Rethinking Global Indian Dance through Local Eyes: The Contemporary Bharatanatyam Scene in Chennai

TLDR: In this article, the authors argue that the complexity of the relationship between the local and the global can be understood only in terms of historical conditions operating in specific contexts, and that the indigenization of global culture opens up the possibility of alternative experiences of modernity, which do not fall under the rubric of American culture but instead refer to other geocultural identities.

Abstract: Discussions about globalization tend to fall somewhere between two poles. One invokes the paranoia of what Appadurai (1996) refers to as a McDonaldization of the world, in which local practices, identities, and economies give way to the homogenizing mandates of capitalism. The other rejoices over the emergence of so-called hybrid cultural forms, interpreted as signs of the resilience of non-Western societies, as harbingers of the dawn of some new age of multicultural understanding, or as proof of the political power of consumers (Garcia Canclini 1995). Both views often underestimate the complexity of the relationship between the local and the global, and lose from view the fact that this relationship can be understood only in terms of historical conditions operating in specific contexts. While capitalism plunders the world, littering its path with Tommy Hilfiger, Pizza Hut, and the ever-popular sitcom Friends, there are many examples of the ways in which local populations do not passively consume what is thrown at them, but actively reinterpret and selectively combine elements of mass-mediated culture within preexisting frameworks and markets (Diawara 1998; Feld 1988; Martinez 1999). Moreover, the indigenization of global culture opens up the possibility of alternative experiences of modernity, which do not fall under the rubric of American culture but instead refer to other geocultural identities (Ching 2000).