Postmodern City Films

& Global Flows

Introduction
2014/09/16
Outline

 Starting Questions
 Global Flows and Urban Space of
Flows
 People in Flows: Flaneur &
Migrant
 Summary
 About the Course & Next Week
Global Flows?
 Globalization: “The world is
3 Theses shrinking“;
“the world is
1) Global expansion of growing smaller."
Capitalism and Capitalist
Culture; of
American/Western Culture
2) West vs. East
3) Increasing Hybridization
and Strangeness

 Re-structuring of Global economy,

politics, activist groups, etc.
 Awareness of Global Connectedness
Connected by Global Flows
 Flows of goods, services and finance
 Flows of people –the most limited
 Flows of data and communication
 knowledge-intensive flows;
 labor-intensive flows
Impact:
1/3 of goods flow across national borders;
“left behind if not being connected.”

 Ref. Global flows in a digital age: Expanding

Network of Global Flows
De-Territorialized and Re-Territorialized by
Cultural Flows
Modernity at Large (Arjun Appadurai)
 mediascapes
 ethnoscapees
 technoscapes
 financescapes;
 ideoscapes.

 With conjunctions and disjunctions in

and among them, with shapes
changing or amorphous
Space of Flows
 Flows: “purposeful, repetitive,
programmable sequences of
exchange and interaction between
physically disjoined positions held
by social actors in the economic,
political and symbolic structures of
society” (Castells 1996: 412)
 e.g. information, goods, people--
whatever travel in information
systems, telecommunications, and
transportation lines
Space of Flows (2)

 Manual Castells: Network Society and

Space of Flows
 3 levels of flows:
1. The flows of information (electronic
communication)
2. The network of nodes (節點; e.g. mega-
cities like Taipei) and hubs (中繼站; e.g.
station, airport, port and
telecommunication system)
3. Transnational Elite groups (decision
makers, entrepreneurs and technicians)
Flows/Space vs. Place
Global Flows

Space Space

Local History and

of of
Flows Place

Identity
Loss of identity?
Flows on Different Class
Levels
 Different purposes
 Different degrees of mobility, risks and
stability

 Chance encounters and coincidences

 A different sense of community
Flâneur
 Flâneur: a stroller on the street
 “As such, ‘[i]t is not the pedestrian
flâneur who is emblematic of
modernity but rather the train
passenger, car driver and jet plane
passenger’” (Lash and Urry, 1994:
252).

Paul Gavarni,
Le Flâneur, 1842.
image source
Urban Migrant

 Immigrant of all class levels

 Rural-Urban Migrant laborers
Summary: Scapes and
Flows
1. Space organized by five types of
scapes (media, ethno, techno, ideo,
finance)
2. Flows: a general feature in
postmodern society (caused by
technologies—esp.
telecommunication—multinational
capitalism and global migration).
3. Five kinds: people and traffic, goods,
information, virus and desire.
Summary: Possible Issues
1. Different or old geometry of power?
a. People with different degrees of
mobility;
b. the global vs. the local in the uneven
flows of goods ();
2. Loss of the local: Compression of
time and space (space virtualized or
non-place)
3. risk factors
4. Loss of stable relations and identity
Course Site:
Let’s Take a Look
Next Week:
The World by 賈樟柯