March 4 Questions: Martin-Barbero and Holstein

From Nationalisms to Transnationalisms
Martin-Barbero’s articles discusses the various ways in which technologies of communication have drawn audience members in nationalizing countries, specifically in Latin America, to take up certain kinds of cultural participation through their experience of popular media. I think it might be helpful to discuss the various ways that he sees “the mass” becoming involved in “mass culture” as a question of agency. To what degree is he seeing media as repressive, and in what ways? Similarly, in the various historical waves of technology he addresses, what possibilities does he see media offering for active engagement and choice within culture? Are agency and coercion mutually exclusive here, or working more in tandem?

Sewing and Sowing
Holstein’s reading of an Amish quilt suggests that one of the concerns of Amish society reflected by the object is the understanding that each member of the community must either actively choose to abide by Amish ways, or must leave the community and join the outside world instead. She suggests that the quilt offers a positive representation of Amish culture, its design offering a kind of argument for the virtues and advantages of membership in the community. Given that it is globalization week: Are there parallels between the cultural tensions that Holstein sees expressed in the quilt (the internal community as definitively sectioned off from a larger national community) and some of the transnational struggles we read about this week? How might we see the quilt with reference to some of the questions of technological-cultural hybridization that other readings raised?