Streams of Cultural Capital: Transnational Cultural Studies

My third book publication, co-edited with Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, is entitled, Streams of Cultural Capital: Transnational Cultural Studies (Stanford University Press, 1997). My introductory essay explores how Bourdieu’s concept, while demonstrating the social function of “culture,” is hard-pressed to address transnational cultural movements, which engage a wide variety of agents and media. The essays, from around the globe, analyze discrete cases of transnational movements and refigurations, recombinations, and reterritorializations of cultural objects. Broadly addressed to the notion of “global culture,” this anthology argues instead that we attend to the local manifestations of transnational flows of culture. Essays by Arjun Appadurai, Chen Xiaomei, Biodun Jeyifo, Bruce and Judith Kapferer, Anne Knudsen, Mary Layoun, Jean-François Lyotard, Carlos Rincón, Robert Weimann, and others. This collection of essays was a pioneering interdisciplinary exploration of what became a predominant question for cultural studies and studies of globalization.