in Bombay that depict India's Islamicate culture, including the historical, the courtesan film and the 'Muslim social' genre. Filming the Gods also examines the presence of the religious across other genres and how cinema represents religious communities and their beliefs and practices. It draws on interviews with film stars, directors and producers as well as popular fiction, fan magazines and the films themselves. As a result, Filming the Gods is a both a guide to the study of film in religious culture as well as a historical overview of Indian religious film.

Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema

Book description: This book addresses aspects of popular/public culture in a manner that connects with contemporary political controversy i.e. liberalization, Hinduvata, etc. This volume concentrates mainly on film and mass media, and includes contributions by Ravi Vasudevan, Patricia Uberoi, Sara Dickey, Nicholas Dirks and a number of first-rate South Asian scholars.

Pleasure and the nation: the history, politics and consumption of public culture in India

All You Want Is Money, All You Need Is Love: Sex and Romance in Modern India

(1998). The Hindi romantic cinema: Yash Chopra's Kabhi Kabhie and Silsila. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 181-212.

Rachel Dwyer

Papers

Cinema India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Film

Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema

Pleasure and the nation: the history, politics and consumption of public culture in India

All You Want Is Money, All You Need Is Love: Sex and Romance in Modern India

The Hindi romantic cinema: Yash Chopra's Kabhi Kabhie and Silsila